Oh What A Time... - #178 Education! Education! Education! (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 10, 2026

This week we’re chatting education: what did schooling look like in Ancient Greece and Rome? What has corporal punishment looked like in schools through history? And how has the concept of the ‘school meal’ evolved over time?Elsewhere, why did pirates pick hooks for hands above all other options?! We think we have the answer, but if you’ve got anything to add, you know what to do: [e-mail] from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, Whatter Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime.

And welcome to Oh, what a time. This is a history podcast. We're going to go back into the past. And this week, I was thinking about the past. In particular, I was thinking about pirates. And I was thinking, you ever have this? You just wake up and you just think, like, in the middle of the night, why did they have hooks?

Do you know what I mean? Interesting. And I looked into it. Oh, did you? Oh, you actually have the answer. Yeah, I have the answer. Why did you think? Why do I think they had hooks?

Well, for a start, they lost their hands because there were so many injuries on that, I mean, it must be shot or bitten by a shark or caught them from ropes. We take it in turns to do these intros. And my intro, if it had been my turn, was I've just dropped an iPhone wireless charger on my toe, which is the most modern injury I've ever had.

And now we're discussing our pirates used to injure themselves, which obviously doesn't happen. And you've now had your foot replaced with a hook, haven't you, as well? I've got a list of how pirates would lose their hands in the first place, different reasons. Love this. Battles, so cannon blasts, gunfire, sword fights, the primary suspects. But also these are the ones that I didn't really think about. Accidents on board.

So obviously lots of ropes, lots of pulleys, lots of heavy equipment that could easily crush or sever limbs. See, I've watched a program called A Deadliest Cat. Do you ever see that? And they always talk about how a lot of the injuries are when they are pulling. maybe the anchor up or putting ropes of netting over the side and it was caught on a limb in a storm. There's so many injuries from that. So that does check out.

And then also this is a grim one. Obviously in the 1600s, 1700, you don't have penicillin. So even like small wounds could turn deadly without modern medicine. So they would just chop you up. Even if you've got a small wound that got infected, you might be better off of losing that your limb to survive.

Captain Hook, that was the crocodile, wasn't it? That's the one I know about that. he got his arms bitten by a crocodile, isn't that right? I think that's what happened in Peter Pan. That's the only other one in it. Well, my next question was like, was Captain Hook based on a real person?

Like, was there an actual pirate who had a hook? And the answer is no. Maybe a bit like, a bit of black beard. But there wasn't a guy who like Captain. Oh, okay. Which is a bit for shame. But why would Sailors go for the hook above all other influence?

Sort of tin opener. Sort of basic tin opener. I would have had a Swiss army. me like for touch to my sort of stunt. I thought this is what I was thinking. There's a million other contraptions you could have instead of a hand. You can pick things out of your beard, I suppose. You can kind of...

Tweezers. Old bits of food out of your beard. Tweezes. Exactly. Genuinely, I'll step my way through this, but I assume it's something to do with use on the ship. Yeah. So it's a shape where you can maybe steal loosen ropes and things that will be part of your day-to-day life on a ship.

I'm guessing it's to do with that, is it? He's pretty, pretty close. So obviously if you lost your hand, you could have like a wooden prosthetic, which is obviously not very functional. So that's why a lot of pirates went for hooks because it was good. And also that would rot, wouldn't it as well? If it gets in wet weather, surely your wooden prosthetic is going rotten very quickly.

If you get the 1600s equivalent of Ronsil on it, I imagine it could do you a couple of world tours. Easily replaceable, though. That's true. That's true. Okay, sorry, Chris. So what's the reason then? As you say, Tom, gripping ropes, rigging, it's a lot better than a wooden hand, but also you could hold tools or weapons with a hook.

Yeah. And it's very simple to make compared to other options. Also, on some level, it just looks really scary. And cool. I think someone coming at you with a big, sharp hook, when your modus operandi is to look scary. That's your main aid. Your main job is to freak people out.

I've never not thought when someone's got a hook for hand. Oh, he isn't hard. It's funny those things in history that suddenly I just woke up in the middle of night and thought, why did they have hooks? That shows to me you've got a nice life, Chris. Because you're not thinking about your own personal problems. You're thinking about the problems of pirates of 400 years ago.

I'm thinking of poor old back. Clearly your personal life is tip top. Sorry, there was a double negative there. I've never thought that someone with a hook isn't hard. I still have never not thought. But basically, if you've got a hook for a hand, I am avoiding you certainly in a sort of pirate

combat situation. I very rarely think about history first thing. I love history and I'm fascinated by it and I occasionally fantasises about going back to university to do another history degree but I don't think I think about history

until I've been awake for at least 40 minutes. But I would do the thing, El, where if I'm thinking about pirates and I'm lying there, I can't sleep, I'm thinking about how would I have fed as a pirate and that is something I would do saying Victorian Britain comes into my thoughts a lot at like two in the morning and I'm thinking about what would I do to survive in Victoria life as well. When I think about Victorian Britain now Tom because of you I imagine your idea

of going back in time and showing everyone smash burgers as a street food and revolutionising Victorian society just changing everything. But the other thing I think about with history is I'd love to feel how heavy chain mail is. But not in a battle context. Just in a safety of a front room with a nice fire. No, like a training day. Like a stuff away day. But for nights.

Hold a really big real sword. It's the food I'd like to eat. Well, get this. One of the parents at my school, she is an author. She's currently writing a love story set in medieval Britain. And she's going away for three days next week to learn how to jazz. Wow. You can still do this.

You can go and learn out of joust. Wow. There's different castles and different places around the country where if that's your thing, you can actually go and experience jousting today. So you probably could experience chain mail. Yeah, but that's the thing. Then you meet these people and you say, so what do you do in your day-to-day life? And they got, I'm actually on the board of directors at Confuse.com.

So this is how I unwind at the weekend. Because obviously, you know, a lot of work in front of a screen during the week. So then I want to go back to sort of how we use. to sort of how we used to do things about 600 years ago, when I'm unwinding at the weekend. Yeah. Or they've made shitloads of money in the pandemic. Just don't have to work anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of am a major shareholder in Zoom. Yeah. And then that sort of changed everything in my life. It was very screen-orientated, my sort of career. And then I must admit, I've made a decent amount of money, and now I'm living like it's 1510. My earnings went from £4,000 a year.

12 billion. I'm actually a billionaire. So there you are. Well, that's what I do. Chris, that's genuinely, a genuinely impressive research. I'm really, I'm impressed with that. I wonder what would be the key cause of limb loss.

I think it probably is ropes. It's got to be that sort of stuff, isn't it? Probably on board a pirate ship. I think it's more the day-to-day risks of anchors. I do actually think. I think that's probably what, that would be my guess. but I've got nothing to back that up. Okay.

Today's episode, as Chris has just shown, his ability to research, to learn, and to teach, while today's episode is on education. Look at that for a link. I am going to be talking today about the story of school dinners in this country and also a bit about the story of school dinners in America, and it's a fascinating tale.

I am going to be talking about corporal punishment in British schools. And we're going back to antiquity to find out how the gritty, and the Romans did schooling. Yeah, I'm imagining that was sort of not very fun for some reason. I don't know why. You won't be surprised to learn. Fighting plays a big role.

Okay, great. It's a real case of, I'm so glad I wasn't born there, is it? Again, they love training their kids to be killers. Do you know what I imagine, what I like imagining, though, I often imagine how I would have been, if that had been just the culture I'd grown up in, Can you imagine a hench, hard, ripped Tom Crane was being schooled in the art of war face since he was about three years of age?

There's always been weeds, Ellis. There's always been the other end of the spectrum. I'm sure I'd continue to fill that bracket. I think even Plato and Socrates could, like, handle themselves. Yeah, yeah, you are right. You'd have been weir by comparison, but certainly not by today's standards. Just within the context of them. Yeah, just within the context of ancient Greece.

So before we get into that, though, should we dip into a little bit of correspondence? So, you sent us some correspondence, have you? Well, let's take a look at you then. I got an Instagram message earlier. Someone slipped into our show DMs. It literally came in an hour ago, and I loved it so much. I'm going to read it straight away.

That's how impressed I was by this message. So this is from Kieran North, whose message is to say, a quick tale of being palmed off. Now, for anyone that thinks that sounds like a very rude story, it's not. This references how recently I got trapped on a roller coaster for 45 minutes at Alton Towers and then for that I got a free bottle of water and also two fast passes. And we discussed how if this was America, I'd have come away from that day with four million pounds in my pocket.

Well, we then asked, have you been palmed off and Kieran has. He says a quick tale, as I say, are being palmed off. and Palace Pier, either in the very late 80s or the very early 90s. It's not important. I was getting onto a waltzer car at a fairground when the guy started the mechanism, causing the carriage to swing around and hit me straight in the jaw. Oh, my God. Knocking me off my feet like a right hook, and I was about seven or eight,

is what he says, as recompense, some reason this really makes me laugh. And before checking if I had concussion or not, the staff took me and my sister on every single ride one after another. and then gave us free fish and chips and 99s all free of charge. Now there's a second story in this email, so let's discuss this. I would say if I've been knocked out by a swirling waltz, the last thing I want to do is go immediately on every other ride there and then be given really heavy food.

True, but we're looking at context by the standard of the time. Yep. That is the absolute most you could expect. There have been a lot of parents. So, Kieran's parents or Guardian or whoever we're. would have told their friends, and then we got free rides, free fishing chips, and I can guarantee to you that everyone has said,

oh, so it was with it then. That was quite good then in the end. It turned out all right, didn't it? I mean, the one thing about the 80s, is it, I presume it's the 80s, is it? Yeah, so it's 80s or early 90s. One thing about the 80s or 90s is that it is a less litigious culture,

and issues like that were often resolved immediately, you know, and a bit over the top like that. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I remember once there was like I getting chips somewhere and there was like a flight in the chips. And they were like, here, have eight chips, you know? Yeah.

Instead of no win, no fee. Yeah. It's funny you say that because Kieran goes on to say, I also once had a dead moth in place of a raisin in a cabri's fruit and nut bar. What do you think he got from Cabrries for that? What do you reckon you got paid for it? Another fruit and nut bar. He got a £10 postal order.

That's a £10. from the huge company Cadbury's. I remember once I got a chocolate bar and it was a kind of third tier chocolate bar. I can't even. It wasn't even one that probably even exists now. But when I opened it up, the chocolate had gone all manky and a bit white inside. And my mum was like, great, here we go. This is your first consumer rights letter.

Let's do it together like a bit of a project. And I wrote a letter to this company. They came out. They sent me like a 50 pound voucher, which is in the days when, you know, Yeah. It was like 50 pounds. And I just couldn't spend it. It was impossible. What could you spend this on, this voucher? What do they want? They were like, tell us what you want as far as I remember.

Wow. Right to us back, you can have 50 pounds worth of stuff. I think I've got some boxes of some boxes of stuff. And they ended up taking them all to school and just handing them out. Wow. Classic you. Very generous, isn't it? Just where you are. The Robin Hood, Hurt. Of East London.

I don't reckon that last bit happened, Ellie. I feel he's just stuck that on at the end. I've retained the memory of writing the letter and getting their letter back. I don't remember what we did with the chocolate. I don't know what happened. You probably ate it all. But I like the way you spun it as if I just went to school, gave it to everyone who gave it to the needy.

I actually took it down to Great Ormond Street from what I remember. And just dishing out chocolate to all the local kids. But that's just me. That's just me. And by the end, I realised I've forgotten to have a bar for myself, actually. I've just given them all out. I didn't have any chocolate. But, you know, classic skull.

So Kieran North, thank you very much for sending that in. I love both stories in that, the 10-pound postal order for the moth in the chocolate and also being forced to go on every ride after you've been hit in the face by one. Great. It's great content. He says, love the pod. Cheers. Kearen's still in Brighton.

Thank you for that. If anyone else has any stories that relate to this show, have you been fobbed off? As something awful happened to you where you should have got more than 10 quid in the post, then here's how you get in contact with the show. All right, you horrible luck. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show.

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in history, your name may have been, if you are, I know what time, all time. And this week, gents, we have Teigen Elise. I'm getting ancient Rome concubine vibes. Are you? I was getting 90s R&B star. Yeah, I'm getting more 90s R&B star, actually. In a sort of a girl group around the same time as Destiny's Child, that sort of thing. And she's gone into producing.

Yeah. And she's actually on the Times Rich list. She's one of those sort of anonymous multi-millionaires because like she does all of Taylor Swift stuff and all of Sabrina Carpard. She's the most in-demand producer you've ever met. Yeah, absolutely. That is what I'm seeing.

In the Guinness Booker Records for being able to play every instrument. Tegan and Lee. I'm seeing, but I'm imagining there's business ventures off the side of it. She's used her stardom as a 90s to, to launch, you know, the mascara range, that sort of stuff, and she's now worth 14 billion pounds.

Or whatever the biggest broadband provider in Australia is, Tegan Elise started. After music. It's nice to know that whatever route we choose here, in our mind, Teigen Elise is one of the most successful and rich people in the planet. Oh, she's successful. Tegan Elise is successful. It's a name that speaks, it smacks of success and wealth. There's absolutely no way that, yeah, Tegan Elise has hit the scale.

So that's, sorry, that's Dame Teigen-A-Lise to you. Teigen-A-Lise. The Teagan-Lise also sounds a bit like a sports car that came out for two years and then the company went under because it wasn't very good, it looked really good. Yeah, my dad had a Teigen-A-Lise in about 1994. It looked good, but the engine was terrible. Unreliable car, that.

There you go, Tegan. You can choose from any of those options. And if you'd like your name postulated upon, here's how you can support the show. Hello again, you horrible lot. Enjoying the show? Well, why not show the love by becoming a Patreon

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Your support makes everything possible, so sign up today at patreon.com slash oh what's the time or oh what's the time.com. What are you waiting for? Stop dawdling. So this week, education, education, education, the words of Tony Blair and the theme of this week's topic. Gentlemen, what will you be talking about later in the show? I'm going to close the show by talking about school meals, the history of that here and in America. And I am going to be talking about corporal punishment in British schools.

So now it's time to go back in time for me. Modern education with all its applications, smart devices, whiteboards, tables, league tables. It still rests on foundations that were laid in the ancient world. Even the language of schooling now gives the game away. School comes from the Latin at Schooler, a place of learn. Did you know that? I did not. No, I did know that.

Education from Educare in Latin, which means to bring up or train. Curriculum, obviously Latin word, but that's from Kukur to run a course. College, from Collegium, a body of people working together. So if you strip away the centuries, the structure still looks familiar. Stages of learning, subjects group by purpose, and progression based on ability. So we have modern schooling owes a lot to antiquity. The language that we use for modern schooling, it's clearly inherited from antiquity.

So school comes from the Latin schooler, a place of learning, education from educare to bring up or train. Curriculum, obviously a Latin word. That comes from Kukur to run a course. And college from collegium, a body of people working together. So you strip away all those centuries. The structure of schooling is very familiar in antiquity. stages of learning, subjects grouped by purpose, and progression based on ability.

I found that quite interesting that it's quite, it's similar, you know, classes, subjects. Yeah. What's Roman for prefab hut, which was where I seem to spend a lot of my lessons? Teachers who've lost interest. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. Did you have those huts that were just freezing? It was mad. It's a sort of thing that they'd have backstage in a festival with someone to briefly get ready.

but you just spend a whole day in there. We had one called Caban Glonia, which means the science cabin. Right, yeah. And a cabin there with, which means the new cabin. And the new cabin had a load of mould on it. So I remember thinking, first lesson in there thinking, it doesn't feel that new. And a minimum of 4,000 footballs on the roof as well.

The day that someone would get in early, like the caretaker, throw them all in the playground. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. One of the best days of the year. I thought that was unique to my school growing up, the port cabin. Was everyone at it?

No, we had them in the playground. Yeah, so did we. I actually went back to my school not so long ago, maybe a couple of years ago. And all those port cabins were gone. Oh, really? Quick buildings. Wow. What took them so long?

Well, my school moved premises when I was in Form 5, so, yeah, we got rid of them there. And I don't know if the new school has got them, but no, it was, yeah, certainly. you up to fifth, up to year 11. Well, well, well. A lot of Port-Garbin-based education. So let's go back before the Port-Cabin age. We'll go back

to ancient Greece, Athens. So education aimed to produce well-rounded citizens and more precisely well-rounded male citizens. Girls were excluded from formal education and they instead got training in domestic skills at home, which I think we may have covered before. But the system in

Ancient Greece was you had four core strands. You did literacy and literature. You had music. You did mathematics. And of course, physical training. You're battering each other. That's where Tom Crane is turning from weed into hard man. I'm guessing this isn't badminton and stuff like that, is it,

that we used to do, or table tennis as we used to at school. Is it just fighting, basically? Is that what it is? Fighting, yeah, physical training, getting ready. So we'll get on to Sparta in a second. But boys in ancient Greece, they learn to read and write. They used set texts like they had a curriculum, so they were reading Homer. They picked up musical skills.

As we mentioned, they trained their bodies for military service. And those who continued progressed to rhetoric, philosophy, geometry, astronomy, the intellectual toolkit of public life. I'm just imagining myself in my trumpet lesson, knowing I'm going to be fighting someone in an hour. Just finding you're really hard to concentrate. You've got trumpet nine and ten. until 10, and then fighting 10 until 11, and then rhetoric.

Retric with a black eye. Really struggling to hit the notes. What's the problem with Tom? I've got my mind elsewhere, to be honest. Your heart doesn't seem to be in this trumpet lesson, Mr. Cray. No, yeah. I do remember a bit of this. I remember that we had four classes per day when I was at school.

And I remember once I had a term where the third class was like rugby, the winter. So it was freezing cold. And then like getting into like a maths class for the last class of the day in winter and the classroom was never quite warm enough and just sitting there freezing battened. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's going to be like. That's what it would be like for Tom Trump into fighting into maths. Oh dear. That's ancient Greece. Over in Sparta and as we know, priorities are very different. Education was run through the state-controlled a system designed to produce disciplined soldiers, a system that was the antithesis of what Tom Crane needs.

Literacy existed in Sparta, but it was secondary. Everything was geared towards strength, endurance, obedience, and they were the examinable subject. So there was a little bit of music and dance, but even those had a martial edge to him. In both cases, as I mentioned at the start, girls are being excluded. If I had to pick, I'm going ancient Greece. I think we covered this in our Sparta episode. It sounds absolutely horrendous going to school in Sparta. So the Romans slightly different, but they still borrow heavily from the Greeks

and organised education into a clearer pipeline. So a Roman boy would be passing through three stages of schooling. So you'd have Ludus, which is like primary school, the focus there, reading, writing, arithmetic, grammaticus, which is your secondary school. So there you're focusing on literature, language, especially Greek, an analysis, and you have Retour, which is advanced, rhetoric, philosophy, and preparation for in public life.

At the middle level... So, it's very similar, isn't it, when you look at what we have in our primary, secondary university, that's why university? Yeah, yeah. In the Roman equivalent of secondary school, students were expected not just to read text, but to interpret them to analyse the language. The arguments understand the meaning.

By the mid-teens, elite students were effectively bilingual and trained to speak, persuade and debate. Education, in other words, was preparation for law, politics and administration. Do you think it was easier because there was sort of less stuff to do after school? It's like now we've got kids have got tele. We've got computer games. They've got all this sort of stuff. Whereas, A.J.O., what have you got?

You got some nice weather, admittedly. You could run around and play some sport, admittedly. But there's less to distract you. I wonder whether the... No, I think it probably was. Yeah. It's, you know, books were the modern technology of the technology of the time. time or scrolls or whatever they would have been.

So maybe you're drawn to them more. Do you know what? I've never heard said, but I think is true. The ancient Greeks and the ancient Romans would have loved football. When you think about their sports, they're all violent, or they're like chariot racing, or they're, you know, getting in the Colosseum and fighting a lion. Yeah. Get a ball, kick it around.

They would have loved that. Yeah. Are you saying, you're saying, but maintaining it? but maintaining the raw violence. So basically sort of 80s football. Well, there's that Italian sport, isn't there? It's an ancient sport that's existed for hundreds of thousands of years and that's extremely violent.

They play it in southern Italy. I can't remember the name of it. Yeah, I reckon they'd have loved a bit of football. They'd have loved it. They'd have loved it. I think it'd be more sort of 1980s English long ball game than sort of peppy era football. If Sam Allardyce had been around in ancient Rome, if they'd have got into football, he would have cleared up.

It was the Calcio Storico Fiorentino. And it's like an early form of football that's sort of originated in the Middle Ages. And they still play it. And you can see it on YouTube. It is extremely violent. They love getting in amongst it. Get on them. So as we all know, the Western Roman Empire eventually collapsed.

and its educational system largely went with it. But what did survive, did so in religious settings. So monasteries, cathedral schools, that's where learning was reshaped, and it was reshaped around theology. So from this environment emerged the seven liberal arts divided into the trivium, grammar, logic, rhetoric, and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy. So these subjects were codified by Cassiodorus,

a sixth century thinker who believed literacy and learning were essential to both faith and society and at his school. The Vivarium, students worked through set texts beginning with scripture and a structured progression not unlike a modern syllabus.

Importantly, this wasn't a purely religious education. Cassiodorus encouraged the study of medicine and classical science alongside theology, preserving fragments of ancient knowledge that might otherwise have been lost. I love the idea of studying astronomy. That's great. That would be a great subject to learn.

The only shame is 2,000 years ago, what they were studying was absolutely bollocks. They had thought they were right, but it's a really good point. But in a way, that makes it more exciting. You don't need to know it's bollocks. You can just learn, you know, that's a very good point. Has anyone ever sent in an idea for a one-day time machine, which is to go back and just be a massive smarty pants at school?

Yes. In like the Middle Ages. Yeah. The earth revolves around the sun. Yeah, that would be the classic, isn't it? That's actually the other way around, guys. Would you come across as a smarty pants when you then have to back up that information?

So how are you explaining that, Chris? Let me go with that. Prove it. Prove it before I cut your head off. Three words, trust me, bro. Yeah, this is my concern. So I don't think you come across as a smarty pants. I think you'd come across as the one guy who'd got it wrong.

I'd like to think, Tom, you'd go back in your one-day time machine. You'd wear a really smart trainers and they would immediately burn you as a wits. for a single word had been uttered. Am I just wearing the trainers? In that case, yeah. So by the early Middle Ages, rulers began to formalise education again.

One of the first to do that was Charlemagne, who ordered in 789, that every cathedral and monastery in his empire should run a school. Pupils were to learn, Psalms, writing, singing, arithmetic, grammar. In other words, literacy, numeracy, and religious knowledge,

the essentials of administration and a clerical life. So what emerges from the Middle Ages into today is continuity. The Greeks gave us the idea of a rounded education, the Romans structured it, the medieval church preserved and adapted it, the core subjects, language number, argument, smattering of science. That's never gone away through the thousands of years since the ancient Greeks got started.

The three hours of later centuries, reading, writing, arithmetic are simply the latest version of a system that's been evolving for over 2,000 years. Different buildings, different ideologies, same basic ideas. And boy, is that word, those words, different buildings, doing a lot of heavy lifting. That's genuinely fascinating, isn't it? That those systems still, the parallels are so stark.

Wow. I know. Like, there's going to be ancient Greeks with pencil cases. Doing their A-levels and being a hard man. Hard man studies, GMVQ. Also, the ancient Greeks, they didn't experience what we experience, as you've talked about, which is the cold winter classroom. That wouldn't have been part of ancient, you know, as we come back to those prefab huts

and our knees knocking together in a math lesson in early, you know, late November or whatever, that wouldn't have been a case. On the rare occasions it was hot, I found it harder to concentrate then. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's true. So that would be, I would struggle with that. Yeah, each of their own, I suppose. But interesting. It's genuinely fascinating.

I played very badly at 5'Aside last week. I looked at my watch, which has got the temperature on it. It was 17 degrees. I thought, I'm at my limit. I'm not sure I could do Hardman studies, GNVQ in anything above 17 degrees. I'd just be sweating to us. I will fight you, but it has to be in the shade.

That's the end of part one of education. Coming up in part two, gentlemen, we have. I'll be discussing corporal punishment in British schools. And I'm going to be talking about the incredible story of school meals here in Britain how it came about, how it nearly floundered and disappeared, and also what happened in America.

And there you go. You can get part two right now if you subscribe to the show on Patreon or Apple. Otherwise we'll see you on Wednesday for that second part. Bye-bye. Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content,

two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets, and access to the O-Watertime group chat. Plus, if you become an O-Water-Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O-Water Time.