Please note that this 'Time Line' of R.F. Mackenzie's life is a 'work in progress'.
The 'time line' has been extensively updated in August 2002..
More information will be added as it becomes available.
 

1927

 School Dux, Robert Gordon's College.

1945

Married Diana, at All Saints' Church, Kingston-on-Thames

1970

 Braehead Secondary School closes (sadly) in February '70

1986

 Re-union in Buckhaven - Mr and Mrs MacKenzie attend
Saturday 13^th September 1986

2001

www.braehead.info is registered October 2001

2002

 'braehead voice' launched in August to celebrate 1st birthday of site

2002

 Seminar on RF Mackenzie in Aberdeen - December

2004

 Aberdeen 9th Oct - 30 years after being suspended in 1974

2005

 Event being planned for early 2005 in Buckhaven

Some dates and information resourced from Peter Murphy's book on
'The Life of R.F. Mackenzie' and Vivienne Forrests 'Tribute' to R.F.
Other dates and information from various sources.

Have you any dates or information to add to this 'Time Line'
then please e-mail them to the web site.
 

Time Line:

1910 - In the close-knit community of Garioch, on the 27th April 1910,
R.F. Mackenzie was born. The proud parents Catherine and Robert Mackenzie at that time stayed at a little place called Lethenty where his father was station master. Soon, after the family moved to a bigger station a few miles away at Wartle which is where the young Robert grew up.
                          Station House, Wartle

The young Robert Mackenzie with his very first bike.

The seed is sown within Robert at this early age and obviously gave him the needed skills and endurance for him to take up his cycling trip round Europe with Hunter Diack.











1927 - School Dux

Robert Mackenzie, school Dux at Robert Gordon's College 1927.

'Mackenzie followed the tradition of many before him in doing well at school and progressing from the local Secondary school in Turriff when he had reached the age of 14 to Robert Gordon's College in Aberdeen. Looking back, however, although he appeared to his parents to flourish at the school and, indeed, was a Dux, yet in his memoir's, he had deep reservations about the value of the education he was given there.'

(extract from Peter Murphy's book)


1931 - In 1931 he graduated MA from Aberdeen University, where his two sisters followed him. Catherine, like her brother, went on to teach, as well as gaining her LRAM, while their younger sister Alice qualified as a doctor.

1934/36 - R.F. Mackenzie spent a brief spell as an uncertified teacher at the experimental freeschool, Forest School in England.

He wrote at the time:
"I was at Forest School from the age of 24 until I was 26. It was as if the school had taken me to a high place and let me see the kingdoms of the world, broadening my horizons. They were practical people like the 6th century monks of Monte Cassino, working away quietly converting dreams into solid reality. These two years stand out in my memory. Since then, former pupils have written that for them, too, their years at Forest School were among the best in their lives. There was freedom and partly because of that, there was what Goethe (in a letter to Schiller) called 'tranquil activity'. I'd been into the educational future and it worked."


1935 - Publication of his collaborative book 'Road Fortune'.

  Below R.F Mackenzie and Hunter Diack
R.F. Mackenzie co-wrote this book with his lifelong friend Hunter Diack. The book was a remarkable achievement as the book has value as a travelogue but also as a historical document. The book contains their views and observations of two young and gifted graduates on the political, social and economic changes that were affecting Italy, the Balkans, Austria and Germany in the early 30's.

Road Fortune was published by Macmillan in 1935.

So it was in December 1932 that Mackenzie and Diack set off with high hopes for the continent. Each had a sturdy touring bicycle equipped with acetylene lamps and were burdened with panniers, a heavy canvas tent, and an old Remington Typewriter on which they planned to record their adventures. As their staple diet, they carried with them a 30-pound bag of oatmeal that was nearly stolen from them before they set off from London. Despite the excitement of going to the continent where everything was in a ferment (there was rumour of war, the Polish corridor anti-Semitism, the Spanish revolution, and, of course, the Balkans), it was the physical stress of hard cycling and living under canvas far dominated their early progress through France.

During the course of their journey through France, they learned from a newspaper that H.G. Wells had gone to spend the winter at Grasse in the south of France, and, since that was on their route, they wrote a letter to him saying that they expected to reach Grasse in January and might they come and have a talk with him. Much to their surprise and delight, they found when they reached the Post Office at Grasse that he had left them an invitation there to visit him and because it was difficult to find the way to the house outside of Grasse, he would send his chauffeur to meet them and take them to his house for a meal. The chauffeur was there on time. They had to explain to him that they had to take their bicycles with them, and so he told them he would lead the way.

Wells is described as a smiling, short, energetic figure who poured the two lads generous whiskies before serving them a meal. In the course of conversation he exhibited his fundamental optimism for the future of mankind, declaring, 'What a wonderful time to by young! Students and young people from all over the world will be travelling, as these Scotsmen are, and inquiring and discussing world problems and putting their minds to the question of how to organise things better.' He then persuaded them to stay the night in a guest-house in the garden.

HG Wells web site (read more about this great author)


Hunter Diack :
A lifelong friendship was begun at University with R.F Mackenzie, who was a year behind him. Robert Mackenzie, son of an Aberdeen stationmaster, was himself to become a pioneering educationist and a controversial figure. At University the two young men were outgoing, outspoken, loved life and loved their fellowmen: their brand of philosophy knew all the answers. Of all the richness of anecdote from that time perhaps the most picturesque is that of the pair of young socialists refusing to stand for the National Anthem - and nobody noticing; but in a letter to his friend later Hunter tells how he did the same in a cinema in Toronto and got the angry reaction: 'You can do that in Aberdeen but you can't do it here!'

After graduating Hunter did a year of Teacher Training, then spent another year at the University of Toronto on an Interchange Scholarship, researching in the field of educational psychology.

Before starting out on his career proper Hunter accompanied Robert Mackenzie on an epic cycling journey through Europe, their account jointly set down in a book Road Fortune, published in 1935 by Macmillan. This is a remarkable book, containing as it does the insight and premonitions of these two young men, eyes and ears open in a Europe coming to the boil. They stayed a weekend with H. G. Wells at Grasse; met an assortment of cartoon characters on other Grand Tours; hungered and wearied and pitied the peasants whose lot was always to hunger and weary; spent three weeks talking religion with their compatriots at the Scots College in Rome.

They sent back occasional accounts for the Press and Journal under pen-names: Hunter was 'Clay Davie' - the country name for a clay pipe - while Robert was 'Picky Say' - the farmers hat. They were away for half a year: when their savings were gone this episode in their lives was finished, and Hunter entered into the world of working for a living.

He became Assistant Master at Robert Gordon's College, teaching English, History and German. By all accounts he was a popular teacher with boys and masters alike - perhaps a little envied by the latter, for it seemed in a way unfair that a man so disorganised and wittily scornful of the establishment should do so well at his job.

Hunter Diack, John Foster, John Mackintosh and other friends of like mind would occasionally meet in the back room of the Cults Hotel, 'We were very left-wing in those days,' mused John Foster. 'The North East Review was really produced as an answer to the Kemsley newspapers.'

'Left-wing, but never committed,' points out Robert Mackenzie. 'Hunter Diack didn't sink his own individuality in any political party.'

Hunter Diack and Robert Mackenzie were called up into the RAF in early 1941.
(extracts on Hunter Diack taken from a copy of the Leopard Magazine)


1941/45 - Robert Mackenzie is called-up to serve in the RAF:

'Mackenzie served in the RAF during the war from 1941 to 1945, having been called up at the age of 31 nearly two years after the war had begun. His diaries of the war date from August 1941 to April 1945 by which time he was on flying missions with Bomber Command over Occupied Europe.

He spent much of the time prior to 1945 training as a navigator, first in Canada and the USA in 1941 and then in South Africa during the period October 1942 to October 1943. He was then stationed for much of the rest of the war at various locations in the Midlands and South of England before being 'demobbed' in January 1946 with the rank of Sergeant Navigator.'


'Mackenzie, after a spell of embarkation leave in Aberdeen, where the family had moved two years earlier, was shipped out from Liverpool at the end of September 1942 to South Africa for further navigator training. It took six weeks of what he describes as 'evasive courses in convoy' to reach South Africa.

Once there he took an obvious delight in discovering the country for himself in the course of going to East London where the training would take place. Some aspects of what he sees on the train journey from Durban reminds him of home, according to his recollections of the event.'

(extract from Peter Murphy's book)



1945 -Marriage of Robert Mackenzie and Diana Lister:

ARMSCOTE - Marriage of Miss D. C. Lister
The marriage of Flight-Sergeant R.F. Mackenzie, of Aberdeen, and Petty Officer Diana C. Lister,
W.R.N.S., daughter of Mrs. Lister of Armscote, took place at All Saints' Church, Kingston-on- Thames; the officiating clergyman was the Rev. Leslie Yorke, padre of the W.R.N.S. Depot. The bride was given away by her uncle, Mr. A.C.H. Pryce, and looked radiant in a dress of white satin with train, long net veil and mediaeval head-dress. She carried a bouquet of tulips and daffodils. Miss Janet Pryce (cousin of the bride) was bridesmaid, and wore a cyclamen dress and net veil and carried a posy of anemones. The best man was was Flight-Sergeant J. Fox, R.A.F.

As the bride entered the church the hymn "Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us" was sung and during the service "O Perfect Love". The bride and bridegroom left the church to the strains of the Wedding March, and a guard of honour composed of R.A.F. and W.R.N.S. was formed outside.

The reception was held at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Pryce, about forty guests being present. After the cutting of the iced cake, decorated with models of steering wheels, anchors, lifebuoys and a four-engined bomber, the toast of the bride and bridegroom was proposed by Mr. Ernest Bomford, to which the bridegroom responded.

The honeymoon was spent in Devonshire, the bride travelling in a gold Moroccan dress with camel coat and tan accessories.

(taken from newspaper clipping)


1946 - Trained as Teacher - Appointed to Galasheils Academy:

He enrolled at Aberdeen Teacher Training College in 1946 to train as a teacher, not long after 'demob' from the RAF, and, having completed the six month's emergency course that was open to returning servicemen at that time, he was offered a post, which he accepted, at Galashiels Academy as a teacher of English and History and began his teaching career there in August of that same year.

Despite the fact that he had not been inside a Scottish school since the time he had been a pupil at Robert Gordon's in Aberdeen 20 years before, he found, to his disappointment, that nothing had changed - 'there they were again, the Tudors and the Stuarts as large as life, the notes on The Merchant of Venice and exercises on subordinate adverbial clauses'. In the staff room education was not mentioned except at the time of the external examinations and the discussion was restricted to whether the exam questions were fair or unfair. Mackenzie felt a great sense of disillusionment at what he saw as a period of retrenchment setting in after the liberating atmosphere in society associated with the war years.

He and Diana enjoyed life in the Borders. For him, especially, the Borders was attractive because of its dramatic scenery and its deep-rooted connections with the way Scotland had developed historically as a nation over the centuries.
(extract from Peter Murphy's book)


1952 - Principal Teacher English at Templehall Jnr Sec School. Kirkcaldy:

Templehall Junior Secondary in Kirkcaldy, an inexpensive, single-storey building catering for the needs of Kirkcaldy children aged between 12 and 15 who had been allocated to a Junior Secondary course as opposed to a Senior Secondary course at a 'Grammar' school on account of 'failing' their '11-Plus' exam. Jack Stewart, the Headteacher, was a go-ahead man who believed in the benefits of outdoor education.

In an article in the Evening Dispatch of June 1957 headed 'School for Adventure' an interesting description is given of the activities that the school had become well-known for at a time when outdoor education was still in its infancy. The system used was for the children to save up for an adventure week by making weekly deposits in a school savings account and then draw lots to go mountaineering, flying in an aircraft over their home county (as a unique form of geography lesson) or go pony-trecking in the Highlands. For instance, a company of 26 boys and girls with two teachers spent seven days at Kingussie Youth Hostel where they made friends with a stable-full of hardy Highland ponies, reaching 1500 feet above see-level, achieving lessons of self-reliance, of community spirit, endurance and resourcefulness.

Hence, swimming, fishing and general nature study figured in the week's course as well as pony-trekking and, in addition, visits were made to the local Folk Museum with its vivid reconstruction of Highland life and to nearby Ruthven Castle. Hostelling was also seen as a valuable educational adjunct in that children had to learn (perhaps for the first time) to cater, not just for their needs, but for others by dint of learning the value of cooperation.
(extract from Peter Murphy's book)


Pupils view Fife from the air
Fife Free Press, Saturday June 18, 1955

Over 40 boys and girls from Templehall School, Kirkcaldy, spent Monday at Scone Aerodrome, near Perth. During the day, the pupils went on a flight in an Airwork Ltd. Rapide to view their native county from the air.

For over a year some of the senior geography classes at Templehall School have been making a particular study of their own county. It began with an excursion by bus round the various geographical areas of Fife, for example the fishing towns of the East Neuk, the agricultural land of the Howe and the industrial home region with Kirkcaldy as the centre. Visits were also arranged to individual industries, farms, mines and other enterprises. Amongst the latter were Balfarg farms with it pedigree dairy stock, the Wellesley Colliery, Durie Foundary, Burtisland Shipyard, where a ship launching was witnessed, and the opening of the new pit at Seafield.

A novel feature of these visits, adopted in order to secure the power of the pupil's own initiative and enterprise, was the use by the children concerned of box cameras. The films taken were developed and printed by the pupils, and the photographs used by each boy or girl to build up their own geographical record of their home county. This is one way it seems of overcoming the resistance to education and the apathy that, as we all know from our schooldays can come too easily from too close an adherence to atlas and text book.

The school's English, Geography and Science Masters (Mr R. F. Mackenzie, Mr. D. R. Mitchell and Mr. W. S. Band), felt that valuable through the project was so far, perhaps the knowledge obtained lacked cohesion. They decided, therefore, with the enthusiastic approval of the Director of Education and their headmaster to let the children see the whole county as a living map beneath their feet. This was done with the unstinted co-operation of Airworks, Ltd, Scone Aerodrome, who were chartered to fly the pupils on an hour's flight.

For the children it was a thrilling and informative experience. As for the educational value, this is best summed-up in the words of one of the pupils - "I learned more in one hour about the geography of Fife than in 10 years in the classroom."

(extracts from this article from the Fife Free Press)


1957 - Appointed Headteacher, Braehead Secondary School:

In 1957 R. F. Mackenzie is appointed Headteacher of Braehead Secondary School, Buckhaven, Fife.

'It was, then, with a sense of purpose and considerable optimism that Mackenzie came to Braehead School in 1957 as its first Headteacher. The opening of the school was conventional enough as recorded in the log-book that Mackenzie kept of the daily events of the running of the school:

'Councillor Thomson and Chairman of the local Education Sub-Committee present.

Psalm 23 Crimond. Lord's Prayer.

Surprised at fresh appearance, healthy, well-clad, of pupils. They sang well.
Give out time-tables. Flowers on platform ... afterwards used for dining rooms.

Dining went so well that at the Staff Meeting a member of staff said they'd agreed gladly to have meals with pupils. There were table-cloths. They washed their hands before eating.

Staff meeting 2.45 to 4 pm.'
(the above is an extract from Peter Murphy's book)

The Mackenzie family at their house in Upper Largo.

1963 - A Question of Living is published

Article published in Daily Record, Monday September 30, 1963
Written by Paul Foot
Shake up our schools!
A book published today should be read immediately by every Scots parent. It's a crushing, slashing attack on the foundations of our educational system . . . and it comes from a headmaster! He is R. F. Mackenzie, headmaster of Braehead Junior Secondary School in Fife.

He is known throughout Scotland for his dynamic ideas about schools and schooling.

Hard look
Now he's set them all down in a little book called " A Question of Living" (Collins: 18s). Mr. Mackenzie takes a cool, angry, good-tempered constructive, and sometimes very funny SWIPE at the system.

Here are some points he makes:
* "Professional Educationalists," draw up the syllabuses for children because "These things had always been taught, and-well, wasn't that good enough?"

"It is tough on teenagers," says Mr. Mackenzie, "that they should have to spend their golden hours of youth on Henry II and George I."

* Bureaucracy and stuffiness in Government and local authority departments produce people who dislike change, says Mr. Mackenzie.

It means re-arranging the files and too many people at the top "play safe" because safety brings success.

* Examinations often are based on regurgitation of things memorised . . . like the distribution of population in Australia.

Ignorant
They are completely divorced from everyday life and merely antagonise the children, says Headmaster Mackenzie.

* Of sex teaching Mr. Mackenzie tells how he once asked a class to write on a piece of paper whether they wanted to be taught about reproduction. All the children wrote YES.

Most children are excessively ignorant about simple biological sex problems, says Mr. Mackenzie, and they very much need and appreciate teaching on the subject.

Mr. Mackenzie attacks almost every aspect of British education today . . . and not just destructively. His ideas for change are clear and convincing. After all, he's tried many of them out-and they work-in his school.

For instance, a School Council of pupils runs a lot of the school affairs and deals with cases of stealing. Although they have power to punish, they are much more interested in finding out WHY the "crime" has been committed.

Science lessons in Braehead School can mean measuring grounds for playing fields with theodylites, and "maths" can mean a discussion on income-tax or hire-purchase.

Big change
I wish there were more people like Mr. Mackenzie.

More teachers who were not primarily interested in the "status of the teacher," more parents who did not leave their child's education to someone else.

If our common rooms and Education Departments had half this man's humanity and wisdom, we could change our schools overnight from dull, hated exam-production lines into happy, invigorating places of learning.
(Paul Foot - Daily Record - 1963)

Press on the book above for a fuller account of what is to be found in this book.


1965 - The Sins of the Children is published

Article unknown paper but headed 'Teacher'

The Sins of the Children by R.F. Mackenzie (Collins 25s)
(written by Chaim Bermant)

Mr. Mackenzie combines four qualities rarely found in one individual and hardly ever at all in a headmaster - charity, patience, imagination and firmness - and his two books on his experiences as head of a school, in a Fife mining town have become minor classics. His school is now under sentence of death, for it does not fit into the comprehensive system planned by the local authorities.

The Sins of the Children is not plea for remission of sentence. It is rather an attack on both system and authorities, for he feels that the former stifle initiative, and the latter, like every deity which every existed, try to fashion man in their own image. They are less interested in individuals than in stereotypes, less in opening the youthful imagination to inquiry than in cramming it with accepted notions.

Those who do not share the author's optimism about the inherent richness of the human imagination will be reassured by this as by his earlier books. He has achieved remarkable material. Yet they do not indicate a unique approach to teaching; he merely happens to be a unique teacher. It is the paucity of Mackenzie's (his more conservative readers may feel that there is one too many) in our educational set-up which makes it necessary to evolve systems, and for authorities to lay down lines of guidance.
(written by Chaim Bermant)

Press on the book above for a fuller account of what is to be found in this book.


1967 - Escape from the Classroom is published

Scottish Daily Express Monday, August 21, 1967.
My Week by Elizabeth Whitley


A new book by R. F. Mackenzie once head of Braehead ("Escape from the Classroom") School. He writes of the unutterable beauty that lies at our door, in moor and glen, and of his efforts to bring his dispossessed flock, both sheep and goats, into contact with it: to get them out of the pen.

Most of his children were under-privileged, some from broken homes, some from drunken ones, nearly all with working mothers.

"Sometimes I see these children as a proud aristocracy, tattered remnants of dignity and spirit enduring through the tribulations of their upbringing."

The things he did-collecting. Alpines on Goatfell instead of swotting botany out of a book for instance - are said to be possible with small groups, impossible with numbers: yet it was for lack of numbers Braeside was closed.

Three thousand secondary pupils was the estimate number for 1970, enough for two comprehensive schools, not three: and his was the oldest building. "We teach civics, citizenship, and tell the pupils how a county council is run. But that is only the machinery." Who would dare tell the whole story?

Although "our pupils probably already guess that the selection of provosts and senior bailies does not always proceed on a Christian, or even gentlemanly, basis, but sometimes . . . by tooth and claw."

He tells of some girls with lice in their hair who got full marks in a home hygiene exam which included questions on how to deal with lice in your hair. Were they any further off-beam than the committee that ignored the schools whole art display, and complained of scribbles in the lavatory?

The good pupils, however eager once, become the good galley-slaves, gagged and chained through the years to their desks. Does that fit them for "the anarchy in human relationships caused by the retreat and retiral of Christianity?"

The book "The Sins of the Children", does not end in a "noble, nebulous pipe-dream . . . because tomorrow there will be an increase in vandalism, gang fights and apparently inexplicable acts of cruelty."

Press on the book above for a fuller account of what is to be found in this book.


1968 - R.F Mackenzie leaves Braehead in Buckhaven for Summerhill in Aberdeen:

Mr. Robert Mackenzie headmaster of Braehead Secondary School, Buckhaven, was presented with a cine camera at a dinner in the Crusoe Hotel, Lower Largo, at the weekend.

He leaves on April 15 to take up a similar post at Summerhill Secondary School, Aberdeen.

Mrs. Mackenzie was presented with a nest of three tables by Miss Kirsten Adam.

The function was attended by 52 present and former teachers.

Courier 15.3.68



1968 - R.F. Mackenzie takes up his post in Summerhill Aberdeen:

HAPPY RETURN
Everyone interested in the progress of Scottish education hails with pleasure the appointment of Mr. Robert Mackenzie, formerly of Braehead School, Buckhaven, as headmaster of a comprehensive school in Aberdeen.

Mr. Mackenzie is a pioneer. Finding old teaching methods wanting, he experimented with new, and made Braehead and educational legend.

But his innovations did not seem to meet with local approval. He will be happy in the go-ahead climate of Aberdeen. Where he will have fresh and ample opportunity to construct a new deal for large numbers of Scottish children.
(end - unknown newspaper article)