After two years at Agricultural College, Chris went to Newton Park to train as a Rural Science teacher in 1964. Today, at the age of 80, he recalls that his lecturers were a great source of inspiration and certainly shaped his teaching vocation.

"I went on to teach Rural Science at Downton Secondary School (Wiltshire) after two years in an army school in Tidworth. I loved my job and initially designed my own syllabus for the course, however, my best achievement was setting up a mini enterprise with two Toggenburg goats."

Chris Southey

I shall be 80 next year and I was at Newton Park college when I was 21 and newly married, so 1964/5. I was doing Rural Science. After my two years at Agricultural college, we students were all in digs in Bath, so not much social life. Our main tutor was Mr Calvert, who was a wonderful inspiration for teaching Rural Science. 

I went on to teach R.Sc. at Downton Secondary School (Wiltshire) after two years in an army school in Tidworth. I loved my job and initially designed my own syllabus for the R.Sc. However, my best achievement was setting up a mini enterprise with two Toggenburg goats. We obviously sold milk but also made feta cheese, yoghurt and quiches. Our dairy had been my potting shed and the goats' quarters were made entirely by wonderful parents. Someone's old kitchen came in handy for the dairy.

Everything from animal husbandry to work in the dairy happened before and after school; goats are milked twice daily for 365 days of the year!

We did have our committee meetings at lunchtime. It was all a huge success in teaching children how to create logos, accounting, advertising, dairy hygiene, obviously the animal husbandry side, and presentations to local institutions like the WI and even local agricultural shows in the summer. I could wax lyrical for ages, but I am sure you can appreciate the immense joy it brought me as a teacher to have such enthusiasm from children of 14 to 16 and younger on the animal husbandry side. We later diversified to plant production, angora goats, wool and floristry, but that's another story.

What is lovely is that I still keep in touch with so many of the students who all agree that they learned far more with a mini enterprise than they ever did with chalk and talk.

The Alumni Oral Histories project aimed to gather individual voices and views from the University's teaching alumni community and publish these stories in people's own words. Any views or opinions represented in individual posts are personal, belonging solely to the author of that post, and do not represent the views of other Bath Spa staff, or Bath Spa University as an institution.