Former Teacher Biographies

James Duncan McPetrie ( - 1948), Rector
 

The Madras College Magazine for June 1940 reports:

The Rector.
Partings are unsettling: they are the more disturbing when they cast their shadows before them. We are at the moment in the path of one of these, for before another vacation, indeed by the end of another term, we shall have to bid goodbye to our Rector. For seventeen years his black-gowned figure has entered by the western doorway at precisely five minutes to the hour of assembly: during all these years his voice has led us at morning prayers. (lathered together in our stately old quadrangle we have been reminded Ivy him each Empire Day of our ancient heritage and our duty as citizens. On every Closing Day we have listened to him reading the School Report. It is difficult for us to picture another in his place.

Born in Huntly, Mr. McPetrie entered Aberdeen University from Gordon's College, and when only a little over nineteen, graduated with First Class Honours in Classics. After this very remarkable achievement, he taught in Irvine, Brechin, Cupar and Kirkcaldy. He was appointed Headmaster of Alva Academy in 1907, three years thereafter Rector of Keith Grammar School, and after thirteen years there he came to us in 1923 to be our Rector. Throughout his career his scholarship and his culture have been appreciated by his pupils and his colleagues: that these have been more widely recognised is proved when we recall that from  1937 to 1939 he had the distinction of being Chairman of the Council of the Classical Association of Scotland.

Mr. McPetrie's interests, however, have not been confined to books and learning. Having himself played, placed successfully, and enjoyed playing, practically all our games, he has taken an unusually active and enthusiastic interest in all school games and sports. Indeed, at a time when sport plays such an important part in life, the pupils of Madras College have been most fortunate in having for so many years a Head who has not hesitated to place games in the forefront of school life, and who has rejoiced as much in the feats of present and former pupils in the games field as in the honour brought to the school by their distinction in the field of scholarship.

During his seventeen years in Madras College we have learned to recognize Mr. McPetrie's many fine qualities. His cheerfulness and calm in the face of difficulty and disappointment and his willingness to cope with every problem have been a lesson to us all. He has seen a very great increase in the number of pupils without any corresponding increase in the size of the school building; there have been the vexed questions of heating, and of the hut; the present calamity has prevented him from having the happy closing year that we would have wished for him. It has ever been his way to seek, and so to find, the best in every one: the most difficult and wayward pupil has always had, though perhaps he did not know it, his best friend in Mr. McPetrie. We have marvelled at his very intimate and accurate knowledge of each and every pupil, and especially of those whom he had not the opportunity of getting to know in the class room. Every school society, every activity, every form of recreation and enjoyment he has encouraged and supported, believing that broad-mindedness on the part of grown-up people and opportunities of wide and varied experience for the young make for soundness of mind and strength of character. To those of us who during these years have known personal difficulty, illness or grief, Mr. McPetrie's quiet understanding and unfailing sympathy will ever be a precious memory.

When we contemplate Mr. McPetrie's keenness of mind and intellect, and his alertness of body we cannot associate with him what is usually described as the evening of life. We do not know his present plans, but we hope that we may often welcome him at the games field, at our Annual Sports, at all our school functions. That he and Mrs. McPetrie may be long spared to enjoy the leisure that will soon be theirs, and that in a world once more blessed with peace, is the wish of each and all of us.

M. P. B.

The Madras College Magazine for October 1949 reports:

Mr. McPetrie

I do not know whether Mr. McPetrie was made for Madras College or Madras College for Mr. McPetrie, but he fitted admirably into the setting of our old school with its austere class-rooms, its cloistered quadrangle, its spacious grounds, contained within this pleasant, ancient city, very Scottish at heart but suggesting, seen from far along the coast, some small Italian city of towers and spires.

Mr. McPetrie was a cultured Scot of the best type — a type now vanishing from our civilisation — giving an impression of scholarly dignity and a certain rugged severity, combined with kindly charm and very considerable humour.

He never ceased to be a student and a scholar, devoted especially to the ancient classics and to all that is best in our own English literature, finding a passage of Homer or Virgil, or a poem of Wordsworth vastly more exciting than a modern novel. Like many Scots he was deeply interested in nice points of grammar, vocabulary, style and pronunciation and liked to argue about them. He had an amusing fondness for 'words of learned length,' for unusual pronunciations ; he would talk about the 'penultimate' day of the term, of the 'eleemosynary' mark he had given to a pupil, would astound us by his pronunciation of such words as 'suggestion.' He had a good command too of his native Scots which he could use with great effect.

This fastidious scholarship had its counterpart in perfect propriety of conduct in an old-world courtesy and grace. His speech was slow and thoughtful, with happy turns of phrase, delightful to hear and later to recall. He can never have hurt feelings by rash statements or un-considered opinions.

With Mr. McPetrie's very genuine love of learning and courageous idealism went naturally a preference for plain living. The flesh-pots, the noise and clatter of cities made no appeal to him. Ho was the reverse of ostentatious. Naturally spartan in taste and habits, he was worried not at all by the coldness and discomfort of our school. Indeed, lack of modern comfort seemed to him an advantage, throwing into stronger relief the personality of the teachers.

Physically energetic, he enjoyed every kind of sport and exercise. He had in his day played all our school games, could, in addition, skate and dance well. He loved fresh air, open spaces. Any evening, after school, you might have seen him, a thin, athletic figure, striding along a country road some distance from St. Andrews, in the earlier days with Bob, his great Newfoundland dog at his heels. (Bob was one of us, came regularly into the quadrangle, went to games, often by himself, even wanted, occasionally, to join us at prayers).

Mr. McPetrie was a churchman, who greatly revered our old established Scottish order of worship. It was a pleasure, weekly renewed, to see him and Mrs. McPetrie with their family, occupying in the Town Kirk (as he always called it) the pew traditionally assigned to the rector of Madras College. At school prayers we sang only psalms and I used to wonder if he belonged originally to one of those very Puritan Highland communities in which hymn singing was considered frivolous. Not that he ever gave the slightest hint of intolerance.
It is difficult to think of Mr. McPetrie apart from his family, his children and later his grandchildren, to whom he was passionately devoted. Madame Duclaux, writing of Victor Hugo, who likewise adored his children and grandchildren, suggested that he might have chosen as a text for his study : 'Sinite parvulos venire ad me.' And so might Mr. McPetrie.

This love of his own family Mr. McPetrie extended to the larger family of school, to which he consecrated all his gifts of heart and head. For him school was a place of absorbing interest. It was emphatically not a place where you have 'the same people telling the same people the same things about the same things.' He liked personality and individuality in his staff, enjoyed and rather encouraged idiosyncrasies (which, being a linguist, endowed with a sense of humour, he could aptly describe !). Pupils, even more, were endlessly interesting individuals, for whose every deviation from normal he found an intelligent, sympathetic or humourous explanation. The pupils varying enormously from year to year, from class to class, teaching, he contended, was not so repetitive as is generally supposed. He detested regimentation, Prussian discipline, frequent examining and testing. 'After all,' he would say, 'you do not pull up a plant every week to see how it is growing.' The life of the child at school should be as natural as possible, without strain or stress.
Under Mr. McPetrie's guidance our school grew and prospered. We worked quietly, busily, happily and, being still to a large extent independent of education committees, with a fine sense of freedom. Our pupils went from us to distinguish themselves in many fields of endeavour, particularly in the academic field, and all still retain only pleasant memories of t heir old school and former rector.

Mr. McPetrie was rector of Madras College over a not inconsiderable period of seventeen and a half years, from 1923 to 1940. We are a small band now, those of us on the staff who accompanied him every step of the way. We realise with gratitude how pleasant that stage in our pedagogic journey was, how greatly our loads were lightened, how little we felt the burden and heat of the day. I am very happy to acknowledge here my own very special indebtedness and to record my warm appreciation.

M. S. SANDERSON.

Reproduced, by permission, from " The Scottish Educational Journal," 14/12/48
Mr. J. D. McPetrie, M.A.

The death of Mr. James Duncan McPetrie, M.A., former Rector of Madras College, St. Andrews, recorded last week in this column, has removed another life member from the ranks of the Educational Institute of Scotland.

A first-class honours graduate of Aberdeen University, Mr. McPetrie taught first at Irvine Royal Academy, and subsequently at Brechin High School, Bell-Baxter School, Cupar, and Kirkcaldy High School. He was Rector in turn of Alva Academy and of Keith Grammar School before becoming, in 1923, Rector of Madras College, St. Andrews, a post which he held until his retirement.

In life, as in letters, he was a master of humanity; he had a just sense of pro-portion, a keen but kindly humour which found its expression as readily in a Johnsonian period as in a pithy Scots mot juste, and an innate courtesy which graced all his relations. He had a sympathetic understanding of the young with whom he maintained friendliness without familiarity, and in administration he cherished a wise belief in the minimum of interference, resting his authority upon example rather than upon much precept. In the classroom he was a power to be lived up to; the luckless fool who failed to think as hard as he could was apprised of his folly in a tone none the less emphatic for an overtone of surprise that anyone could possibly think less than his hardest. But intellectual ability was not his only, or even his chief, measure of success and he could look back with pride, and his pupils with gratitude, on a healthy and happy school. He was a figure who grew in stature as memory lengthened, and his influence extended far beyond his teaching.