Unofficial School Expulsions

Unofficial School Expulsions
by
Austin Mitchell

If you attended the Keswick All Age School now Keswick Primary and Junior High and survived to graduate, then you could survive anywhere. You could survive at any of those Inner City schools. Keswick was over there in the Keswick Mountains, down in St. Catherine. Each year, at least four or five students had to run from the school for one reason or another. They were mostly boys, but a girl was sometimes given marching orders too. Once a student was chased out of school over Free Hill or Christmas Hill that was it. You could go to another school, but you couldn't return to Keswick. I remembered Denny Reid using a bag of marbles to burst Winston Lothian's head. We chased him over Free Hill, didn't catch him, but he never returned to school. I heard that a group of girls had chased Darlene Treasure over Christmas Hill after it was revealed that she had stolen another girl's purse. Sometimes you'd see the whole school chasing a student up one of those hills. Some students had relatives in every class. Sometimes that was how it happened, you got into trouble with one of these families and they and their allies ganged up on you.

Austin's blog: stredwick.blogspot.com