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Wyn y experience Cardiff Mof Wales, debate in as a graduate in chemistry and the pathway I chose to follow led me to become a customer of what schools provided and a provider of what society-government and industry demands. Furthermore the ethos prevalent in schools, universities and government in the 1950s clearly has an influence on my view. Three questions need to be considered 1. Has the education of students in Wales deteriorated? 2. Can it be made better? 3. Why should we bother? do The glib answer to the first I have heard frequently is "well it's different" - that in my view is not good enough.
Early days...
I was brought up in Ammanford and went to the Amman Valley Grammar School (AVGS) which had some 450 pupils. The main employment available locally was in the coal mines associated with the Valley. Recently I was interviewed by David Parry-Jones for the Wales Video Gallery and during the discussion I was asked to offer an explanation as to why, what appeared to be statistically highly improbable, a "cluster" of professors had emerged, all pupils at the AVGS and brought up just a few hundred yards of each other: Alan Bevan (Genetics,) Don Arthur (Zoology), both at London University, Alan Bowen-Jones (Geography, Durham), Rheinallt Williams (Theology, Aberystwyth), myself (Chemistry, Cardiff), Fred Nash (Physics, Nottingham) and from a little further away Lynn Williams (Chemistry), Eric Sunderland (Anthropology), both at Durham, and Colin Grey Morgan (Physics, Swansea).
I suggested that there were three factors that contributed to what statistically was highly improbable: The school and its teachers; the prevailing culture of Ammanford; the role of the chapels and churches Teaching at AVGS was innovative; in chemistry I was exposed to the new and novel concept of chromatography in 1949 prior to Martin and Synge being awarded the Nobel Prize some years later.
The experiment was simple but effective "Take a stick of chalk, immerse it in a solution of flowers and grass when within a few minutes yellow, orange and green rings appear on the chalk". The individual pigments had been separated, and chromatography became one of the most important analytical methods in chemistry.
There were two outstanding pillars of the local community; the Rev Nantlais...