1965 | STUDENTS have their say on COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS | Tonight | BBC Archive
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- Опубликовано: 20 янв 2024
- "It's a place of social as well as educational reform".
Alan Whicker reports on whether comprehensive schools are successful in social engineering, interviewing pupils at the country's largest such establishment to get their opinions on the matter.
Clip taken from Tonight, originally broadcast on BBC One, Thursday 21 January 1965.
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Everybody perfectly cool with being interviewed in a snowstorm.
All of these children will be in their mid-70s now, those who are still alive, of course. I was born in 1978, and I'm still alive, if anyone's interested.
Glad to hear. It’s good to have you here
@@Adam-ob1hl Thank you, Adam, for reaching out - top man!
You were born in colour then
Keith Richards has been dead for at least 30 years and still performs live.
They would be 74 now, same age as me and I’m still alive as well. A few have dropped off from cancer but most would be still around. I wonder if those kids will watch this and respond.
Alan whicker said this is the biggest comp school in London. It's the famous Holland Park School a comprehensive school which took over 2K students.
It was an Outstanding school when it opened in 1958.
Then a new headmaster took over in 1970 and done away with streaming, bad discipline was on the rise, it went down hill . By the early 1980 it was a rough school and stayed at that till a new head master took matters into his own hand and changed it in 2004
Also uniform went out of the window by 1970. Uniform came back in 2004
Ohh and nobody spoke so posh like the kids do on this video did
Most came from Shepherds Bush
@@EgoShredder Diversity is our strength, did you not get the memo.
just casually being pelted with snow while being interviewed
The days when it snowed in this country
Children were made of hardier things in those days!
@@icecreamforeverbecause they were routinely bullied. How is that better?
@@heinkle1it showed last week you weirdo.
@@Jayfive276You just made that up. He never mentioned bullying.
I would so love to know what happened to these young people and how their lives turned out. Did they all end up in their respective "Academic, Commercial or Technical" fields that they'd been put in at school.
I went to a comprehensive between 79 and 84. I wasn't an academic and was in what they call in the video the technical stream. We learned tool making, woodworking, motor vehicle maintence, skills needed for the workplace. Except for English and Maths my exams were City and Guilds, trade qualifications. This is what's lacking today.
I went through this when I was at school although we were just classified A,B,C. The experience I had was that we only mixed on the bus depending where you lived. The actual education and teaching was actually quite poor and the teachers definitely showed a sort of class bias between the various classification’s. They always made stupid assumptions about one’s parents such as their education, income or where you lived and your interests. They got away with it then but I doubt they would today, parents are a lot more interested in their children’s education and teachers seem to be a lot more concerned about results because of it.
I don't know, I think alot of parents in the modern era have neither the idea they're being taught things that they themselves wouldn't approve of or the will to change it.
The problem is now parents are much more happy to let the government to do all the educational parenting and the rest to tiktok and youtube
Alan Whicker had such a great presenting style, & always came across as wonderfully laidback, charming & quintessentially English.
However, I’m of an age where I only truly remember him from his BarclayCard TV ads…& whenever I hear his inimitable voice now I expect him to start waxing lyrical about some exotic foreign-land and then say “with a BarclayCard here you’ve got 3 times more chance of being accepted than with certain charge-cards I could mention”. 😂🤣
But I do find his habit of drawing out the last syllable of the last word of each sentence very distractiiiing.
What wonderful well balanced intelligent young people...even the one or two academic ones that didn't mix with lower streams recognised that they probably should...I hope they all went on to lead worthwhile and content lives..I'm sure most will have.
When you hear the quality, clarity and confidence in these answers, from students at every level, you realise how 'dumbed down' British society has become 😢
Aye, turns out "one size fits all" comprehensives were not the way forward...
Fabulous interviewees.
Well, I was 15 in 1965 so I would be the same age as these kids. I went to Newquay Grammar School in Cornwall and was in the A stream, but ended up emigrating to Australia. Certainly didn’t end up working in a bank or in some other academic occupation. One thing we learned at grammar school was how to spell, and, errr, use good grammar! They were very strict in those days, and no way would you mouth off at a teacher or get away with bullying.
Same age as me. Family emigrated to Australia in 1965. I found the education system to be well behind the UK but still did well😊
Forgot to add Crown Woods Comprehensive in Eltham
How well they all spoke. And standing in the snow like that well could you imagine kids today.😮
I'd be in the 'special' stream 😂😂
It's easy to tell which time of the year this was filmed in 😂 (January 1965)
Wonderful archive footage and well spoken students with no complaints about the driving snow :), I have fond memories of the mixed Comprehensive system in the early 80's.
Loved the video.
Typical of the 60s. .being interviewed in a blizzard! Inside would've been nicer, don't you think 😊
It's just weather
Those were the days when we had proper snow at school, not like the rubbish we have these days.
do we no longer have snow?
Well said!
@@gtaluvr1992back when people got basic British humour too apparently 😂
The British accent was clearly different in those days, the 1960's. More refined. Today it much more loose. These student sound like they've been trained how to speak.
Cuz of radio. In 1800s different areas spoke diffreent
@@pugh.joseph 'cuz'. What if they never listened to radio, would they have just sorted and grunted their way through?
@@QuoPaperPlanelanguage evolves over time. Stop being a snob.
That's because the school presented the more well spoken kids to be interviewed.
@@Jayfive276 What's radio got to do with it and why am I a snob? Who says 'cuz' on the radio. It was a legitimate question.
Could someone who went to school around this time please explain: what were streams? Were there only academic and technical? Who chose which stream you were in? Thanks!
I was the same age as these kids. In primary school, you took the 11 plus exam at age 11 which determined if you went to Grammar or Secondary Modern schools. Comprehensive schools were just being introduced where there was just a single school for all abilities, but they were streamed according to whether you were academic or wanted to enter the trades. I didn’t go to a Comprehensive as they only had Grammar and Secondary Modern at Newquay where we lived, but just after I left Grammar school everyone was moved to a Comprehensive school including my younger sister. I think exams at the new school determined what stream you went to.
@@gm16v149 interesting, thank you!
Was there a hat shortage that year?
I don’t remember kids wearing hats except for those silly caps we had to wear in primary school and up to form two in secondary.
Even if they had hats they'd take them off to be interviewed!
Wow. Where did it all go wrong!
Very articulate these pupils. Can we have a follow up?
this is much more of a comment on the nature of the school that anything else. it's interesting how the different streams speak and it's also interesting that no-one from the "general" stream is interviewed.
At this time, "Comprehensive" was very much in it's infancy and here it means that children are still segregated but under one roof. The good news is that setting now allows students to be good at things and not others, so avoiding these quite rigid distinctions.
How many Anglo/Celtic English/British kids at the school in 2024 I wonder?
One per class, probably.
Some of these kids look like they are in their forties.
"It's OUR WORLD too, right kids !"
When this was made in 1965 they would have been called pupils not students. Why has that all changed? The grammar, secondary modern system in my area ended two years before I went to senior school & I would have failed the 11 plus but the comprehensive system worked out well for me.
It's changed because they're obsessed with copying America. The systematic Americanisation of British school terminology is so pathetic, we should have our own distinct culture instead of copying another country.
I’m not surprised the academic kids don’t mix.
Better times. It's as simple as that.
What were schools before they became comprehensive?
Grammar or secondary modern.
Functional.
@@kamandi1362 I don't think they were Grammar schools as I went to a comprehensive and the clever people who passed their 11+ went to a Grammar school. (Southend High School)
@@Jack_WarnerThe ones who didn’t pass went to Secondary Modern which was where kids who weren’t particularly academic learned the trades.
0:28 Cut to modern day narrator: “And the critics were right.”
All the teenagers are now retired and in their 70's. I wonder what lives they lived? Maybe you can even reply with a comment here if you read this.
The penultimate interviewee was a future king Charles.
And now they are getting de education
WHICKER'S WORLD
One is quite amazed at the erudition, manners and presence of the teenagers being interviewed here. But, of course, these are the very qualities that the comprehensive education system was designed to destroy. Then add mass immigration...
They look and sound about 35
Interviewer to a girl in the Commercial stream: "What are you going to do when you leave school? Be a secretary, I suppose."
Wow. Times certainly have changed. Not as much as they should have but still a lot. The interviewer wouldn't dare to make such an assumption these days.
Commercial stream was essentially secretarial training.
Now she would aspire to be an influencer.
Should never got rid of this system, comprehensive education has produced generation after generation of mediocrity
Everyone I know who can send their children to Private school or a Grammar/Secondary county, do so
I went to comprehensive school in the eighties and I've not had a lifetime of mediocrity
Cant all be privileged.......
I went to a comprehensive school in the mid-seventies to early eighties. I mostly had a very good education, particularly in music, which was my passion and subsequent career. My music teachers were equally good, if not better than teachers in any grammar or private school.
I went to this comp school in this film and it was in the 80s. It was a rough school by the time I joined.
It went from disciplinarian outstanding school when it opened in 1958 to a rough school from the mid 70s onwards.
Comprehensive schools were nothing but a sausage machine designed to churn out workers. The woke culture already existed even then, with percentage grades being replaced by A, B, C etc, not to discourage the less talented. My 100% scores in infant school (1960's) evaporated into nebulous pap. The corridors of the comprehensive school were marauded by thugs (yes, thugs - spare me the bleeding hearts) classified within the system as uneducatable, but who nevertheless were free to roam between periods of art class and library attendance. Grinding hell of head-banging boredom for the top performers, stuck in a class of up to 40 individuals of random ability. An absolute blight on my formative years, replete with bullying and the commensurate behaviour of lowlifes in general. For those who were not there, be aware that one did not have to be "weak" to find it difficult. I know of several individuals who payed the ultimate price whilst still at school, one even at infant school. I won greatly in the genetic lottery for intelligence, and do not vaunt it as a learned skill. More is to be proudly claimed for having practiced to flip and catch a beer mat, but make no mistake, this system of education disenfranchised many of my ilk to get out as soon as possible. Glasgow was always a tough city, and this "educational" environment provided a feeding ground for predators, and often a crushing experience for those otherwise inclined.
Glasgow has always been the same…feral! It looks like your surroundings didn’t impact on your linguistics 😁
you're complaining about the failings of your school, not the comprehensive system per se
Crap system Grammer system was best smaller class rooms gave more attention to those that needed it !
Comp was noisy and distracting ....teachers hated it but got on with it only plus side building was new ...swimming pools gyms etc
their accents are far too posh for a comp
Looking back now this could easily be a Monty python parody
Sad to think the mentality back then was that women had jobs opportunity in the secretarial side or nursing
sad
Yes and the males had jobs in the factories or building sites.
It should be the same now.
Though it turned out to be a great move for the nurses who went on "working holidays" in Australia and New Zealand.
Could do worse than a January weekend on the beach.
Women still dominate those two professions. Nothing wrong with it.
They wanna stop swimming and start reading some books I should think
Bigest mistake ever doing away with the 11+ and bringing in comprehensive schools and I failed the 11+
Yes I failed the 11+. Passed the 13+ went to Cheney Grammar School Oxford. Mixed experience but did widen my self confidence.
As opposed to the progressive mentality of today, you mean?
Not often I comment but I was born in 1965…i love this!!! Proper grading! Respect! Wonderful accents without the hjnt of a beatbox!😁. The standards have gone and those alive commenting on film must be shaking their heads at today’s teenagers.
you're getting old. i was also born in 1965 and i just hear the voices of the time. I hear the voices of the time when i talk to my students too. Children don't change,, and if you talked to the head girl of a notable state school now, they'd still sound the same.
I loved England when it was like this, I hate it now.
children of today, on the whole, most certainly do not sound like the ones on film. But, Im glad you are experiencing the best of today’s young