Yesterday is history

[UncleIan]

Just to make you feel old, was talking to an A level history student yesterday, and their current topic is "Britain 1930-1997".
Yes, 1997 is now in a history syllabus.

To be fair, they thought that was far too recent as well!

[tjh290633]

Back when I did History for School Certificate, history finished with the Boer War. The rest was more like Current Affairs. I reckon that 50 years is a decent time to have passed.

TJH

[Gaggsy]

Back when I did History for School Certificate, history finished with the Boer War

You are Grandad from Only Fools & Horses and I claim my £5.

(To be fair, knowing what book this references probably ages me too! Published in the '30s, read in the '80s)

[tjh290633]

Back when I did History for School Certificate, history finished with the Boer War

You are Grandad from Only Fools & Horses and I claim my £5.

(To be fair, knowing what book this references probably ages me too! Published in the '30s, read in the '80s)

You had books? Such luxuries were unheard of in 1948. We had to take notes.

TJH

[Leothebear]

You had books? Such luxuries were unheard of in 1948. We had to take notes.

You 'ad pencil and paper for notes?
We 'ad to memorise everything and if we didn't we got thrashed.

[kiloran]

You had books? Such luxuries were unheard of in 1948. We had to take notes.

You 'ad pencil and paper for notes?
We 'ad to memorise everything and if we didn't we got thrashed.

Luxury!
We didn't even have a teacher to thrash us.. Had to thrash ourselves

--kiloran

[stewamax]

We 'ad to memorise everything and if we didn't we got thrashed.

You merely got thrashed? We were soundly flogged; it improved one's memory remarkably (cf. the custom of beating the bounds)

Luxury!We didn't even have a teacher to thrash us.. Had to thrash ourselves

Self-abuse?

[bungeejumper]

A gap of 23 years is too little? I'm not so sure. When I was studying German history in the late 1960s, we felt we had quite a lot to learn from the experiences of the 1940s. (LOL, from the feuding 19th century, not so much.....)

Fast-forward to 1997, and the curriculum will need to include (a) the final collapse of Thatcherism and the beginning of the Which Blair project; (b) the "irrational exuberance" phase of financial markets, which also didn't end well; (c) the run-up to the single European currency, which certainly changed things, for better or worse; and (d) the beginnings of the internet as we know it. An age when we still wrote things down with ballpoint pens. How quaint.

You don't have to approve or disapprove of any of those things to accept that a millennial generation that can't remember them - let alone how things were before them! - might just derive some benefit from studying them for a while. Time to accept that we really did live in another world.

BJ

[tjh290633]

You had books? Such luxuries were unheard of in 1948. We had to take notes.

You 'ad pencil and paper for notes?
We 'ad to memorise everything and if we didn't we got thrashed.

Who mentioned paper and pencil? Those were the days of chalk and blackboards. You had to remember what you were told, and you had regular tests to make sure that you had. 3-weekly orders were the norm.

Miss Dexter taught us history. I'm not sure how I managed to get a credit, as I put no dates in my answers.

TJH

[staffordian]

My first O level, taken after a one year course whilst in the Lower Sixth was British Social and Economic History from 1760 to 1939.

It's sobering to realise that at the time I sat this, 1939 was around 50% closer to the then current time than today is from when I sat the exam...

[nimnarb]

We 'ad to memorise everything and if we didn't we got thrashed.

You merely got thrashed? We were soundly flogged; it improved one's memory remarkably (cf. the custom of beating the bounds)

6 of the best, absolute vicious sadistic sods. Putting a wet flannel in your pants helped but it made the sound different after they cottoned on that you actually hadn't wet yourself. And it didn't improve my memory at all.

[sg31]

Not so much flogging when I was at school but wooden blackboard rubbers were often thrown at pupils who didn't seem to be paying attention. Certain masters were remarkably accurate shots. Years of practice no doubt.

[bungeejumper]

Not so much flogging when I was at school but wooden blackboard rubbers were often thrown at pupils who didn't seem to be paying attention. Certain masters were remarkably accurate shots. Years of practice no doubt.

You were looky. For some reason, I found myself recently browsing through the recollections of other inmates at my grammar school, and some of them recalled that the woodwork teacher was in the habit of throwing chisels at boys he didn't like. They weren't wrong, either. He did!

I wasn't his favourite person either, but I got off relatively lightly - the worst I ever got was a length of four by two around the ear'ole. Then, one dark night, the woodwork rooms mysteriously burned down. In the morning, Mr Evans was seen wandering through the ruins, sobbing his heart out. We tried our best to feel sorry for him, but without much success.

BJ

[Paultry]

Our sixth form chemistry teacher would throw blackboard rubbers on occasion.

One time, it was thrown back at him. Imagine the atmosphere!

But a cheery chap shouted out, "Sir, why don't worms have balls". Atmosphere now electric.

Then he shouts out, "Cos' they can't dance"

We all fell off our stools wetting ourselves, I had tears of joy. Paul