Were you at school in Scotland in the late 70s/early 80s? Did you see this film?

[squeaver]

The other night, dh and I ended up watching some of the Culloden mockumentary on BBC4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074sp7/culloden

A couple of minutes in, I said to him "Did you watch this at school too?" which caused him to guffaw as, at that exact moment, someone had their leg cut off with blood spouting everywhere. It's all pretty graphic.

The weird thing is I have a very clear memory of seeing this at school. I can remember it being in black and white and, really vividly, the English accents, because we talked about the different accents that we hadn't heard before.

At first, I thought it was in primary but there's just no way they would have shown something so gory to that age group, even in the 70s!

So it must have been in secondary although I know I didn't do this period for O Grade or Higher History - so we're talking when I was 12 or 13?! I also did a couple of years of History at uni, but not any of this period.

I have no memory of seeing it as an adult.

Am I mad? Does anyone else remember this?

I was at primary school in the 80s, never seen it or heard of it before!

Never seen it?

You’re not mad, I saw this at high school, 2nd year history class. I can still see some of the faces in my minds eye when I think about it. I too thought I’d imagined it.

South-west of Scotland, never seen or heard of it.

But I don't remember learning anything about Culloden at school, either primary or secondary.

I'd not seen that either and I was in secondary school from 1980 - 86.

You could always post the question in Scotsnet?

We didn’t do culloden in history at school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they showed it. I remember aged 11 wondering why they had turned the colour down on the episode of “living and growing”, then realising we were about to watch actual video footage of a baby being born, right from the business end. That’s pretty graphic stuff for a combined p6/p7 class.

We were showing excerpts from the Blue Lagoon in our early 80s high school RE class so I think pretty much anything went in that time period.

Yes! Thank you - it wasn't a fever dream. I am going to tell my dh right now!

I couldn't believe how graphic it all was when I saw it the other night.

Bloody hell.

I love that they thought turning the colour down would do it.

I showed DS 13 the opening of it last night - he’s doing Culloden just now - I turned it off after a couple of minutes and he was “god mum, that’s really grim. It definitely stayed with me. I remember visiting Culloden as an adult and picturing the people from the documentary - it’s a really compact space and I could imagine the horror. Not sure I’d be happy with schools showing it now.

It is grim!

Just wanted to update this thread - mainly for @Jellycatspyjamas

Met an old uni friend of mine last night - same age as me, brought up in a different part of Scotland - and she remembered it too! As soon as I mentioned the name and "black and white", all the same images came rushing back to her.

Her memory is better than mine; she was sure they did Culloden in 2nd year so that would be 1980/81. We had a good half hour chat on "why did they show us that?!"

Yes I would have been in second year in 1982/3 so that fits time wise. I think there was much less thought about traumatising kids under the guise of being educational back then. I remember a similarly awful film/documentary about the Holocaust around the same time and again, no shits given about the impact on kids watching. It would never happen now, I hope.