To ask what exactly is wrong with a '1950 s ' style education .

[mountford100]

I have just come across a thread on the Secondary Education board that suggests a couple of grammar schools are like travelling back to the 1950 s !

Does that mean they expect pupils to behave (not answer back) , work to their best of the ability do their homework, wear correct uniform at all times.

A school that has little or no time for a child seeking excuses as to why they can not abide with basic rules.

Why does there has to be a mitigating reason as why a child misbehaves other than just bad behaviour.

I am extremely grateful i was educated in a grammar school operating with many 1950 s principles (this is despite being near the bottom of the year) .

A non-1950s-style education might have tackled the dyslexia, ensured you scored a higher grade at 'A' level (if you were in the top 10-25% that really shouldn't have been a stretch) or guided you towards an A level you would have achieved a higher grade in.

'1950s-style' is shorthand for a style which is pretty much 'take it or leave it'. Teacher delivered the lesson, children followed or didn't (and most didn't), with very little/no individualisation, and primarily an academic focus (with devaluation of any skills that weren't academic in focus (ironic, considering how many working class children failed in that system).

I strongly suspect that illiteracy rates have fallen over the last 60 years.

The problem with education in the 1950s was that it prepared one for the world of the 1940s.

A 1950s education prepares students for the 1950s but the type of jobs available and the skills needs are different now.

OK so all the students on engineering degree courses with their pointless Level 3 Btecs in engineering wasted their time?

So the students I know with level 3 Business Btecs studying law at Uni - waste of time?

well my father went to a 1950s style grammer school and had incredibly bad dyslexia. He was treated appallingly and now lives his life with a huge chip on his shoulder because of the corporal punishment used against him when he got things wrong.

I'm also quite sure that - even at your grammar school - you wouldn't have experienced a '1950s-style' education. I have a theory that many schools were woeful in the 1950s. My mother experienced a one-form, mixed-age, village school, which left her with utterly basic skills. My father was taught by men who were employed purely because they were back from the war. I don't think aspirations were very high in either of their schools.

Advocating that all kids with SEN need is a strict teacher is

a) Ignorant
b) Dismissive of the affects of disability
c) twatty

From a child whose disabilities were not known and largely ignored. Secondary school left me near suicidal and sadly my SENCO still holds position in my catchment school. She’s not changed so my son didn’t go there.

Ah it’s you again. A PP is right, you’re like a dog with a bone.

Yes all those level 3 health and social care students going into nursing - pointless

Level 3 science - pharmacy - pointless

Btec is an alternative to a levels it is not easy or pointless

Ditto NVQ's

1950's education failed a lot of students because it was ridged and based on middle class experiences - also I am not sure hitting kids is constructive

the op got served

Oh and my grandfather was a teacher'because he came back from the war'he was required to have a certain level of education and was away from his wife and child (my mum) for 9 months training 7 days a week

He was a wonderful and well respected teacher

mountford love, you're like a dog with a bone. Bloody obsessed with rules and uniform and structure

Now, there's a thought.

Are you posting from the inside of HMP Holloway, by any chance, OP?

My mum went to a 1950's GS - the teacher never used her name - she referred to her in registration as 'the back street slut' - needless to say she left with no exams but thanks to free 1970's further education went on to be a fabulous teacher herself

Obviously i am not saying everything about a 1950 s education nor its society was a panacea. However, surely there are areas where certain applications of 1950 s style education would improve outcomes.

I am aware of the fact that many children went in to employment/or being apprentices at 15 , so in those terms it is not comparable nor preferable.

The point of this post though was to suggest that we can take good educational practice from any time or culture !

I remember literally terrifying teachers from my time in a girls grammar in the 80s. They didn't help me learn at all.
But what was good was language teaching. I got a mediocre o level in French and, because I was taught properly, can get by in the language. My children got mediocre GCSEs in French and can't put a sentence together, because of the way they were taught.

I mean the teachers terrified me - that was rather ambiguous

There's good and bad in both traditional or modern. We need to keep the best bits.

So the students I know with level 3 Business Btecs studying law at Uni - waste of time Broadly yes. They won't be getting silks will they? They might get a bit of paraleagal work or conveyancing.

You know what we actually need to do... look at why some countries manage to have well behaved, productive people without a 1950s attitude. Why do Scandinavian countries, Canada etc. often have stable, law abiding, pro-social children and the UK sometimes doesn’t?

I’d argue that a very hierarchical, divisive structure makes for disaffected, unhappy young people. When children think education won’t get them anywhere; they don’t engage. Unsurprisingly.

I think i posted about on another thread about how BTEC s used to be regarded . The BTEC HND/OND required a depth of knowledge and brought trained educated and efficient young people in to industry.

The perceived downgrading of a BTEC s academic relevance has been advanced on threads like these !

My definition of a good education is one that instils a lifelong love of learning and gives a person the tools to know how to continue their learning both inside and outside of school.

No amount of 1950s fetishising (they hit the kids then, why is that desirable?) or Gove’s teach to pass exams will do that.

My mother went to an elitist grammar school in the 50’s, because she passed her 11+. She had excellent education, which suited her as it perhaps did the other top few percent, who went there. But everyone, who failed was considered not good enough and the school was given less funding. It didn’t matter how intelligent you were if you failed your 11+, you were still chucked under the bus. The same was still happening into the 90’s. Why on Earth hark back to better days when for the many, there was none to be had?

I was at a girls grammar school from 1966 onwards, so my old classmates are a little bit younger than the cohort this thread is about, but the education and the qualifications were about the same.
There were 30 of us and of the ones I'm still in touch with there are 3 nurses, a maths teacher, I was originally a solicitor, one banking career, at least one farmer, a magistrate, one runs a family business that is an industrial estate, one civil servant, 2 junior school teachers, an educational psychologist, an air line sales rep, a lady of leisure in Greece, someone who runs an antiques business, a Citizens Advice Bureau advisor, a religious studies teacher and two in hotel management. In the main I think we have had happy lives (hardly any divorces, mostly married). Our children are a lovely lot, mainly graduates themselves now. Yes the education was a bit more structured than now and you did get into terrible trouble for uniform transgressions but for most of us a traditional grammar school education was what we wanted for our children too.