Very true about kids leaving school earlier! Not to say it was right, but staying on at school wasn’t a choice for a lot of working class teens who had siblings, especially outside of London and the Home Counties. Closing the mines also hit a lot of families hard. Lots of kids left school as soon as they were 16 and got jobs or tried to get apprenticed on somewhere to help out with the family finances and a lot of times to save to move out or buy a car.
I wonder how many of you were alive in the mid-70’s for example, let alone have real memories of those times - as in not things you’ve read, or seen on television.
Also, media - television - wasn’t like now. BBC2 had the testcard more often than not, the most exciting thing on BBC radio was The Archers, the most exciting thing on commercial radio was the Sunday night chart countdown, and Coronation Street wasn’t pre-recorded!
As children, we were very protected from more unpleasant things that were going on whereas my DH and his siblings knew one of the Moors Murderers victims as DH’s sibling was best mates with the victim and still misses them and talks about them even now.