To think the past is being misrepresented on here?

[ChilliLips]

Not all the time obviously but didn’t want a waffly title.

I feel like lately I’m seeing a lot of posts describing a past I don’t recognise. Apparently schools used to be relaxed, have no rules, fewer demands. Whereas I’m sure I remember uniform inspections, SATS, end of year tests, mocks, weekly spelling tests at primary, Saturday detentions, and don’t forget the worst punishment of all - the CHAIR!

I have also seen a few posts saying conditions now are much worse resulting in poorer mental/physical health, hence a spike in disability. But again - can this be true? The world wars wounded, no antenatal tests, jobs like coal mining, loads of smoking/drinking, polio and measles… I’m sure there were a lot of people disabled with conditions they wouldn’t have now.

And finally that everyone was wealthy and lived in massive houses. Nobody I know who grew up in the 50s/60s have tales of luxury, I’ve heard all sorts of horrors including ice on the inside of windows, smog in the air, kids sleeping 4 to a room.

Particularly interested in answers from those alive then! I’m mid 30s.

Your dying your hair story reminds me of a girl I worked with in Bhs ( 1982-85) at a Saturday job. She dyed her hair blue and they wouldn’t allow her on the shop floor. She had to work in the storerooms until it grew out and they made her change her uniform if she left the building. They didn’t want her wearing a bhs uniform with blue hair.

Our headmaster used to cane the boys in the gym.
Theyd have to lean over a gym horse and he’d take a run at it for a good hard wack or ten.

I love this my own grandma had the same stories from going into service to the blokes havubg to take 3 baths to get dirty. I love your history

Born in 64 in London, lived the first 4 years in the slums in Wandsworth , where we - family of 5 shared a house with another family - they had upstairs we had down. We had two bedrooms, a kitchen, a scullery , out side loo and a tin bath in front of the one and only fire once a week

We finally got allocated a 3 bedroom semi between the commons - had a bathroom, and just one gas fire in the living room. You froze in the winter - ice on the insides of the windows, and whilst we did have a bathroom, baths were still weekly as the immersion was expensive to put on. All other hot water was from the gas boiler in the kitchen so strip down washes were the norm

Shools ruled, Our teachers were strict and had the backing of parents. Slipper and cane were doled out by the head ( primary school ) and if your parents were called to the school about your bad behaviour, you would get another walloping at home.

Secondary was a 3 mile walk, and walk we did, all weathers. Uniform was strict , right down to outside coats . We were constantly being tested, taking exams. . There were after school clubs - music, chess, netball , swimming etc, no charge other then any equipment you needed.

Both my parents worked, dad was a carpenter, died of mesothelioma due to years of asbestos exposure . We had one family car, clothes were second hand, bought from the Saturday morning jumble sale., hand me downs or home made. New clothes and shoes were christmas or birthdays Holidays were two weeks in a caravan in Bognor , the only time we ever ate out in proper restaurants . Take away was a weekly chippy or if mum won on the bingo a Chinese

Food was expensive back in the day , a high proportion of wages went on food. When I started work in 78, I took home £42.50 and £20 of that went to feed me ,me dad and little sister ( all that were left home then ) We didn't have the choice of foods we have now. Fruit and veg was purely seasonal. But omg , when the soft summer fruits came in, the pure joy of biting into a peach and having the juice run down your face and trying to eat the flesh before it all just slipped off the stone

No one was expected to go to Uni, you left school and started work. Only the exceptionally bright pupils went . A 40 hour week was the norm and only two weeks holidays , but you got all bank holidays - shops didn't open 24/7 then. And Saturdays supermarkets would be out of fresh food by mid morning with nothing fresh arriving until the Tuesday

Housing was cheaper but back in the day we didn't have the regulations we have now. Leaving home you would find a bed sit, not a HMO, you literally had a room in a house with a lock on the door and in that room you would cook and live. A two ring mini oven and a sink. Shared bathroom and loo, put 50p in the meter for the hot water for the bath, 50p for your electricity in your room.

As a child/teen we walked or cycled everywhere. Entertainment was what we devised ourselves. We were expected to be outside, we only turned up home for meals. And meals were eat it or go hungry, no other choice, no snacking, no popping to mc'ds

We bought our first house in 95, a 1930's mid terrace. When it was built it was built with no bathroom, that was added after the war - a bath literally squeezed in under the stairs. Cost us £68k and two years hard graft to modernise it . It was the first time I had lived anywhere that had central heating and a shower. Interest rates were high in the 1990's, think they went as high as 15% which caused a crash in house prices. We started looking in 1993 but rates were still high and whilst prices were low, we couldn't afford the rates. By 1995 prices were rising again but I think the rate was around 8%

I went back to the place I spent my early years, all the front gardens with their neat privet hedges have been dug up and paved for parking, there were also cars lining both sides of the the roads. Children now can't play outside the way we used to. Our local school recently had dinner ladies teach kids playground games. (older ladies with post natal pelvic floors demonstrating skipping - what could possibly go wrong?)
At infants if you went out without a coat and complained of the cold you'd be told to run around to get warm.At junior school the gates were open all day, apparently there was no fear of people wandering in or children running out, some children went home for lunch. Now children have lock-down drills as part of their routine, not dissimilar in some ways to my mum having to get away from windows and scramble under desks ( if they weren't near a shelter) during the war perhaps. (It was not uncommon to see limbless veterans and we had a couple of the 'guinea pigs' come to give talks at school when we were older.) There were many more children with Downs in the community, and I knew several deaf children whose mums had been exposed to rubella whilst pregnant.

Houses were more affordable but good furniture was often inherited or made . Clothes were often hand made, knitting and needlework were common skills. Society had a much less 'throw-away' attitude.
Strikes and power-cuts were exciting to us as children but a nightmare to manage for our parents.
People I knew generally put a lot of trust in the police, authority wasn't questioned as much. Doctors, teachers and the police were considered very respectable.
We were near London so as older children we were made aware of the threat from bombs being left in public places, after Airey Naeve's assassination the Houses of Parliament stepped up their security.

Some things were better, some things weren't . Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

I went to school in the 80s/90s and I definitely think school is easier now. There’s much more recognition of SEND, mental health issues etc, as well as more technology like computers, tablets etc to make learning interactive, submitting homework online etc. rather than just writing things out endlessly as we did and having to carry multiple heavy exercise and textbooks around for all our lessons - woe betide you if you forgot to bring the right book to school with you! No google or wikipedia for looking up stuff you didn’t understand when you were doing homework either.

Also uniforms seem a lot more relaxed eg my son’s primary school lets them wear PE kit all day on PE days so they don’t even have to take their PE kit in and change. Girls can wear trousers. There’s more choice with school dinners and we never had after school clubs like they do now - the only after school activity was prep where you sat in the library and did your homework quietly!

Houses were more affordable but good furniture was often inherited or made . Clothes were often hand made, knitting and needlework were common skills. Society had a much less 'throw-away' attitude.

This. Things, including electrical equipment, were repaired when they broke, not just thrown away and replaced. I remember sewing up ladders in my school tights.

Yes - Woolie's actually sold tight repair kits.

I have watched the schools change from boring happy and normal to dysfunctional and toxic twice now with the introduction of a new head and deputy head. It’s a real thing happening everywhere

And @KimberleyClark
my mum use to draw a line on the back of her legs when going out somewhere nice as she couldn’t afford tights

Wheni got a hole in my tights I used clear nail varnish to stop the run.

It's now cheaper to buy a new appliance than to have it repaired. For the small extra cost of a new appliance, they will deliver same or next day, take away the old one and I don't have to wait ages for parts to arrive. Not so 'back then'.

That's completely relevant though. It's "boomers" that supposedly lived in a utopia when they were growing up, with money coming out of their ears. The reality is that people had lower expectations, were satisfied with a lot less and lived simple lives compared to current times, when many people think they're entitled to have the best of everything.

I'm early 50s and my parents are boomers. There was definitely little money when I was growing up. Except for ciggies. There was always money for ciggies.

I think you have no idea unless you have kids in secondary school now how different it is than 30 years ago.

This.

One thing that stands out to me is the huge range of subject options my children have compared to me. They have so many. We had a very narrow core of options to choose from.

And the old one ends up in landfill.

The company I use reconditions them then sells them on. They make some extra profit this way. They are welcome to it, as it means I don't have to be without a machine.

And some today find the opposite and there is not the choice of art and creative subjects, their kids have to do several compulsory subjects and there is very little free choice.

Yep, so very different in so many ways.

Schools- uniforms and everyone accepted this. There was no ‘strict uniform policy’. Just a uniform and all kids wore it and parents didn’t believe there were any other options. Nothing like today where both parents and kids try and find every excuse around it and call it ‘strict’. Very little misbehaving in class because we had the cane. Funnily, all kids who today ‘must be naughty for (insert 1000 reasons why, but essentially because their being ‘spirited’ is supported by their parents)’ managed to behave adequately when the threat otherwise was a caning. Kids with genuine problems went to dedicated schools, endless places to accomodate, not like now.

Bathrooms- outside bathrooms/toilets were the norm. Our parents/grandparents considered it a luxury to have actual rooms outside, where prior was a bathtub carried in once a week, filled and oldest to youngest in the same water. I remember as a uni student we’d still only shower once a week (if that) in winter as no one wanted to trudge outside and into a freezing bathroom and back. If you lived with guys you also had to hound them into not pissing just outside the back door as they didn’t like to get cold😤. No one ever got sick from this sort of hygiene. It’s only on Mumsnet where the ‘if you don’t take a shower at least once daily you will die’ rubbish is spouted.

I’d change it all in a heartbeat to go back. People had good sense back then. None of the codswallop people carry on with today, of which my kids are equally as guilty.

Really? I haven't seen that anywhere myself. Hopefully it's unusual.

Should have added for schools, teachers all smoked in the classrooms. Also, senior students in secondary were allowed to smoke if they wanted at breaks in school grounds. I didn’t but many did as health concerns were not noted then. In fact, Dr’s smoked while doing rounds in hospitals and patients were all allowed to smoke in bed, you had an ashtray beside you. I remember visiting aunties in hospital who had given birth - stayed in for a week back then for a normal birth - and all of them puffing away in the ward. Babies were not bedside but in a dedicated nursery room and were brought in at feed times (to a smoke filled ward, with mum who smelt of smoke). Completely normal as people didn’t know any better.

Except sometimes it’s easy to repair yourself @farmlife2 and not send it off to landfill
I recently repaired our washing machine ( it must be 15 odd years old ) just by googling and watching how to on youtube.

Plus once an engineer came to look at a washing machine because it wouldn’t drain. He told me I needed a new one. I realised later baby hands had turned off the drain mode

Id also note that if you buy from a good maker they often send you parts for free.
Dualit for example. I’ve also had parts from Kenwood too.

I’m guessing 50s / 60s ?

I have to say, I find the level of political amnesia quite astounding too.

Everything negative is always the Tory's fault and everything positive is always Labour's pride of achievement. Or vice versa depending upon one's own allegiance and whether their chosen party won the last time.

Sometimes your own chosen party did shitty things too. People's ability to remember the "other side" doing what theirs were actually fully responsible for is mind-boggling. Other people's recollections be damned. Documentary evidence...forget about it.

The self-delusion is strong anywhere people get into conversation online though, not just on here.