having a moan

I enjoyed teaching in the 70's in South Devon - there was the freedom to be spontaneous, take children to adventures and make memories. At one time I had Gerbils, ducklings, fish, rabbits and even a couple of lambs for a week - children used to arrive at 8.00 in the morning and be prised away in the afternoon. They could all read well, knew arithmetic, had manners and were curious and interested about learning. They were outdoors a lot more, ate better, were active and could entertain themselves better.
There was no trace yet of was the track suited sullen youth walking around with a phone permanently fastened to its face, eating junk and staring mindlessly at a game console or television for hours a day.
Teachers and school, if not always enjoyed, were respected and were empowered to set standards and codes of behaviour.
It wasn't perfect - far from it - and there were some really poor schools and teaching. There was the need to review and change curriculum and teaching for sure - it was, at its worst, a wandering and liberal self indulgence education experience.
The change however, when it squirmed forth as the National Curriculum was a catastrophe and in true 'baby and bathwater' many values, excellent practices and teachers were wasted.
The N.C. - often concocted by people with little real experience of schools or child learning, caused anguish and turmoil and became a monster that schools were unable to manage effectively. Staff were ill trained in it, schools were underfunded for it and once motivated teachers were bludgeoned into being tickers of boxes and forced to parrot a sterile and target based curriculum.
It was a time of nightmares, late nights filling in endless record sheets, and being part of a system with a high built in failure factor. Very demoralising and soul destroying for thousands of dedicated teachers who , like me, fell out of love with the job. More energy went into administering the Curriculum than in delivering quality teaching.
I heard recently that in Scotland they are moving back into a project and enquiry based curriculum to try and raise standards and child enthusiasm. I also note that SATs are not considered to be a good idea. We could have told them all that 25 years ago.
Having said all that, I admire teachers today. -They are, from the ones I know, hard working and trying to do the best while battling against awful attitudes and low motivation.
I do not however envy them.
I see the older youth in Secondary education become part of a cynical, careless and gimme culture that has scant respect and ever declining values - I pity them and see why some use the phrase 'the lost generation'. I see younger children in Primary schools being forced or enticed into adult attitudes and perceptions and childhood more and more truncated.
Of course there were problems 30 years ago and yes, its easy to look back and remember only the summers that seemed to last longer then. But there was also a more optimistic and happier society than there is now - not the 'must have' greed, banal television programming that rakes up ever more cheap, degrading, cynical and lewd trash it can throw at the public it can get away with. And yes - I will say it - I believe children were happier and more stable.

So, truly, I feel sorry for young people growing up today and having to cope with the pressures put uppn them in so many ways. Most youngsters are OK people - trying to do well and treat their world and people fairly but the values they are having to handle are too often driven by the worst of attitudes and behaviour to the point it becomes cool to be bad. Young people will always be ambivalent and emulate the outrageous but what they given to emulate today is just scary.
What I see generating the standards is not the best of young people but a low, base and unpleasant culture that expresses the worst of attitudes and behaviour as acceptable. Media, fashion and music all cash in on to promote and sell to a teenage customer base that nowadays has spending power unheard of in my day. Along with others, I have watched standards increasingly devalued and wasted by the 'do-good' influence that broadens the tolerance of low morality, poor standards and appalling behaviour to the point where teenage deaths are now regular and some old foolish old dollop this week whines about it being unfair to stop thugs and search them for knives. Try telling that to the parents of a youth stabbed to death.

If we are prepared to tolerate our children growing up in standards from the gutter what hope is there for our society? Is it too late anyway?

MELDREW I sound like for sure. So be it.