"Oi, Tucker. Booger Benson is gonna do you." Grange Hill, 1978.
With all the debate around school starting age and primary education at the moment, I thought it worth wading into the debate - but from a slightly different angle. If, like me, you're in your (late) 30s your memories of primary school will be centred on the 70s and 80s. Remember them? Blimey, school was different.
I entered school in 77, just as corporal punishment was outlawed in state schools, so they were progressive times. But there was no national curriculum, no SATs, no regimented teaching structure to the day beyond registration and assembly. Most of my first year in school was spent preparing for the Queen's Silver Jubilee and basking in the glow of the hottest summer ever. Yes, it's easy to put on the rose tinted specs, but if you have kids in primary education right now, you'll know just how different things have become.
Teachers had real freedom to do what they wanted. I was very lucky in that I had a great teacher for the critical 9-11 years, June Crebbin (who has since gone on to become a children's author). As a result I can testify to having had the most incredibly rich, rounded and diverse primary school education. But equally, I remember the hippy-teacher next door had some very strange ideas about how to teach his class. I recall it involved having lots of sofas in the classroom and letting kids do what they wanted as he strummed the guitar and recounted his experiences at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. Jack Black eat your heart out.
There might not have been SATs etc, but there was certainly 'experimentation' (beyond teachers who had to much LSD in the 60s). My poor older brother was a victim of something called 'received pronunciation'. Incredibly this meant learning to spell phonetically rather than how the word was spelt. I'm sure there was some cod science behind it but it effectively taught children how to spell incorrectly and my brother still can't spell to this day.
Much greater emphasis was put on Art and Music. Everyone in our school had to do a basic music apptitude test. If you passed it, you decided on an instument, the school supplied it and you started lessons. Wonderful. I chose the flute but my flute teacher told me my bottom lip was too big so he went to teach in another school (there wasn't much tact in the 70s). I took up the drums instead. I also remember spending months writing and illustrating my own children's story book. June Crebbin clearly knew where her future career would take her - but I can't imagine the school day allowing for such an outlet of creativity any more.
Of course there were drawbacks. My nine year old son knows his times tables better than i do today and, boy, there were some dreadful teachers and teaching methods employed. But I can't help feeling, as lots of educationalists now do, that our children's narrow educational diet is a retrograde step. How much of the UK's current incredbily vibrant music scene is a result of the emphasis we once put on broadening our kid's musical horizons?
So, a simple question, would you have liked your kids to have experienced a 70s/80s primary school education?