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Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Yours magazine and mispent youth

I have just read a report from the magazine ‘Yours’, claiming the majority of people brought up in the 1950’s feel that life was better in those days. I suppose all generations tend to think their time was better and I suspect youngsters brought up today will say something similar in 50 years time.

All I can say is that my experience of the 1940’s and 1950’s was not so good. At best it was a boring time and at worst there was a crushing conformity that also concealed some pretty nasty behaviour.

Wife battering was tolerated much more then it would be today as was bullying. So was racism and sexual abuse of children was simply called incest and regarded as something that rarely if ever happened. In fact it happened a lot and quite possibly as much as today.

Was discipline in schools better? Not in my one. The cane was used frequently and the woodwork teacher use to make you bend across the bench and hit you with a plank of wood. One poor teacher was driven to a breakdown and would chase boys round the classroom lashing at their legs with the cane. It was not a pretty sight!

The one and only French teacher returned to France after just a couple of months because every time she came in the class room there were drawings of her without any clothes pinned to the board and she was greeted with leers and jeers. I could go on but you might begin to think that I spent my formative years in an Approved School as the young offender’s schools were called!

There were certainly some advantages. There were fewer cars on the road so you could ride your bike in reasonable safety. Drugs were rarely available and gun crime unusual. But some people who idealise the past have forgotten the razor gangs with their gratuitous violence and the Hammersmith Palais vied with the Ilford Palais as the place to go if you wanted a fight.

It is very easy for the older generation to see all teenagers as raving psychopaths especially when they are behaving badly. But by and large I am impressed by today’s youngsters. Obviously we have to intervene and stop bad behaviour when we see it and perhaps we don’t do that enough. At the same time I don’t want to forget what I did when I was young.

Next time you hear an older person criticising all young people ask them what they got up to at the same age – and beware of the “Whatever happened to the crispy bacon we use to get before the war” syndrome!

People have always complained that life was better in "the good old days" and I expect they always will.

This is why you should never trust old people.

They refuse to believe that right now is almost certainly the best time to be alive for someone in this country - you can dispute that claim but not very easily.

In my opinion bring in Logan's Run style extermination except instead of having an age limitation just take them out when they start reading the daily mail.

Ah yes.

The old have always thought things were better in their youth throughout history (I'm not sure I'd say that was true of people who were children in 1941 Belarus or 1972 Cambodia though).

Therefore it's never true.

A brilliant piece. The article candidly illustrates how prejudiced we allow ourselves to become when we reach a certain age. We can all become blinkered and fail to see our own youth-time faults. It prompts the well-worn biblical statement: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone".
From a mild-mannered "one foot in the grave"ophobe, or was that "gravy" - Manchester, UK. _