Learning from the past
HURRAH, it’s the 1960s. Not for real, that would be strange, but in the latest episode of BACK IN TIME FOR SCHOOL (BBC2, 8pm), the show where a group of today’s kids learn how yesterday’s kids were taught things.
For this latest episode the teachers and pupils are off to a new location, a boxy secondary modern built in 1959, and joined by a new member of staff, Sophia, another modern-day teacher who’s joined this project.
Sophia seems to find things a tad overwhelming at first, mind you. It’s the school assembly and headteacher Sue has an announcement for everyone in the assembly hall. “We are now going to sing together a hymn: Jerusalem,” she declares. Sophia looks a bit startled.
“That assembly was very different to the assembly that I’m used to at the school I teach in, in Tottenham,” she tells us afterwards. “I found it quite uncomfortable. I didn’t know the song.”
Yes, I’ve double-checked my notes and that’s definitely what she says.
For the kids themselves, many of the lessons at this school remain segregated in ways they’re not wholly thrilled with. The girls, for example, learn typing and cooking, the boys are taught bricklaying.
This being a secondary modern, which at the time would have been attended by 75 per cent of the country’s pupils (the three-out-offour who didn’t secure a grammar school place via the 11-plus exam), such vocational lessons were the norm. But when the school then holds a careers evening there’s further dissatisfaction, from boys and girls alike.
One lad sounds particularly unimpressed by the two main options suggested to him: the armed services or mining.
“All the jobs I can go and die in,” he protests.
One of the girls is actually quite happy with the idea of becoming a secretary. But the teacher seems keen to burst her bubble.
“You’d be told what to do, though,” she warns. “The boss would tell you what he needed you to do that day and you’d do it.” Quite how the teacher thinks this differs from any other occupation she doesn’t say.
Elsewhere tonight, there’s a location report from the Caribbean island of Saint Marie in the holiday programme Hot Shots.
Except of course there’s no such show. It’s actually the set-up for this week’s DEATH IN PARADISE
(BBC1, 9pm), where Kimberley Nixon
(right) guests as a soon-to-be-bumped- off travel show host called Catrina. Catrina’s report has told viewers how this lovely island offers “sun, sea and sand by the bucketful” but for some reason has omitted the bit about the endless brutal murders. Sadly, a reminder is about to arrive in the most unpleasant form, because the following morning her lifeless body is found washed up on an otherwise deserted beach (yes, that’s right, it’s just Katrina And The Waves…).
DI Father Dougal gathers her colleagues and tells them he suspects foul play. “What?!” comes the reply. “You think one of us did it?” Well, yes, that’s generally how this show works.