Fifty Years Ago

It was 50 years ago this week that I took time off from my holiday to go to my old school, Leigh Grammar School to collect my A Level GCE exam results. I did enough to be able to confirm my place in Leeds University to study Chemical Engineering. It does seem so long ago - it is a long time ago. I did OK with my exams but I remember that only about 50% of us passed in three or more subjects. I had the usual maths, physics and chemistry plus scholarship chemistry. My result in scholarship physics was abysmal - probably good enough for a pass today but abysmal nevertheless. Exam results these days are little more than a sad joke. The A levels for 2009 resulted in a pass rate of 97% plus and 40% got A grades - all down to brilliant students and teachers, of course. Some of this is due to exams being in daft subjects like media studies and film but it is also because the questions are often pathetic. Of course it is a condition of political correct examinations that not even a complete moron should be allowed to fail completely. The consequence is that we are filling up our universities with semi-literate students who ought not to be cluttering up places of serious learning. It is staggering to learn that 25% of entrants into one university [over a period of three years] admitted to never having read a book. But we don't do serious learning anymore; keeping down the unemployment figures is much more important.

What else happened in 1959?

Fidel Castro became President of Cuba and after lots of blood letting, Archbishop Makarios became President of Cyprus.

Buddy Holly was killed in a plane crash and Cliff Richard topped the UK charts with Living Doll.

The Manchester Guardian ceased to be and was replaced by the simpler appellation "The Guardian". For many years it remained to many as The Manchester Guardian and in many ways it was a better paper then - even with the misprints that gave us The Gruaniad. In 1964 The Guardian management reneged on their promise never to abandon their headquarters in Manchester and moved to London. Commenting on the changes in Britain over the last 50 years The Guardian said yesterday that we are now more tolerant, better educated, healthier, more cultured and richer. I would disagree with three of these propositions. We are indeed richer but I don't think we are happier and suggestions that we are more tolerant, better educated and more cultured depend on our being more superficial in our assessments. In the areas of education and culture we have dumbed down to the point that even a fleeting knowledge is considered evidence of exceptional achievement.

The summer of 1959 was long and hot and I remember it from June to October as I grew from being a schoolboy without any real cares to a student who would have to get down to the serious business of learning to be independent and to pass enough real exams to get a degree. But that last long hot summer was memorable for the long days of sunshine, minimal rain and long bike rides around the rural lanes of South Lancashire and Cheshire and lots of time spent lying in the shade of an English tree reading novels, short stories and English history. These days our highly educated students don't read much and have only a glancing knowledge of English grammar.

Happy Days!

/