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A New Title for the Swinging Sixties?

I'm thinking of things like "The Decade of Wrong Turnings" or "The Age of Unreason". Why? Well I mean at the national level. It was a very good decade for me at the personal level but that's not my drift here. The 1960s was when Beeching and Marples closed so many railway lines that would be useful today. It was worse than closing the rail services, they ripped up the infrastructure. The French are wiser. They will close unproductive services but I understand that by law they must keep the infrastructure for at least 50 years. According to a book I'm reading, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynn Truss, it was 1960 when it was decided that it was no longer necessary to teach grammar, spelling and punctuation in schools. We all know where that led. Has anyone else any examples of 1960s unwisdom? Keith


Created By on 04/08/2016

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HeatherC862
15th Jun 2017 17:27:33
0
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Being educated during the 70s and 80s I was barely taught any grammar whatsoever. Fashions change however, and I now work with 10-11 year olds in junior school where the children are expected to learn very detailed grammar that certainly takes me out of my comfort zone. Of course, once they move on to secondary school they promptly forget most of what they have been taught - especially if they are texting or emailing - then it is all about speed and spelling and grammar goes out of the window.
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Romina
15th Jun 2017 10:51:58
-1
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Giving up national service was a big mistake.It taught dicipline and made men out of boys..
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Fruitcake13
5th Aug 2016 22:23:02 (Last activity: 6th Aug 2016 14:52:09)
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So Lynn Truss thinks that it was decided in 1960 that it was no longer necessary to teach grammar, spelling and punctuation in schools. My primary education (where the bulk of that teaching took place) began in Scotland in the early 1960s and I was taught grammar, spelling and punctuation constantly for the whole time I was at primary school. I can't speak for English schools, though, as my education (both primary and secondary) took place in Scottish schools. My son was educated for several years in Scotland during the latter part of the 1980s and and he was also taught grammar, spelling and punctuation at school. So, did this only apply to English schools?
Response from Alan247 made on 6th Aug 2016 13:39:22
No, just by reading stuff on facebook , its clear some younger people have a job stringing a sentence together, its stuff like...u gd m8 and, I red in the ppr, people write everyday things like texting, unlike spell checker....eye reed it throw be four eye use spell cheque two make shore it is write
Response from Fruitcake13 made on 6th Aug 2016 14:52:09
Ah, I don't read stuff on Facebook, I've no interest whatsovere in Facebook, Twitter or any of these things, and from what you're saying, Alan247, I think that may be a wise decision on my part. As for texting, my friends, some of whom are much younger than I am, all write their texts in perfectly understandable and correctly spelled English. Even my French friend only makes the occasional spelling error and she's still learning English! I can understand what you've written as an example above, but why do they bother? Some of those 'words' contain more letters than the actual real word!
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jeanmark
5th Aug 2016 11:35:42
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I agree with celtwitch, were most of us really aware of how national infrastructures were being destroyed and the long term effects of this? But you asked the question 'Has anyone else any examples of 1960s unwisdom' - 'Free love' and the introduction of the contraceptive pill? Did any of us foresee the problems this would cause? It may not have affected the railways, but it did have an impact in other areas.
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celtwitch
5th Aug 2016 11:04:59
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I don't think that most of us 'children of the 60's' were really aware of how national infrastructure was being ripped up, we walked, hitched or cycled to wherever we needed to go. I travelled the world on foot and by bike, I took very few rail journeys.
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