Kids Today Britain on Film

Educationalists believe a child's character is formed

in the crucial years from two to five.

There are about 600 recognised nursery schools in Britain.

Some run by local authorities, some independently,

but there are still far too few of them.

From the outset the, idea was that by giving young children

the chance to play together, they would develop more fully.

At the Elizabeth Lansbury Nursery School at Poplar, London,

music periods are a little more organised.

# But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear

# The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me

# And all for the sake of my little nut tree. #

A group of mothers banded together in 1961

to form an association to encourage the setting up of local playgroups.

Today, it has more than 300 members.

Small groups of children, aged from two-and-a-half to five,

play together at regular morning or afternoon sessions in the houses

of mothers, some of whom have had some training before they married.

Finger painting here is not so much to develop the future artist,

as to give an opportunity for self-expression.

This school runs a part-time system,

with one group of children in the morning,

and a different group in the afternoon.

In fact, two schools in one.

This is not only to help with the nursery school shortage,

but of course some children are happier at home for half the day.

The nature corner teaches little boys to be gentle

with such delicate things as stick insects.

Even learning to blow your nose can be fun,

with a coloured paper handkerchief.

Entrance to comprehensive schools is not based

on the result of an 11-plus examination.

Children of all abilities are admitted,

from the dullest to the brightest.

The size of the schools enables them to employ many specialised teachers,

and most comprehensives offer courses that otherwise would not

be possible outside of a technical college.

Boys are able to study draftsmanship, architecture,

surveying, and even boat building.

Teachers like, too, the opportunities given them

to try out their own ideas.

Take, for example, the mathematics laboratory at Wandsworth.

Exercise book sums are replaced by practical experiments.

By seeing and feeling the shape and nature of mathematical figures,

the child rapidly grasps the principles of algebra and geometry.

There are many schools of thought on the subject of comprehensives.

They've been going for about ten years,

and an official survey is now being made of how the system is working.

Comprehensives cater for children of every kind of ability,

from all kinds of backgrounds, and are essentially large communities,

sometimes numbering about 2,000.

This doesn't mean that the clever ones are held back,

or the not-so-bright neglected.

The children are soon sorted into tuition groups,

suited to their abilities,

and there are many instance of the tortoise overtaking the hare.

At this comprehensive school at Holland Park in London,

there are 2,000 pupils, nearly half of them girls.

Girls are at least a match for boys at school,

and in some things they're a good deal better.

At this school all the girls learn housecraft.

This is a subject they can take in their GCE exams,

their General Certificate of Education.

The girls prepare a meal in the model kitchen,

lay the table in the model flat,

and then invite a member of the staff for lunch.

Today, they've asked the headmaster.

Entertaining in their own homes will hold no terrors for these girls,

and cooking for a husband and family will be like...

well, like being back at school.

Sewing classes are naturally very popular.

These girls are making summer dresses for themselves,

or maybe something special for the school dance.

It's not surprising that many firms are anxious to employ girls

like these as home service advisers as soon as they leave school.

Some will themselves become teachers.

Education these days covers a lot more ground than the three Rs.

All the boys at this school pass through the workshops,

and this decides many of them on careers as craftsmen,

technicians or technologists.

At careers conventions, such as this at Chidbrook,

children and their parents can meet and talk to representatives

of various industries and professions.

They can see some of the equipment used and processes employed.

They're free to ask as many questions as they like,

and the answers may help them in a choice of career.

In Britain today, taxpayers and ratepayers contribute about

£890 million a year to educate seven million school children.

Yet more and more parents are also paying to send their sons

to one of 90 independent public schools.

Schools such as Eton, which is the largest.

Parents stint themselves to raise the £2,000-£4,000

which a public school education costs.

Many now save the fees through insurance policies.

Today, less than 10% of the boys of Eton

come from Britain's old aristocracy.

The running of Eton is largely the responsibility of the senior boys.

In each house there is a body of them called the Library,

which is self-elected.

The Captain of the House is appointed by the house tutor.

Communications to organise life depend on Fags.

The Library also controls discipline.

Young offenders are punished for being noisy or dirty or rude.

The Captain may punish by beating, but only with his tutor's consent.

Most children's homes are not in new buildings,

but they've brightened a lot of them up inside.

None of the old brown and dark green paint that I knew 30 years ago.

What matters much more is the greater understanding

and love the children get today.

In the 17 years I lived in children's homes,

I don't remember any real understanding,

and very little warmth or affection.

There are more than 2,200 children's homes in Britain,

and they ARE homes, not orphanages or foundling institutions.

500 of them are run by voluntary societies.

This new one at Canterbury is one of Dr Barnardo's 110 homes

which cater for 2,500 children.

Like most of the other homes, it's got a homely atmosphere.

The nearest we ever got to a play room was a room with wooden chairs

and a few lockers.

Much more thought is given to children's interests today.

Look at this model railway.

How many children living with their families could have one like this?

Mind you, the boys in this home helped to build it over 15 years.

Stand by studio. On mic.

This is Crown Woods broadcasting on Channel Three.

It's just after 3.41,

and at quarter-to-four, you can hear the tenth edition of Crown Week.

Until then, some music.

Children produce a weekly magazine programme, which they prepare,

write, and transmit themselves.

The show is heard over the school's loud speaker system,

and the rest of the pupils listen in.

They later discuss and criticise what they have heard,

and they don't pull any punches.

All the activities you expect to see in school are augmented

with others that are much rarer.

Closed-circuit television, for instance.

This large county secondary school in Surrey is one of a number

which are trying out teaching machines.

They use them with large groups of children,

working through a whole lesson period,

such as in the mathematics class,

or sometimes for individual children working on their own,

either to catch up the others, or forge ahead.

Pupils load their own machines, and use them at their own rate.

Sometimes they also use calculating machines

in conjunction with teaching machines.

This machine uses sound, as well as vision to teach

and a dial replaces the push button operation.

The programmes in this machine

are on what is called a branching system.

If the student gives the wrong answer,

she's sent back to study and try again.

Here, in the grounds of Loughborough Training College, is another

collection of teaching machines, this time in a travelling classroom.

This caravan goes round to schools all over Leicestershire.

These are two of the early models.

Today, many work on a press button system.

Teaching aids being tried out at Loughborough include

coloured movies, which lead on to practical experiments.

The children watch this film about air, one of a series,

as often as they like.

It's the only school in Britain to be fully equipped

with a multitude of TV and radio sets, record players, film,

film strip and slide projectors,

tape recorders and language machines.

All part of an experiment christened,

by the children themselves, An Adventure Into Learning.

This is a new and noisy world.

The children run their own library of 1,500 films and film strips.

However, the usage of the ordinary book library has increased

greatly since the school became automated.

The children learn to look after the equipment

and understand how it works.

Indeed, they claim to do less damage than the staff.

The ordinary classroom, however modern,

will have to be redesigned as these learning methods spread.

When there's a really important story to invent,

chaps need a bit of privacy.

One day, Russell and I went to bed.

We were reading the paper.

We were just about to turn to the back

when we saw an exciting bit in the front.

It said, "The highway man.

"Reward for him to be captured, £1,000."

I, I only thought that they...

were in fairy stories.

I didn't even think they lived.

Normal kids, no different from any others,

except that in the two years the experiment has been running,

children of ten and 11 have acquired vocabularies

of boys and girls of 14 and 15.

It may be a while before the state

can afford to equip every school like this

but that it is going to happen, few doubt.

Initially, some of the Oxhey Wood teachers

had their doubts but they are now fully enthusiastic,

find together with the children, that learning is indeed an adventure

when you can bring the whole world into the classroom.

Outdoor work begins on a playground map

which includes models of places of interest, towns and rivers.

The next stage is to get the class out to see for themselves.

They may spend a day cruising on a river to study the waterway

and how it's used, why locks are necessary and local river history.

All of this will later be written up in the classroom.

On foot, another class follows the river to its source,

where different types of rock are found and examined,

not just talked about in a geography classroom.

Mathematics comes into outdoor studies

when the rate of flow of the river is worked out.

Chips of wood are dropped from a bridge

and timed over a given distance as the current carries them along.

More than 800 secondary schoolchildren from Surrey

leave their classrooms for a 14-day outdoor study trip of a kind

which is becoming more popular even than the summer holiday.

They travel across the continent for a Mediterranean cruise

in one of two school ships run by a British company.

More than 30,000 British schoolchildren sail in these ships

for educational cruises which range from Russia to North Africa.

Dormitories sleeping up to 40 children

are allocated to each school

and as well as the five ships' five matrons to look after the girls,

there's one teacher with every 15 children.

For the eight days the ship was at sea,

these schoolchildren had five lessons,

each of 45 minutes, every day.

As they were cruising in Greek waters, all the lessons dealt

with some aspect of Greece and its contribution to world history.

But this still left time to lounge on deck and enjoy the sun.

No public funds have been contributed to these trips.

The Ministry of Education and many county authorities

are encouraging the idea of taking children out to see for themselves.

And so it's back home again by train.

Loaded down with presents and souvenirs for the family,

excited and anxious to get to school again to tell the others

all about their adventures.

Not so many years ago, London

and the great cities of Britain were pockmarked with bomb sites.

Sometimes they've been cleared

and turned into playgrounds or elegant gardens.

Among other things, a sport grew out of them.

The racing game of cycle speedway.

A game born in the bricks and rubble of the air raids,

a sport for youngsters who were spending nights in the shelters.

The first speedway cycle tracks, 90 yards round,

were marked out by the boys and girls

of bombed streets using shattered bricks to mark the course.

Those were tough days

and they invented a tough little sport to go with them

and cycle speedway, which is now organised and has its leagues,

can probably claim to be the only sport today

to have originated in the crackle of ack-ack fire.

Any old dressing-up made a change from the world of ration cards

and air raid warnings and any old bike would do.

The game caught on in amazing fashion

in the East End of London, in Coventry and up north.

The track was usually a shambles, rough and ready.

Some of the lads remember the speedway stars

who'd been their idols in pre-war days

and tried to copy the dirt track technique.

The first move to give town children space in which it was safe to play

was the play street, from which through traffic was banned.

Today parked cars often reduce the play space drastically

and can often be dangerous.

The old-fashioned playground,

with not much more than swings and roundabouts,

doesn't exactly fire the imagination of children in the Jet Age.

Neither is this sort of thing much more exciting.

The London Borough of Camden thought up a new idea,

with the emphasis on a miniature road system on which

children can ride on bicycles

and in toy cars supplied by the centre.

The site was deliberately chosen to be in the middle

of the large Regent's Park council estate in the area.

But despite the fascination of traffic lights that really work,

many children wanted to build their own world of make-believe

so very soon, scope for adventure was also provided.

The idea of this kind of playground,

which is open throughout the year, is that anything goes.

Within reason, of course.

And the children have the scope and the materials to give full rein to their imagination.

Wonderful what you can do with a lot of old timber.

These children are members of a club which meets twice a week

during the school holidays at the Centre for Spastic Children

in London's Cheyne Walk.

There is never a lack of helpers to fetch the children from their homes

all over London and to help them enjoy themselves and make friends.

Many of the voluntary helpers are sixth form

boys and girls from local schools.

Adventure is the keynote of Boys' Club life today

and there are 200,000 boys between 14 and 18 who are finding it

with the help of the National Association of Boys' Clubs.

A club is a boy's springboard to weekend or holiday expeditions

at home and abroad.

At Conway, they are converting a tumbledown cottage

into an adventure base where they can eat and sleep,

plan their expeditions and get a shower.

Yes, these boys are tough all right.

The one attraction boys don't join clubs for is girls.

In fact, many boys look upon their club

as somewhere to get away from them.

Most boys' committees exclude girls, except as canteen helpers,

football supporters or guests on dance nights.

Yes, the boys' club is one of the few male preserves

left in Britain today, but for how much longer?

Some of the local authorities which help to favour

new clubs and their leaders want the boys to let the girls in.

But is this really a girls' world?

Judo, one of the 22 sports and games that the young can choose

as they go from Bronze to Silver to the Gold Award.

Many fall out - pressure of exams, a new job.

But even a few weeks spent in this scheme

means some broadening of experience.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd