Memories - early or general

We can't teach kids their future responsibilities if society doesn't know what it should be asking of it's citizens. The citizenship test for new arrivals seems to be a glorified pub quiz rather than a test to see if people know how to behave. We have a great many laws but don't teach anyone what they are. If we're not teaching legal responsibilities, when would we start to teach them about moral responsibilities? We have 'experts' who airily claim that toilet training shouldn't be imposed and that the child will get it when they're ready. It used to be that parent peer pressure made new parents aware that toilet training is essential before school but what happens when all those peers are letting things slide? Supermarkets introduced self checkouts on the grounds that they knew the cost of shop lifting and having till staff was more expensive. Now there are many more people who think it's acceptable, shoplifting has gone through the roof. Mental conditions affecting behaviour that used to be rare are more often being diagnosed, not because those conditions are more common but because people used to suppress the outward effects. Society thinks that letting people be themselves is kind. It's not. Not to those they interact with and not even to themselves. Good behaviour makes sense because there are punishments for bad behaviour. Now we not only don't punish bad behaviour, we can't even define it as a society. How then do you teach the next generation?

Agreed Helen, but how are we, or more correctly, the younger generations going to correct this? Are there enough younger citizens with the correct moral compass after being indoctrinated with these views to break away and change society? If you are older than 50 your views and experience don't count with modern society.

This has been a very interesting thread, especially on behavior. My parents were not disciplinarians but I knew the rules early on with few threats. In fact, they were what is now called Free Range Parents - the sort of Mum and Dad who let you wander and play until just before dark. Your neighbours were part of that family but would only report you if there was danger involved. I really wonder at my parents patience with my elevated sense of adventure. The thing that sticks out for me is really small but shows how certain skills disappear. Take the simple job of tying your shoelaces - who does that regularly anymore? It used to be just sneakers but now it's a rarity to see men's shoes with laces. So nobody learns to tie a knot. Don't even mention polishing shoes. Do the ladies remember when we used whiten our spring/summer shoes. I loved that job because it made me feel very grown up. Things like boiling or poaching an egg or, at the other end of the skill set, making ginger beer have almost disappeared. I feel very lucky to be born and raised in Coventry in the late 40's and up.

I just wanted to mention that I'm sitting, listening to my daughter and grandson out in the back garden doing the weeding for us creaky oldies. They have a full set of fairly sharp tools and she's showing him how to use them and answering his questions. I remember doing this sort of thing with my dad from about the age of four and I was a world champion riddler, or so I thought. I had my own riddle or sieve and my dad would dig me a pile of dirt and I would shake it all until I had half a bucket of stones. Such a sense of achievement - and I got a threepenny bit for my work. We did a lot of talking sitting side by side on the garden steps and now I'm getting all sentimental.

A silly thought came to mind today, "The big ship sails on the ally ally oo". Why, because it is the last day of September. We started to think of other playground rhymes. Oranges and lemons, and doing one potato two potato, may be going back too far for some of you but what else was there ?

Those were still going in my day but maybe no longer. Ring o roses. Eeny meeny miny moe. Humpty Dumpty. Frère Jacques. London Bridge is burning down.

When was the last time that you saw a "Hop-Scotch" grid chalked on the pavement??

Whilst replying to a post on another thread, I started to recall memories of some of the Sci-Fi/21 Century magazines, books and TV programs those of us who grew up during the 50's, 60's and early 70's, or as I've heard it said, the Thunderbirds or Gerry Anderson era and early TV Espionage series, like The Avengers, The Prisoner and a great many more too numerous to list in one post. Remember those primary school days, (back then it was Infants or Junior school), when you were confined to the classroom for your breaktime when you'd rather be out playing on that old tarmac surface.... When you had to clear out that ever increasing pile of magazines and you were told to dispose of them, often taken to school for those inclement weather days..... We all recall the Beano, Buster, Dandy, Hotspur, the girls comics, Jackie, Judy, Penelope among a great many more. I wonder, how many on the forum, boys and girls, recall some of the Sci-Fi/21st Century magazines they had, either at home or shared in the school classroom during a very playground. One that came to mind was the TV Century 21 comic.

"The Eagle" featuring Dan Dare and the evil Mekon. Also the radio series "Journey into Space" where the Radiophonics Workshop? added much to the atmosphere. (But wiki tells me JIS started in 1953 and the RPW in 1957!)

It was the 'Lion' comic for me with the daring exploits of Paddy Payne, a WW2 Spitfire pilot. We also read 'Look & Learn' which was probably the start of my brain absorbing totally useless information.

Does anyone remember a comic strip that feature humanoids with two wheels rather than feet? They anticipated the Segway by about 50 years. I can date it to summer of 1953 or just before because my first recollection of seeing nurses, while they walked along a part glazed corridor that ran the length of the boy's ward in Keresley Hospital, is that they did not appear to bob or sway and I imagined they must have wheels instead of feet, same as the characters in the comic.

Could it be the 'FooMobile' from Smokey Stover? Photo: ©The Grand Comics Database™, 2025: Comics.org/ Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 No changes made.