Education in the global sixties
The sixties were
a decade of change for countries all around the world in many ways. The Cold
War and Civil Rights dominated the era, however, there were other important
changes in everyday life. One was the rise of education during the baby boom
after World War Two and the changes implemented to make sure was child was
enrolled in to education. Also, there was changes to stop the ongoing pressure
that students were putting on their educational boards.
During
Lyndon B. Johnsons presidency, a programme called Head Start was created in
1965, which helped millions of pre-school children ‘to meet the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological
needs from low-income families’.[1]
Johnson created this as part of his War on Poverty and the programme managed to
reach millions of disadvantaged children, who would never have received the
help and education they deserved without the help of the programme. Due to the
baby boom in the sixties, this programme was essential to the American public,
it made sure literacy rates were still increasing with the increase of children
needing education. This important change to education is still being used today,
with Head Start still helping disadvantaged children to an education, giving
them a better chance in life.
Over the pond in the United Kingdom, there were also major changes to the
educational system under the Harold Wilson administration. Wilson did not agree
with the grammar school system and wanted there to be more mixed schools, which
would give the chance for children from a lower-class background to have a
chance to be qualified like the children who had an advantage in life and were
able to go to grammar schools. Thus, Wilson changed the system in 1965, where
‘all students got the chance to be qualified with the introduction of Britain's
first public exams for all secondary students – CSEs’.[1] Before
Wilsons reform, if you went to a secondary school you would not have the chance
to receive qualifications which left a lot of children unable to find work. Although
this still did not work in a lot of cases, children of lower-class families
were finally able to try and receive an education that could lead to a better
future if they passed their exams. Therefore, Harold Wilson made sure that the youth
of the United Kingdom in the sixties had the chance to compete in the job
market.
However,
unlike the improvements in the United Kingdom and the United States, France
struggled with education during the sixties. The struggle that France had was
to do with students in Universities who were calling for reform on campus laws,
which other countries did have as well, but not to the extent of France. On the
3rd of May 1968 rioting started in Paris, ‘the right of young adults
to have sex with one another in their rooms was, indeed, one of the first of
the demands of students’ to their educational boards.[2]
Therefore this shows that each country had different educational issues during
the sixties, some to do with qualifications and school places, and some being
down to educational boards stopping the youth from growing up within their
educational systems. The Sixties was a time of change in all aspects of
education, and without the changes implemented the system today would look a
lot different, we could have lower literacy rates around the world, or maybe
better systems that would have caused these rates to go up. But undeniably without
the sixties, the modern generations education would not be the same as it is
today.
[1] Aidan
Stitt, "Backbench", Backbench, 2017,
https://www.bbench.co.uk/single-post/2016/03/09/Harold-Wilson-The-Forgotten-Father-of-Modern-Britain.
[2] "Egalité!
Liberté! Sexualité!: Paris, May 1968", The Independent, 2017,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualit-paris-may-1968-784703.html.
[1] David
Hudson, "This Day In History: The Creation Of Head Start", Whitehouse.Gov,
2017, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/05/18/day-history-creation-head-start.
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