always more liberal

Guardian headline:

Teachers call for return to the liberal 1980s

I remember the "liberal 1980's" well, under the rule of the Great Earth Mother. It was a free lovin' hippy paradise.

Yet the eighties were more liberal in at least one important respect: there may have been violent disagreements about the government’s role in the economy but there was little urge to make the whole of private life the territory of endless management, incentive and punishment initiatives.

Now I feel like I’m on the wrong end of a political Doppler shift. The general assumption I grew up with was that past in general was always more reactionary. The sixties may have seen a struggle towards greater social liberalism, but that just went to prove the point. We now seem to be getting to the stage where the past – at least, the fairly recent past - is always more liberal because there was a general acceptance of much greater personal autonomy.

Comments

[Igor Belanov]

I did my GCSE's in 1994 and when I hear about the education system now I get the feeling that my experiences were of a Golden Age in comparison. Everything seems to be less relaxed- discipline, uniform, the curriculum, teacher's and pupil's workloads, the myriad of targets schools have to meet and the sheer amount of propaganda they have to spout in order to 'compete' for their survival.

I know the Tories had started the present process, but for Labour to have accelerated it so much is extremely sad.