(Torquay) Grammar Snobs Thread

NEVER!

Glancing at a few more exam papers I see it’s thirty-eight years to the day that I sat an A level economics paper. What’s more it was one of those (then) new-fangled multiple-choice johnnies. Good grief, what was the world coming to? At least I had Brazil v Scotland to look forward to in the evening and it was also the day Yugoslavia put nine past Zaire. Try finding either country on the map now you geographers.

The other economics paper was more traditional but, all these years later, it almost reads like a history paper. I’m sure we’ve discussed some of the issues on this forum but, personally, I’ve retired from the economics fray:




As for history itself, what would the younger generation of “history boys” make of this little lot? James?


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And finally, for a generation or two of other old gits, how could we not revisit the Scramble for Africa? I’m sure this will reduce one or two of you to tears especially if you still suffer nightmares from Rip Rap’s insistence that we read the passages aloud in turn. That reduced a fair number of toughs to jelly, I can tell you. Especially the passages in French.

Drummed into us, you could say, and – when we were later to discuss The Scramble during a university seminar – I was confident I’d got it all sussed. But, upon offering Rip Rap’s anaylsis as a suitable one-size-fits-all explanation, I was politely told that the great man's thoughts were a load of bollocks. That, of course, is history. It’s all in the interpretation.

I'd suggest the answer to 11 is "because he was a bastard":

I’m ashamed to say I know bugger all about the Tudors. We briskly sailed through that period around – what is now – year 8 or 9. Other schools may have taken that path at A level because I see that a parallel section to our Scramble for Africa paper was Government, Reformation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England 1509-53.

“Historiography” wasn’t a word I encountered at school and the only “sources” we really used were diplomatic notes from the nineteenth century (these being in book form which didn’t really make them seem like sources at all. Not that I knew anything about primary or secondary sources at the time).

I guess the political approach was the order of the day as was economic history in which I did my degree. Or should I say economic and social history, a broader approach that proved to be my salvation. This spun off to include subjects such as urbanisation which enabled me to do a dissertation on the growth and development of Victorian Torquay.

With your interest in the post-1945 period you might just be interested in the politics papers I sat at the time of Wilson, Callaghan and Malcolm Musgrove. They were well into China at Sheffield in those days so emphasising the need for continuous revolution was always worth half-a-dozen marks:


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Good grief, looking back, did I really spend forty-five minute chunks of my life attempting to answer these questions? Three exams = six football matches. Talk about a misspent youth....

On another paper there's a question about the Webbs being and their contributoion to the socialist tradition, I don’t think they were meaning Dave Webb.

He wasn’t the son of Beatrice and Sidney, was he? No, thought not.

And a quote too attributed to some bloke called Beer. Even then I probably knew more about Alan Beer who was playing for Exeter at the time.

And why the bloody hell didn’t we sign him when he was playing for Weymouth?

That was an altogether bigger question in my book......

1. The development of the industrial proletariat is conditioned by what other development?

2. The struggle of class against class is a what struggle? A what struggle?

3. Who won the Cup Final in 1949?

Yes, it does read like that, doesn't it?

And I never won a lounge suite either.

Now if they'd asked Karl about Wolves and Spartak Moscow.....

www.britishpathe.com/video/wolves-v-spartak

Strange Forum! The fixtures are out today and the best goalie we have ever had in living memory has been transferred. But what do we get .... endless exam papers from the 1850's. I could answer every question on them (as Jon demonstrated) albeit of course some may not agree with my answers. Although what is right and what is wrong? Did we get marked up or down at school depending on the political views of our teacher in that particular subject?

If politics and economics were such exact subjects it would have to be said that the World shouldn't be in the sh*t state it is.

But it is and they're not!

I used to live in Tudor Street in Exeter but my mate in Newcastle, a history teacher no less, could only make reference to John Tudor: