Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

Welcome back to our lessons on the Swinging 60s with me Mr. Wallace.

Now, I hope, but I wouldn't expect everybody would recognise the music that was just played.

But if you weren't aware of it then you can see the title on the screen.

That was the James Bond theme.

And the reason I've played it and it's going to come up more during the lesson as well or at least James Bond is is today we're going to begin to think about how we remember the 60s.

Over the last few lessons we've studied the events of the 60s, the trends, the youth culture, the music, the living conditions, and so on.

But now we're going to step forward a little bit.

How do we in the modern day, remember the 60s? What sort of things come to mind when it comes to the 60s? And already one of the most prominent one of the most famous elements of the 60s is the pop culture.

And James Bond is a very, very good example of that.

And when we think about things like James Bond, what does that tell us about the 60s? And what are we forgetting? What aren't we remembering about this decade? Now, before we start the lesson, I want to make sure you've got the things you usually do.

So make sure you've got a pen.

Make sure you've got something to write on.

And make sure you've got a distraction free environment.

So for at least a little while, we can get on with some work.

Okay, once you're ready, we'll get started.

All right, let's go.

Now I've taken myself off the screen.

So you can focus on this question here.

What is the difference between history and memory? Now you're in a history class, you're not in a memory class.

So what's the difference? I mean they are both to do with the past, right? I want to pause the video for a moment and think about what is the difference here? When we study history, or when we remember things, what would be the difference between those two things that we're doing? Okay? Just pause for a moment.

So, what did you come up with? Let's try and define the two things because our lesson today is focused more on memory than it is on history.

So history is the study of the past.

Historians use sources of evidence to interpret the past.

So historians ask questions, they look at documents, they interview people, they will look at artefacts.

They will record as much evidence as is relevant and use that to come up with a judgement about a topic or a question or an individual or a time period.

It's all about evidence.

And it's trying to get out of our own heads as it were.

You need to kind of not have as many, if possible, not have as many biases as possible, not try to be niche, try and be objective.

So use as much evidence, whether you kind of thought you would expect to find it or not, to come up with a judgement of the past.

Memory, they are the person personal recollections of people based on their lived experiences.

So an ordinary person who lived during the 60s has their own memories.

A historian might consult that person, they might talk to individual people, they might not, but individual people aren't historians.

You know, I have relatives who grew up during the 60s.

They're not historians, but they remember the 60s.

They have memories of what the 60s were like.

So we're focusing today on this category.

How do we remember the 60s? And for those of us like myself and like you guys, for those of us that didn't grow up in the 60s why do we remember it in a certain way? Now, we don't remember it like our own experiences.

We don't remember it like something we lived through.

But we have ideas of what it's like when we think about it.

Why do we think about it in a certain way? So let's see what we're talking about here.

So I have a bit of a kind of an experiment.

I want you to think about the decade that you've just lived through, the 2010s.

And I want you to try and list three things that best represent this last decade.

So when people of the future study this decade, just like you're studying the 60s, when they in the future, look at the 10 years we've just lived through what will be the things that they probably think about? What will be the things that they probably study? And I've given you some bullet points here and stuff you might want to write down.

So it might be individual people.

Specific culture.

So music or art or film or fashion.

Major news stories, technology, or new developments.

Pause the video and try and list three things.

And I'll show you what I put down.

And then we'll see if there's any similarities.

But if there's not, well, that tells us already that we remember things in different ways.

So pause the video and write down three things that you think people will remember about this decade.

Okay, so you should have your three things in front of you.

Well, these are the things that I put.

I put the London Olympics, because I remember them really, really clearly.

I thought they were amazing and they're going to come up later today as well.

The rise of social media.

And social media has become more common during the 2010s.

I put Brexit because it's one of the most important news stories of the last 10 years and is going to impact the Great Britain for a long time.

I put Donald Trump as kind of a very, very notable, not always popular president, who has had a huge impact on America and you know, events around the world.

I also put smartphones.

So this might be something that you don't put, for example, because you've grown up with them.

I remember having my very first mobile phone when I was at high school and it was like a brick.

No games, just solid buttons and you know, text messages that cost money.

This was a different world smartphones have had, you know, a new piece of technology that has changed everything.

Now you might have different things and that's fine.

In fact, that's great because what you remember of the 2010s is different to me, probably.

You've had very different experiences.

We are in different parts of the country.

We're from different backgrounds with different ages.

We're going to remember different things.

Now we've experienced the same stuff.

We've lived through the same years.

But our memories of it are different.

And our memories are personal.

Now let's try and do the same task for the 60s.

Based on everything you've studied so far on our lessons on art, fashion, music, youth culture, living conditions, migration, all the different stuff we've covered.

I want you to write three things, not just the first three things that come to your head, but three things that you think people will remember.

If I was to and I have done this.

And you'll see the answer in a moment.

When I went and spoke to people and asked, "What did you remember about the 60s?" What three things do you think came to their mind? So I want you try this again.

Write down three things that you think are the most memorable of the 60s.

Okay, let's see what you got and how it compared to my results.

So I've got quite a few results here, obviously more than just three.

But some of these things you'll already see is familiar, The Beatles.

That's probably the thing that came up the most in music in general.

The World Cup.

Fashion, miniskirts.

London, colour TV.

We've also got some things that we haven't covered so far something like a lava lamp, which is just a piece of kind of decorative fashion inside the house.

Austin Powers a film that we'll talk about more later today.

James Bond, like we've already talked about.

So all of the things we've got here what people tend to remember about the 60s are cultural.

There are about the things that we buy or the music that we hear or the films that we watch.

They are less to do with individual specific experiences.

Now if I were to ask a different group of people, I might get different results because the whole point here is that we remember things differently.

But these tend to be the most common.

The question really is then, why? We know there are more stories in the Swinging 60s.

But if you looked at this list, it's all swinging, isn't it? It's swinging London, it's Beatles, it's mini skirts, it's art, and so on.

We know there are more stories in this.

We've looked at stories from middle class people and people in poverty.

We've looked at stories from young people and migrants.

So why do we remember that one so clearly? What is it about our society or our brains that means that we focus on the Swinging 60s and we forget some of the other stories? So when we think about the 60s, there's different ways that we can learn about it.

Okay, I didn't live through the 60s.

I learned about it and well I encounter it in different ways.

And I want you to get used to hearing that phrase, how we encounter the past.

That doesn't mean you have to go out and study it.

That doesn't mean you have to read through a book.

That doesn't mean you sit through a documentary.

You encounter the past through conversations with people who lived it, such as your grandparents.

This woman here on the right, that's my gran.

And this woman here, that's my mum.

This is around 1965.

And I remember these conversations that I had and I've recently had with my mom as I've planned these lessons.

And I asked her what she remembered.

And my grand asking her about her experiences and new fashions and experiences that she had growing up outside of London in the 60s.

Were they the same as people who grew up inside London? So we encounter the past not because we happen to go and study it, but sometimes just conversations.

The same as the conversations thousands and hundreds of thousands of people will have had with the people who moved to Britain, So the people who came here on the Empire Windrush or as part of the Windrush generation.

The people who lived in poverty in Newcastle, in Birmingham.

All of these people experienced it and we can encounter the past.

We can absorb some of that information by talking to them.

That's one way we can learn more about the past.

That's one way that we absorb it.

It's not the only way.

There are other ways that we get that as well.

One of them could be something like a popular TV show.

Now I've included here a picture of Call the Midwife because one it's incredibly popular.

Two, it's set during the 50s and 60s.

And three, it's based on the memories of a real life midwife from the time.

So it's kind of combining these two things.

There was a person who lived through him.

Her diaries have been converted into a TV show.

So no one really switches on the TV watches Call the Midwife and thinks I'm going to learn about the 60s here.

They watch it because of great stories great acting and because they want to be entertained.

But they are going to absorb some things about the 60s.

They will absorb the close people are wearing.

And the way that they talk and the music that they're listening to and so on.

And they will encounter the 60s through entertainment.

That's another way.

But you could also do that through an academic history book.

So I'm just going to bring myself back on the screen here.

Can see, I'm just going to grab a book from my bookshelf.

This is the one that I've been using.

You can see.

And I've taken all the posted notes out of this one.

But this has been an extremely useful book.

You know, I have my own understanding of the 60s.

But I want to make sure that I'm getting this right.

I'm teaching you about this decade.

And I want to make sure that I'm double checking and I'm referencing and I'm understanding exactly what happened.

So I don't tell you anything that's wrong.

And so academic history books can tell me things as well.

Now these have been really rigorously researched and the people who've put a lot of time and effort into this one it's called White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties.

I mean, it's even in the name.

However, one of the things he kind of goes on to say is that that stereotype isn't true, just like we've been talking about, that there's much more to the 60s than the stereotype suggests.

Now, this has been done through all sorts of research, through looking at documents, through talking to people, through studying archives and photographs and videos, and so on, okay? All of that boiled down into one book.

But someone else might write a book about the 60s and has a different point of view.

And in next lesson, we're going to kind of investigate that about two different writers who have come to different points of view about the 60s and why.

Now remove myself back from the screen.

One of the most interesting ways I find that we encounter the 60s is through pop culture.

By pop culture, we mean popular culture.

The culture that we that surrounds us that is mainly targeted at young people.

And is to do with the things that they buy, the things that they enjoy.

So things like fashion, music, film, celebrity life, that's pop culture.

You know what is in society.

Like I said, especially targeting young people.

So a very, very good example of pop culture, which has helped influence the way that we think about the 60s is this film here, Austin Powers.

Austin Powers is a film made in 1997, 23 years ago about the Swinging 60s.

He plays a British spy.

It's kind of a spoof, it's a joke on James Bond films. It's to kind of take the Mickey out of them a little bit, but it has all of the stereotypes of the Swinging 60s.

The the Swinging London, the fashion, the obsession with you know, The Beatles and and all that kind of stuff.

And when I asked people about the 60s what they think about it, often Powers came up quite a lot.

And that's not because it tells people what to think.

People don't come with a blank slate and then all of a sudden they see this and think, "Oh, well, that must have been what the 60s were like." But it reinforces what they already think.

When people already think, are the 60s are full of bright coloured fashions, and they see a scene like this.

Well, it just kind of makes them think it even more.

And they we know it's a film, we know it's fiction, or we know it's silly, but it's based in a kind of a period that makes sense.

The fashions are the fashions of that period.

The cars are the cars of that period and so on.

And so films like this.

Again, this is another way, much like TV show, much like talking to people is another way that we encounter the past.

No one watches Austin Powers to learn about the 60s, but they're going to absorb some stereotypes about the 60s whilst they're doing it.

And pop culture continues in other ways.

James Bond films are still being made.

The first ones were being made in the 1960s.

Now they've changed.

They've got different actors and updated storylines and so on.

But the general themes are there.

And people have very fond memories of Bond.

And they'll argue over which bond actor was that was the best.

And a lot of the time, most people tend to say it's Sean Connery, the one from the 60s.

Those films occupy a really kind of precious place in British pop culture.

And in the 2012 Olympic Games, one of the the key kind of features of that was these parts of British history that was circling around the track.

And one of those things was these people that were dressed up like the Beatles.

These outfits what The Beatles wore on the front cover of one of their albums. And people who are familiar with that will look at this and they will immediately know, Oh, that's to do with The Beatles.

And this is a band that broke up in 1970.

You know, they haven't been around for 40 years at this point.

And all of a sudden, here they are again and Paul McCartney played music and so on.

So our understanding of the 60s is constantly being reinforced.

It's not like it's no put in a box, put on a shelf, and we no longer think about it, or come to it.

We're still enjoying things from the 60s like Bond films and Beatles music.

We still value it.

We still encounter it at different times.

And so it's no real surprise when you go back to this list.

It's no real surprise to see people talking about Bond and Beatles and pop art and fashion and so on.

Because we see it in so much of our culture.

We see it all the time.

And the 60s has cast this huge shadow that really influences culture to this day.

One last example of this is we think about the 60s because it in a sporting sense generates a sense of national pride.

We've talked about the World Cup win a couple of times.

And a couple of years ago, England got to the semi final of the World Cup in Russia, which is the furthest they got in a long time.

And a lot of people were saying this it's coming home.

A bit tongue in cheek a bit a bit, kind of silly.

But there was hope for the first time in England maybe weren't terrible for once.

And the phrase it's coming home is from a song from 1960 sorry, 1996.

So from the 90s, about the World Cup win in 1966, because whenever England are bad or whenever it feels like there are tough times, it's comfortable and it's comforting to look back at the past to the good times.

Back to when England were the best team in the world.

When English culture was the most dominant.

When English music was the most popular.

When English art was the most famous and so on.

And that you can look back to the 60s is a sense of national pride.

And nowhere is that clearer than through sport because that's the only time England have ever won the World Cup.

And so modern in the modern day people may kind of look at the 60s and what we would call rose-tinted glasses.

You know, it's, it's all rosy, it's all good.

And you forget the bad stuff because well that's not enjoyable.

You won't think about the tough times and the difficulties that people faced.

But you will think about the success and the way that it made you feel good.

And so looking to the past to generate a sense of identity and national pride is quite common.

And countries do all over the world and they do it for different things.

Now, America looks back to certain events in its history for national pride.

France does; we all do it.

But that doesn't mean we're remembering it accurately.

It means we're only choosing to remember certain things.

And that's the difference between memory and history because memory is kind of biassed.

Now, with this in mind, I'm going to pause the video here, move forward and answer these questions.

These are based on the things we've talked about the strengths and weaknesses of you know, learning about the 60s from TV shows.

Austin Powers, work your way through here.

Question four is a bit of a difficult one here.

Do it, do your best on that one.

When you've done, come back to this video and we'll go through the answers, all right? Let's pause here and move forward.

All right.

So let's see what you got.

Question one, what types of documents can be left by people who lived through the 60s? Now a straightforward answer and we already know this.

If you were here on lesson five you know that we have our acceptable answer and a good answer.

And we want to make our our answers as close to the good one as possible.

An acceptable answer are diaries, photographs, letters, videos, but a good answer would say something like, people who lived through the 60s often have documents such as diaries, photographs, and letters, which give us a really interesting view into what life is like.

They give us information about what daily experiences were like, how people felt a different point of the 60s and how they reacted to major events.

So it's not just a conversation, but a diary, a video, a letter.

They all tell us how people felt at that time.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of TV shows like Call the Midwife in learning about the 60s? Well, there are strengths and weaknesses to this.

So the strengths are that they have millions of viewers, so they reach lots of people.

They can get a topic across in an interesting entertaining way.

So it might be something you wouldn't usually study, but a storyline might make it more interesting.

And as in the case of Call the Midwife it can be based on the real experiences of people.

So it's based in reality.

However, there are weaknesses and important ones.

The aim is to entertain.

So it might not always be historically accurate.

They might change features to make the storyline more interesting or the character more interesting.

Now entertainment is the first focus here, not history.

And viewers might be misled as a result.

Because the past could be portrayed wrongly.

If they get some of the styles wrong, some of the events wrong, then you might miss understand what the past was actually like.

So it gives us a sense of the past, but it's not the sort of thing you can really learn from.

What does a film like Austin Powers suggest we remember most about the 60s? An acceptable answer here is, we remember the bright fashion and stereotypes.

But let's add some detail.

Films like Austin Powers suggest that people often just remember the stereotypes of the 60s.

These include cultural changes, such as new music or bright fashion.

These tend to be the more positive memories of the 60s and still impact our culture today through entertainment and music.

So they're easier to remember.

And that's what we were talking about with pop culture.

How it casts this long shadow and still is brought up all the time in the modern day.

Now the challenging question.

Why can popular culture like films and TV lead to a simpler understanding of the past? Why does it simplify the past? Now this is the answer I put.

And if you just put this as bullet points or put it in your own words, that's fine.

If you've got a slightly different answer, I'm sure that's fine to just check it through your teacher.

Pop culture, like films and TV can lead to simpler understanding because it reinforces stereotypes that people already have.

Films and TV focus on what people already remember, such as the vibrant fashion and don't include the less memorable or more difficult things which people might prefer to forget.

This helps stereotypes continue and means we think about the past in a simpler way.

So certain pop culture, and it wouldn't be fair to say all of it does this, but a lot does.

Reinforces stereotypes.

Austin Powers, James Bond, these things reinforce stereotypes.

It reminds people of things they are already familiar with and it ignores the stuff that we'd rather forget.

Because it's maybe more difficult or less pleasant.

And lastly, why do many people value sporting moments such as the World Cup win in 1966? A straightforward answer here is because it's the peak of England's success.

But we know there's more to it than that.

People value sporting moments like the World Cup win because it reminds them of positive times in the past.

This means that they can be a source of comfort when things are difficult, either in sport or in other areas of life.

This can give people the impression that things were just better in the past.

As people like to remind themselves of the happier moments rather than times that are less enjoyable.

And I'm sure you may have heard that.

I know I certainly have, of people who have the rose-tinted glasses on.

Who looked back at the past as if they were the glory days as if nothing was wrong.

Everyone enjoyed themselves and everything was great.

The past is always more complicated than that.

We choose to remember certain things are more comforting or enjoyable.

And it's preferable to forget stuff that maybe we don't like or that makes us uncomfortable.

That doesn't really mean that's what the past is actually like.

So what actually influences the stories we tell about the 60s? This is the focus we keep coming to.

You know, what stories can we tell? Now, I've given you one answer here already.

Historians who study the 60s that influences the stories we tell.

I showed you my copy of the book White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook.

He has influenced the stories that I'm telling you.

But I'm going to ask you to pause the video here.

And I want you to try and come up with two other reasons.

Two other ways that we are influenced in how we think about the 60s.

Two other places that we learn about the 60s, okay? And now it may be useful for you to draw this diagram in your book or on your sheet of paper or just bullet point them that's absolutely fine.

But pause the video here.

Copy down the one I've already given you.

And try and write two more two other influences that we have when we think about the 60s Okay, have you got two of them? Right.

So let's see if your two are the same as my two.

So I've put popular culture, such as films and music.

We talked about that a lot today.

And the memories of people from the time.

I showed you that picture of my grand and she has helped me understand more about the 60s because her memories have helped shape how I think about it.

Now, the stories we tell about the 60s aren't always a mix.

It's not like there's some sort of recipe.

They are some sort of ingredients where we take a little bit of all of this and we come up with the 60s.

Sometimes the stories that I've been telling you are a bit of a mix, but other stories might just be based on popular culture.

Austin Powers would be a good example of this.

This almost entirely focused on this.

There'll be historian input and memories of people.

Sure, but mainly they're relying on our popular culture to appeal to people and get people to go and see it in the cinema.

Other stories, we tell might just based on the memories of people at the time.

We might focus on them more, such as the stories with the Windrush generation and the people who moved to this country.

And that's less about popular culture because that's not really part of our popular culture.

So the different stories we tell tend to be influenced by different things.

And this brings us back to this point that I mentioned in the last lesson.

The danger of the single story.

That the 60s and the past is not just one thing.

It's different things to different people.

And that we think about it in different ways because we encounter it in different ways.

We encounter it through pop culture or through individuals, or through historians, through TV, through film, and so on.

We encounter the past in so many more ways than just in a history class.

But if we have a simple story, if we only tell one version of the past, then we're not really doing our job.

And we're misunderstanding what the past really is Now let me just bring up my camera.

There we go.

In our last lesson, in the next lesson that I do with you, we're going to finish off the 60s.

And like I said, we're going to look at two particular points of view about the 60s.

And why these two writers have come to different views and which one you think you would agree with more.

Now, what are their points of view? Why do they differ? And which one do you think is more accurate? Now, I would like you to share your work with us as just as it says here.

Share your work with Oak National.

I'm particularly interested in maybe what you've suggested we'll remember about the 2010s and your point of view about pop culture because it's a topic I find really, really interesting.

So if you'd like to and I would like you to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging Oak National and Learn with Oak #LearnwithOak.

I look forward to seeing you in our next lesson.

Have a great rest of the day.