Wednesday 8th May 2019 saw The Johnson Foundation host the fourth Great Wirral Conversation in partnership with Young Chamber and Age UK Wirral. Fifteen Year 8 pupils from Oldershaw Academy were delighted to be invited to take part. The intergenerational topic of conversation was Is the world a better place now or when you were our age?
Back at school the children’s Head of Year, Lee Routledge, asked the pupils a couple of questions following the Conversation:
What did you think of the event? What did you learn?
The children’s responses were overwhelmingly positive. Amongst their feedback they said:
“It was really good; I didn’t expect it to be so fascinating and intriguing”
“It was a real eye-opening experience. I learned so much not just about the past but about the present too.”
“I learnt how life was like when they were young. For example, that girls were forbidden to play football and had chalk thrown at them if they were naughty in class”.
The world has changed in both positive and negative ways. Positively we have so much technology at our fingertips now and people do seem better off. However, there are more problems with knives, guns and drugs than there used to be.
People are lonelier. In the past families lived close to one another but due to employment and more people going to university family members move out of area. Children had more freedom than the children of today, they could go out to play, given a bottle of ‘pop’ and some jam ‘butties’ in the morning and wouldn’t return until the evening.
Further topics were discussed within the groups such as euthanasia, abortion, Brexit, Syria and capital punishment!
The elderly folks were astounded at the questions our Year 8 pupils asked and reported that they had had a lovely afternoon. Our pupils can’t wait until the next time!
Big thanks to Age UK Wirral & The Oldershaw Academy for making the Conversation such good fun for everyone that took part.
