From its origins in the 16th-century reformation, Scottish education was once considered the finest in the world. But by the first years of the 20th century the system was struggling to cope with the country's sprawling industrialised cities. Children were taught by rote, by crude repetition. Tens of thousands of Irish Catholic immigrants felt unwelcome in the "Kirk" schools and established their own - an issue that still polarises opinions today. A century of Scottish education reveals how Scottish schools bonded the country together in shared experiences, from school milk to shiny new comprehensives. The teaching of Scots and Gaelic and, of course, the dreaded "tawse", or strap.
In the first decades of the 20th century, many Scottish children lived in poverty, but enjoyed the freedom to roam as far as their imagination and the local trams would take them. A century later everything has changed. Most Scottish children now live in comparative comfort, but many are virtual prisoners at home, travelling outside only with parental supervision. We meet men and women who grew up in the 1930s, who remember playing games in the streets, camping out in the hills. We also visit modern families where the children play only with their tablet computers. This is the story of the world Scotland created for her children and how children reacted to those new worlds. Moving on from the infamous Victorian slums to the new town landscape of "Gregory's Girl" and then to the green, traffic-calmed suburbs of the present day.
As the twentieth century began, Scottish local authorities would load problem children into vans and taxis bound for remote island communities. To be fostered to local families, with few references or checks. Similar schemes continued into the 1960s. Indeed some Scottish children were sent as far as Canada or Australia, without parental consent. The final film in the series meets the veterans of the Scottish care system. Some forever damaged by that system. Some redeemed by it. The film examines how councils, churches and charities treated orphaned, abused and neglected children. And how in the space of a century, Scotland's authorities learned to cope, and occasionally to love, the country's most vulnerable children.
