1968

It’s about this time of year that the media begins to fill with reviews of the past twelve months. But what if we were to turn the clock back half a century… to 1968.

Some years somehow resonate across the ages. They go beyond four simple digits to evoke an era and define a generation.
1066…
1789…
1914…
Fifty years on, 1968 surely also falls into that category.
Student protests in Paris…

The Prague Spring and it’s brutal suppression by the Soviet Union…

The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy…

Man’s first flight to the moon…


And the iconic Mexico City Olympic Games…

A Games which brought together sport, politics and protest in a way which still seems striking resonant some fifty years later…

A spirit of protest which is of course immortalised in Tommy Smith and John Carlos’ podium salute.

On the field, the Mexico Games of ‘68 also witnessed some of the defining sporting moments of the age…
Jim Hines becoming the first man to break the 10 second barrier for 100m, still the benchmark of world class sprinting…

And Bob Beamon’s incredible 8.90m long jump – a feat so remarkably far in advance of anything achieved before that it has attracted its own adjective…

Oh, and 1968 also produced this too…

The author

Derek Peaple

Derek has been the Headteacher of Park House School since 2003, during which time he has played a leading role in regional, national and international education initiatives. He supported the design of the Values-themed London 2012 Get Set Education programme and was subsequently appointed as the first Chair of the Youth Sport Trust‘s National Headteacher Strategy Group. In 2013 he received the inaugural Sir John Madejski Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education and Sport and contributed to the House of Commons Education Committee’s Report, School Sport following London 2012: No more political football. Ofsted recently stated that, at Park House, a "values driven ambition for students inspired by the Headteacher drives the school’s effective improvement." The school has also just been identified in the top 100 state schools in the country for continuous improvement in GCSE results. Derek was shortlisted for the 2016 TES National Headteacher of the Year Award.

http://www.parkhouseschool.org/