Living and Growing: Series 3 (1975)
Series 3 (1975) of the ITV Schools series Living and Growing from the 1970s, covering sex education for primary and secondary school pupils.
Much of this series follows a family as they prepare for the birth of the baby, we see the birth of the baby and its immediate post-natal care, and how it then fits into the family unit.
Times and expectations had moved on quite significantly since the previous series of Living and Growing was shown in 1970. To begin with these programmes were made entirely in colour rather than black and white (the contemporary BBC sex education programmes for younger children were also made in colour but their childbirth film was deliberately in black and white to minimise the impact of the blood, this 1975 series of Living and Growing presented a childbirth film in colour).
Assumptions about the role of girls and women in the family and in society had started to move on since 1970, as had apparently attitudes to the problem of "unmarried mothers", which is not mentioned as a topic of discussion by any contemporary reviews, in contrast to the 1970 series. The programmes still give the names of sex organs and facts about biological differences between the sexes but also attempt to talk about other, social differences between the sexes.
This series discusses menstruation in terms of feelings as well as facts. Masturbation is mentioned as part of normal sexual development. And televised sex education begins to nudge towards the concept of contraception, through brief references to "family planning".[1]
This unit of Living and Growing introduces a new presenter, Stanley Mitchell, who would be the face of the series for more than a decade and its writer for two decades. Formerly a teacher and college lecturer, then educationalist for the Scottish Health Education Unit. He had first appeared as a guest in the late night preview programmes for parents and teachers accompanying the 1970 series, then went on to present Grampian's schools programme Your Health in 1972 and later recalled[2]:
“I started doing the programme for parents and teachers in the evening and then took over the whole thing in 1966 [sic].
It was a programme that rolled on for years.
It was one of those tremendous challenges that I managed to get involved in completely by accident.”
— Stanley Mitchell
Previews
Grampian, 1975
For the first transmission of these programmes in spring 1975, Grampian produced a preview series for adults broadcast late at night each week before the schools broadcast, containing the full schools programme and a discussion about it with a panel of experts - just as they had done every year since 1968 and would continue to do until 1995. These programmes were billed as Living and Growing for Parents.
These original preview programmes were presented by the schools series' host, Stanley Mitchell, who had a gentle discussion each week on the themes of the episode with guests such as the gynaecologist Arnold Klopper.
The preview series was shown by Grampian Television on Monday nights at 10:30pm from 13th January 1975. It was also carried by Scottish Television and Anglia Television, both on Wednesday nights around 11:20pm, starting on 8th January 1975. Like the schools series itself, the preview programmes were seen first this year in other regions before reaching the producing company Grampian's own area.
Grampian, 1976
A completely new preview series was produced by Grampian Television the following year, billed as Living and Growing for Adults and presented by the journalist Donny B. MacLeod, with discussions analysing the series itself and debating whether it goes too far or not far enough, and at what age sex education should begin.
Grampian screened this preview series on Monday nights at 10:30pm from 12th January 1976, preceding their schools broadcasts of the series on the Wednesday & Friday of the same week.
This new preview series was also screened by Anglia Television and again the other region preceded Grampian's own broadcasts. Anglia took Living and Growing for Adults on Thursday nights around 11:55pm from 8th January 1976.
Finally the preview series was also used by Ulster Television, from Thursday 20th April 1978, when they broadcast these schools programmes.
Titles & Theme Music
The opening titles for these programmes use a series of illustrations to show a boy and a girl growing from babies to adults, and finally a family with a baby of their own. The title Living & Growing appears above the final illustration in a semi-circle.
The theme music is a piece of library music called Shades-Tones by Barbara Moore, published by De Wolfe Music.
The same illustrated opening titles were used again for the following series in 1979, but with different theme music.
Episode List
| # | Title | Broadcast |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Social Development | 13 Jan 1975 |
| 2. | Sex Differences | 20 Jan 1975 |
| 3. | Functions of Sex Organs | 27 Jan 1975 |
| 4. | Conception | 3 Feb 1975 |
| 5. | Birth (1975) | 10 Feb 1975 |
| 6. | The Baby | 17 Feb 1975 |
| 7. | The Family | 24 Feb 1975 |
| 8. | Summary | 3 Mar 1975 |
The programmes were first broadcast for schools by the producing company Grampian Television on Wednesday mornings from 15th January 1975, but they were broadcast in several other regions including Scottish, Border, Anglia, ATV Midlands and HTV Wales & West two days earlier, on the Monday dates listed here.
As noted above, the programmes were also broadcast late at night for adults to preview within a longer discussion programme, starting from 8th January 1975 in the Scottish and Anglia regions (with Scottish technically first to show these programmes at all, preceding Anglia by 10 minutes!). It is this site's practice to use the first broadcast date specifically for schools in episode lists.
One episode from this series was previewed in an Out of School programme on Friday 27th December 1974 at 10:45am, in Grampian and other regions due to show the series in the spring term (see details of regional broadcasts below) - but I'm not certain which episode was shown.
The episode title Birth was re-used for the fifth series of Living and Growing in 1983, so it is listed here as Birth (1975) to distinguish it.
Some episodes were sometimes billed under more descriptive names as well as the proper titles given here. The 3rd episode was sometimes advertised as Functions of Sex Organs and Menstruation, the fifth as Birth of the Baby and the seventh as Genetics.
Broadcasts
The series was scheduled locally by different ITV regional broadcasters.
Grampian Television
The series was produced by Grampian Television, the ITV company in the north of Scotland, who broadcast it every spring term for three years as follows.
| Year | Term | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Channel | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974-75 | Spring 1975 | Wednesday, 11:18am | Friday, 10:30am | Grampian | from 15 Jan | |||
| 1975-76 | Spring 1976 | Wednesday, 11:20am | Friday, 10:30am | Grampian | from 14 Jan | |||
| 1976-77 | Spring 1977 | Tuesday, 10:09am | Friday, 11:43am | Grampian | from 11 Jan |
Other Regions
1974-75
In 1975 the series was shown by 10 of the 13 ITV regional broadcasters[3].
In Spring 1975 the series was shown by Grampian on Wednesdays and Fridays as listed above, and by Scottish, Border, Anglia, ATV Midlands and HTV Wales & West, all on Mondays & Wednesdays at 10:35am. In Summer 1975 the series was further shown by Tyne Tees and Yorkshire, on Mondays and Fridays at 10:35am.
This accounts for 9 of the 10 regions which carried the series this year (HTV Wales and HTV West were counted as a single region). The series was not carried by Ulster or Thames in 1975, and I believe not by Granada either. If the series had been shown by Westward then it would almost certainly also have been shown by Channel too which would bring the total to 11 regions, and so I suspect it was actually shown by Southern Television in 1975 as well, and likely in the summer term as Southern tended to schedule Living and Growing in the summer in later years.
1975-76
A similar pattern followed in 1976, with spring term broadcasts on Wednesdays & Fridays by Grampian, but Mondays & Wednesdays at 10:35 in other regions including Border, Tyne Tees, Yorkshire, Anglia and HTV Wales & West, and for the first time by Thames Television in London - the schoos' broadcast of Living and Growing in London and the first time the series had been seen in the capital since the the very first series had been screened for a general audience by London Weekend Television in 1969.
In Summer 1976 the series was carried by ATV in the Midlands alone, on Mondays & Wednesdays at 10:32am.
1976-77
During 1976-77 Living and Growing appeared in all three terms of the year somewhere in the country.
- In Autumn 1976 it was shown by Border, on Wednesdays at 10:35am, and by Tyne Tees, on Mondays at 10:35am.
- In Spring 1977 it was shown by Grampian on Tuesdays and Fridays as listed above, by Yorkshire and Anglia on Mondays at 10:37am & Wednesdays at 10:31am, and by Westward and Channel on Wednesdays at 11:20am & Fridays at 9:50am - the first broadcast of these programmes by Westward & Channel that I can definitely substantiate.
- In Summer 1977 it was shown by ATV Midlands and HTV Wales & West on Tuesdays at 11:39am & Fridays at 11:43am, and by Thames on Mondays at 10:37am & Fridays at 11:43am. I don't know when or if the series was shown by Scottish, Granada or Southern Television this year.
1977-78
This series of Living and Growing finally reached Ulster Television in Northern Ireland in Summer 1978, broadcast on Fridays at 11:43am. Ulster had screened the second series back in 1970 & 1971, but had not taken these new colour programmes until 1978.
Grampian Television themselves, having screened the series for three successive years, took a break from Living and Growing in 1977-78 whilst a new and updated series was produced, but other regions continued to show it. In Spring 1978 the series was shown by Anglia Television, on Mondays at 11:00 and Wednesdays at 10:43am.
In Summer 1978 these programmes were broadcast by Ulster Television on Fridays as mentioned above, and by Thames at the same times. It was shown by Yorkshire Television on Tuesdays as well as Fridays, and by ATV Midlands and HTV Wales & West on Mondays at 10:31am as well as Fridays at 11:43am. The interruption of normal schools broadcasts by bank holidays on Mondays meant that ATV & HTV were actually the last areas where episodes from this particular series of Living and Growing were screened, on Monday 19th June 1978.
The details given here are as complete as I can offer but do not cover every ITV region in detail. If you can add any missing information, especially about broadcasts (or not) of these programmes by Scottish, Border, Granada, Southern, Westward or Channel Television, please get in touch by email.
Credits
| Presenter | Stanley Mitchell |
| Design | Sandy Massie |
| Film Editor | Roy Smith |
| Educational Adviser | Sheena Young |
| Writer | Stanley Mitchell Peter Webb |
| Producer & director | Peter Webb |
Resources
There were teacher's notes available.
Related programmes
- Merry Go Round: Sex Education (1976)A parallel series for slightly younger children from the BBC.
Sources & References
- Drummond, Kay 'Living and Growing star turns to retiring' in Press and Journal, Aberdeen, 23 March 1991, p.2
- IBA Annual Reports, 1975-1978
- ITV Schools Annual Programme Guides, 1975-1976
- Jones, Christopher 'Educational Broadcasting: IBA' in Visual Education, December 1975, p.10
- Local newspaper listings via British Newspaper Archive
- Lowry, Betty 'The latest approach to sex and your children' in Belfast Telegraph, 12 April 1978, p.8
- Mares, Cherida 'ETV: Emotive subject' in Times Educational Supplement, 30 April 1976, p.119
- TV Times listings, 1975-1978
- ↑ Jones (1975) speaking of developments in response to teachers' comments since the previous series of Living and Growing says that "[q]uite a strong majority of opinion called for more information about subjects on which the first series had been reticent. Contraception is part of family planning — indeed the aspect of family has much stronger emphasis in this year's series." However Mares (whose articles about Living and Growing at this time tend to sound fairly dismissive) says that it is "surprising that a series that deals so explicitly with menstruation, masturbation and childbirth should not also mention contraception." The ITV Schools Annual Programme says this series has "brief reference to masturbation and family planning." (1976-77 Grampian edition p.20, but the same text used in relevant publications from 1975 to 1978)
- ↑ Stanley Mitchell quotes on his involvement with the series from Drummond (1991).
- ↑ IBA Annual Report 1975-76 p.26 says "Living and Growing was scheduled for showing locally in ten areas, and in three areas the series was preceded each week by a preview and discussion for teachers and parents."
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