i've got my lacy big girl panties on. I learned to wear them in a school where a slamming locker door made us all hit the deck. It was an education on a non-academic level. To pretend everywhere in the US provides the same education as a white, affluent, rural shool is simply silliness. You guys need to put your big boy whitey tighties on and realize that the 50's seem like a great time to you because they were the last time that white males automatically went to the head of the line.
BTW - some High Schools still offer archery, I know because my niece competes on her HS team.
major bean wrote: Riverside Indian School was rather brutal back in the early 60s. If you could not engage in a good fistfight then you were nobody of consideration. Uterus? The gals knew how to use it. Football, beer, and ciragettes. Blonde, red, or brown hair was only something that you saw in a color magazine such as Life or Look. Every male carried a knife, including me.
Parents stayed away. Every once in a while you would see the sheriff at the school.
Beer, lots of beer smokes all kinds, my '66
Pontiac Catalina, HUGE BACK SEAT came in handy, (pun), .38 under seat, (can't remember why... O went to Normal Heights to score), knife in pocket, acid, coke, 'ludes, mascalean,<sp?>, shrooms, almost burning down the men's head, my favorite teacher of all time (no not because of that... Water Polo Lettered 3 years in a row, lost all 3 letters for smoking at Football game, Same with Swimming, (Didn't learn much) Water polo practice in Mission Bay before the school year started.
MORE am sure... Head hurts...
Forgot all the fist/chain fights with the Mexicans.
O Billy Joel was correct, "cathloic girls are easy!"
chickaree wrote: I remember high school. Heroin in the parking lot, rapes in the bathrooms, brutal beatings, not casual fistfights. It sounds like you guys grew up in Mayberry. Not everyone was that lucky. Too often we see the past through rose colored glasses.
We see it through the eyes of youth in part, and let's face it. Some of us were lucky in where we grew up. For me, it's not so much the high school thing, it's more to do with general attitudes. Again, not everyone was as fortunate and so it can be expected that not everyone feels warm and fuzzy about the 50's.
Heck part of what made this time period so damn special for me was that we immigrated to NY state in 1953. It was all new and exciting and being out in the boonies allowed for far greater liberties then than my brother, who still lives on the old homestead is allowed today.
SS109 wrote: I have no nostalgia for the 1950's, I wasn't born yet. I like living nowdays with better medical and technology.
Back then the doctor would come to your house and you could afford to pay him without needing insurance. Then again you'd both be smoking cigarettes and you wouldn't live as long.
Indeed some of us were more lucky than others. You can choose to highlight the negatives, but I do not believe for one minute that drugs were a major issue in the 1950's. Drinking and driving before you had a license, now those are another story. Plenty of students delighted in beating the drinking age. We are talking generalizations about the 50's and today. Some isolated hick schools still have elements of the past living on today, but the vast majority do not, have evolved to the point where police officers reside in the schools. Never saw one even show up during y HS years unless it was to a ball game. Let's face it, as BearMtnHIB writes:
America was somthing to be proud of back in the 50's- economy was booming, the middle class was expanding and there was more freedom and personal responsibility for every individual. Seems like the government has taken that over these days.
That at least encapsulates the impression I had of those times as a whole. Sure there were exceptional unpleasant events that happened back then too. It would be unrealistic not to acknowledge such things happened (like setting a school on fire) but it was not an every day occurrence. Much of the "social engineering" OmniScience describes is an every day occurrence and that evolution is not something I hold dear.
In remembrance of the 50's This from 1953, My first day going off to school in the US.
I'm amazed at those who really think that life in the 1950's was so idyllic....perhaps they are suffering some grave memory loss or did not live through that era. I grew up in a very nice middle class suburb.....so no horror stories from inner city schools. First....it was definitly no time to be black or a woman, worse for blacks, not a lot of fun for a woman (girl) who had designs on a good career. I graduated high school at 16 and applied to college even though I was being discouraged by most everyone, except my father, from continuing my education. It was OK to go to the local teacher's college but not out of state to a "real" university. My mom only relented because she thought I might find a decent husband there.
Medical care was hit or miss in those days....my best friend contracted polio and the medical costs to keep her in the iron lung at home totally devastated and bankrupted her family, there was no health insurance to speak of.
Girls in high school were always going off to visit some mysterious aunt somewhere, then returning in about 9 months. They almost never returned to school to finish their education.
There were few blacks in our town, and they were unwelcome everywhere....those that had the guts to attend the local schools were intimidated daily. It was ugly, to say the least. Many were taken by their parents 20 miles to the city to attend all black schools. The native american students from the nearby reservation ( they were called indians then, with a lot of not-so-nice descriptors) weren't treated much better, they usually dropped out of high school rather than deal with the constant taunts and bullying. When I was a junior I dated a Native American who I had met over the summer at the lake and whom my mom and dad had hired to do some yard work, they pretty much adopted him and he spent a lot of time with my family.....the flack we both took for dating finally broke up that relationship, though we did start dating again when I was in college and he was at West Point.
Drinking was the vice of choice and underage drinking was not only tolerated, it seemed to be the norm. I don't recall ever being carded from a bar even though I was many years younger than legal drinking age.
Bad stuff happened at schools.....fights resulting in serious injury, rapes, horrible intimidation to geeks (they weren't called that then) but that stuff never made the news, it was covered up by parents, schools and the local authorities. I think we view our current society as being worse than those idyllic 50's because we know more now, it's all over the news. And that is OK with me....ignorance is NOT bliss....it is just ignorance.
The indoctrination of kids then was just as bad as conservatives say it is now, only from the right wing of politics. We used to have mock elections in grade school.....Ike and Stevenson....I voted for Stevenson and was promptly told by my teacher to change my vote because Stevenson was a commie and wanted to do something horrible to our nation. Ike got like 90 percent of the vote.
While it was a right of passage for a boy to get his driver's license and an old beat up car, girls had to fight to get the license and a car was simply out of the question.....
All in all....it was certainly a happy time for many....but miserable for many more. We were naive, we were content with simpler things, and we were ignorant pretty much of world affairs and national issues.
When my kids were young I tried to give them some of the best things from those simpler times (reading, outdoor play, respect for their elders etc) but added in more recent issues like tolerance for other races and religions, knowledge of technology and how to use it wisely, encouragement to follow their dreams and get as much education as they wished in whatever fields they wanted. I especially encouraged my daughter to dream big and reach high for what she wanted.
I would never want to go back to the 50's (no self respecting techno-geek ever would), but that doesn't mean we can't recapture some of the good things from that era and apply them to our own life and that of our children and grandchildren now.
edited to add....I almost forgot the Kennedy election in 1960....I had the guts then to vote for kennedy in spite of my teachers telling us the Pope would be running America if he won. In our high school, he lost badly.
Pontiac Catalina, HUGE BACK SEAT came in handy, (pun), .38 under seat, (can't remember why... O went to Normal Heights to score), knife in pocket, acid, coke, 'ludes, mascalean,<sp?>, shrooms, almost burning down the men's head, my favorite teacher of all time (no not because of that... Water Polo Lettered 3 years in a row, lost all 3 letters for smoking at Football game, Same with Swimming, (Didn't learn much) Water polo practice in Mission Bay before the school year started.
