I suspect there are many things about High School in the 1950’s that isn’t all that different from high school today. Then, just as now, you got up way too early, drug a comb through your hair and boarded a rumbling school bus only to be dumped onto the high school parking lot. Amid the din of slamming locker doors, you hustled to your home room and slunk into your desk just in time to mumble “here”. According to my grandkids, this hasn’t changed in over 60 years.
However the culture of young people who attended high school in the 50’s was radically different than the culture in which today’s high-schoolers find themselves. In the late 40’s & early 50’s, the things that influenced youngsters were much more filtered, more simplistic, providing a protective naïveté.
Before the industrial revolution, a great majority of Americans lived in the country rather than the city. As these middle-Americans raised their children from toddler status into school age, they fully expected them to help with the chores that accompanied rural farm life. Children naturally grew into the wholesome responsibility of early adulthood. But today, few parents’ vocations are associated with the home.
I vividly recall the long family discussion at our dinner table the evening my oldest brother asked if he could forego his evening chores in order to play football. It was a real head scratcher for our family.
“How are we gonna get everything done if Tommy isn’t here to help with the chores each evening?”
My parents always listened to our requests, and they wanted Tommy to have the opportunity to play extra-curricular sports, but it would require shifting his young adult (age 15) work load to the others sitting there at the table. He did what our parents determined was best for the entire family, not just one person in the family, and that’s just how it was.
It was about this same time a new technology was introduced that changed forever the youth landscape. A tiny device established itself as the greatest single influencer upon what would become a newly emerging youth culture (and remained the greatest influencer until the introduction of the World Wide Web).
Before the PC (personal computer), there was the PR (personal radio). The transistor, a tiny electronic marvel, replaced the vacuum tube and enabled battery powered radios to fit into the budget AND the palm of adolescent Americans. Personal-sized radios allowed youngsters to choose their own music without disturbing others in the household. Soon, cagey merchandisers seized upon this newly developed market, promoting a special new music that was wildly received by a category of buyers that had here-to-for been only known as “older children”. Rock & Roll music blasted off like a rocket ship and established an entirely new social stratum of Americans called the “Teenager”.
Being a teenager early on was tricky business. Grownups were the ones who determined the status quo and anyone who varied from that were accused of being rebellious or delinquent. Remember the term ‘juvenile delinquent’?
Rock and roll curried that change…and it stayed! It proved to be an undeniable force for change; resulting in today’s empowered youth culture.
As an aging Baby Boomer, I realize it was my generation who is responsible for the social revolution launched and fueled by Rock & Roll. Together, as older American’s, we could commiserate over the uncertain cultural landscape the current generation of young people are projecting, or we could be the ones who pray for and lift up the next generation. Times have a changed…can I get an “Amen”?!
The Lord, himself, chose to become as one of us in order to save each of us. The Bible reminds us…
“For even though it was in weakness that he was put to death on the cross, it is by God’s power that he lives. In union with him we also are weak; but in our relations with you we shall share God’s power in his life.”
2 Corinthians 13:4
Read Ron’s column, Simple Faith, each Saturday on the Faith Page (page 3) of the Lancaster Eagle Gazette, or visit www.lancastereaglegazette.com.