The prompt this week for Ten on Tuesday
is Ten Ways the World Has Changed Since I’ve Been in School:
- The computer age is upon us. Such things as the Internet would have been science fiction when I was in school.
- President John F. Kennedy’s emphasis on physical fitness for school children meant that you saw very few obese kids.
- We knew our neighbors. After school, we children would sometimes have neighborhood games of tag or hide and seek. It was no big deal to wander around the neighborhood, go on long bike rides, or play down by the irrigation ditches.
- Not many people knew about the healthfulness of eating whole grains. Highly processed convenience foods were considered an advance.
- Most TV shows were family-friendly and generally wholesome.
- Most students were respectful to their teachers. If they weren’t, the parents usually sided with the school, rather than with their disobedient child.
- Many of the teachers smoked cigarettes (but only in the faculty lounge, not in front of the students).
- There were a lot more one-income families “way back when.” Working moms were a curiosity.
- Girls were required to wear dresses or skirts up until my senior year of high school. All the female teachers wore dresses.
- We had a greater choice of electives. In junior high, I learned to cook and sew; in fourth grade I started in band playing the French horn (which was provided by the school); and in high school I marched in the band at all the football games, and in parades.
