(What school was like) Learning during my 1970s High School years

Metallicman ^ | June 2018 | editorial staff

[vannrox]

Do you remember what it was like going to High School in the 1970s? I do. I most certainly do. In fact, the older I get the more removed that I am from it. As time passes, it starts to look like some kind of a scene from “The Twilight Zone”. The truth is that the kind of life that I had growing up is really alien to the way kids grow up today. That is worrisome, and it really concerns me.

When an American intern comes in to work for me, I am stunned just how absolutely helpless they are. They do not realize that they must go to work before the start of the working hours, and cannot leave until the workday is over. They don’t realize some of the most fundamentals regarding self-initiative is totally missing from them. American kids today are robots, or maybe zombies. They need and expect constant supervision. They are afraid to do anything.

Now this only pertains to my American interns.

The interns that I get from Germany, France, Singapore, and England are just fine. What is wrong with America? What are they teaching in schools there? Ugh. I think that I will devote another post to cover that subject. As it is truly alarming.

Whenever I berate an intern about something that they did wrong, I often use examples from my childhood. I use them to illustrate key points. Such as, [1] you need to eat breakfast at home before you come to work. [2] Showers are not optional. [3] Don’t check your Facebook when you are in a meeting with the boss. [4] Lunchtime is for one hour, and long lunches are not an option. As well, as a pet peeve of mine, [5] you must

[MoochPooch]

The millennial living me hasn't been able to hold down a job. She is almost 30. At that age, I had already worked two years at a print shop, then nearly 7 at an ad agency.

Instead, she spends her time on Instagram or friends' parties. The job she does have is part-time and off the books. Even there, she frequently comes in late and takes time off for vacations. "My boss stared at me, but he didn't say anything," she told me.

Addicted to online shopping, she has run up credit card debt. (Amazon & other packages arrive almost every day.) Don't worry, she says, she hopes to get a 6-figure job in Manhattan -- doing what, I don't know. Apparently paying her dues, starting at the bottom, is too tedious or degrading.

She is not the only one. I've had others with similar problems as far as long-term responsibility. I once overheard one denigrating her boss: "I wasn't incompetent enough for him!" Any kind of negativity sends them back to Mommy and Daddy. Literally.

I dunno . . . I never had parents to fall back on, a room or basement to crawl back into. Survival is the best teacher as far as people skills and priorities.

I should mention . . . the girl living with me really liked Bernie Sanders because "we can get free medical care!" Meaning, everyone else pays for it. (She currently gets Medicaid.)

I truly worry about this generation.

[lightman]

I could never get my rubbers on...

[eyedigress]

I did. They would go over your sneakers and up your leg.

We were a different family in some sense that we were from AK down in the south. I have memories etched in stone from about 4 on.

My first bicycle was a blast and Santa from K-mart said it will be done. I took that thing miles from home.

Thanks Santa!

[rlmorel]

I graduated in 75 too.

My Freshman year in high school, my family had been back about a year from a five year stint in Japan and the Philippines. I was nervous about coming home due to all the unrest (we didn’t have that on military bases overseas) stories about lunch milk being spiked with LSD...all that stuff.

So when we return to the states, my dad gets his last duty station at a small naval communication station near Andrews AFB, and my freshman year at high school in Prince Georges County, they commenced “desegregation” of schools and forced busing. It was an extremely unpleasant time for me. We had come from military run schools where there wasn’t a huge amount of racial tension (race relations were very good, IIRC) so to be thrust into that situation was much like being dunked in icy water. I remember walking into a bathroom to take a leak, and there were about eight black kids in there smoking a joint.

I was a clumsy white kid with short hair and the black plastic “BCD” glasses (Birth Control Glasses) and had only just finally learned recently how to deal with bullies, so I was pretty insecure.

All those black kids turned and looked at me as I walked up to the urinal, and while I am peeing, they all come closer and one of them said “You aren’t going to tell anyone are you?”

Without even turning, I simply said “Nope.” then turned and left. There was a lot of racial tension, especially between these guys they called “Grits” who were called “Greasers” in the decades before in other places. The “Grits” uniform was blue jeans, white t-shirt, cigarette pack in the sleeve, and hi-top Keds. We had one who hung around with our group who seemed like a good guy, but he was the only one of them I ever knew personally. I recall hearing after I had moved away that there was a shotgun fired in a hallway in a racial incident, and he was somehow involved. Anyway, there were a fair number of fights there. I really hated that school.

My dad retired and we moved north. I hated high school with a red hot burning passion, but I did make a few friends and that was okay.

But among the best two years of my life were those two years there, and not because of high school. I got involved with a CYO band (they operated like Drum and Bugle corps, not like a high school band)

I spent those last two years of high school completely immersed in CYO, and spent ALL my time outside of school, all year round, with those people who went to three different area schools. That was my high school fun...all my lifelong friends are from that activity.

When graduation approached I had to make decisions about life as everyone does. My parents wanted me to go to college, and would have gone into hock to pay, but I couldn’t do that. I was an awful, bad student. I would have flunked out, no question, I was that bad. So I decided to join the Navy when I graduated in 1975, and my parents were reasonably happy with that, I think they knew full well I wasn’t college material.

So, I was trying to figure out how to tell my best friend I was going in the Navy. He played hockey, and was pretty good. One night that early spring of 1975, I was trying to fix something in my parent’s 1966 Dodge Van (which they let me drive around! How cool is that?) and my buddy suddenly poked his face in the door...his nose was spread across his face, and as I stared at his nose, he told me how a slap shot had hit his stick as he skated backwards and ricocheted directly into his nose, breaking it. (Ah, the days of no facial cages!)

He had to go get it fixed. As I looked at him, I just blurted out “Hey...I joined the Navy! In the Fall.”

He stared back at me, and without any hesitation, he said “F*** it! I’m going with you!” That is my best friend, and still is...:)

I had a great time in the Seventies, even if I hated school!

[rlmorel]

I swear, with every facial expression that guy in the video makes, I feel more like him...

[Chode]

too damn funny...

[Captainpaintball]

I like this blog. He could put this in book form, and it’d probably sell well...

[rlmorel]

Hehehehe...”Facebook? That’s for OLD people...like my parents!

[DoodleBob]

[Species8472]

I learned to program on the school districts IBM 360 mainframe.
Punch cards and tape drives, COBOL and Fortran.

10 STOP

END

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

That is so close to the truth it is not even funny. That is not a joke any more. A LOT of young people actually think that way. Really.

[rlmorel]

Yes...like I said, I identify with the older guy there.

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the post and link. It is addictive reading. I grew up outside of Pittsburgh too and graduated in 1975.

Reading down the blog is my entire childhood.

Thanks again for the post and link. Life was indeed better during those years.

[PA Engineer]

Back in the 60’s, I had to walk uphill 10 miles in the snow to get to school, then another 10 miles uphill to get home.

Did you live in Pittsburgh?

[familyop]

"Everyone wanted to be a part of the Partridge Family.(Image Source.) Hey! Doesn’t the mother look a little like a younger version of Hillary Clinton? Maybe that’s part of her appeal?...My first class on gun safety was in elementary school in the 1960s. Then, just about every year afterwards we would have courses on safety and hunting safety. The first classes on how to use a gun occurred in Middle School."

What?

"My take is the decision to ban marijuana was a control method, put in place in the 1920s to make it easy to arrest and incarcerate blacks and Mexicans when other laws were not available...Indeed, how can we actually say the USA is “free” if we are told what we can and can’t do with our very own bodies?"

Oh, I see. Never mind. Get a haircut, and stop smoking pot.

[PLMerite]

“Was that the one on the sugar cubes? I still remember lining up in the cafeteria along a cafeteria table and getting a sugar cube.”

That was the acid. It’s why you don’t remember much of your schooling after that.

[Ciexyz]

I remember getting the sugar cube. Lines were very long, I remember standing in line with my parents at the local elementary school. I was too young to remember the exact year, sometime around 1959 or so.

[umgud]

Newton KS

[a fool in paradise]

something like this...

“was first published in 1973”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lampoon_1964_High_School_Yearbook_Parody

[a fool in paradise]

I mostly went to Catholic schools in the 70s/80s but I went to public schools here and there too as we moved around.

There were fake bomb threats called in and genuine bomb events at schools (in lockers and toilets) without any of it making the news. Students sent home and returned the next day. If anyone was ever prosecuted none of us knew about it.