School 1957 vs 2007

[Vails]

Ryan White? Wasn't he, like, 20 years ago? Things are better now, is what I'm saying. This isn't just about the 1950s and 60s, and I don't mean to pick on that era in particular. That's just the age that got this conversation started, and it's also the age in which the generation that precedes me grew up. So there's a lot of looking backward to those days with glasses set on Maximum Tint.

Whatever problems I think the '50s and '60s had, they were still a lot better than the '20s and '30s, and that time was a lot better than a generation before that, and so on and so on, back to a time when tootbrushes didn't exist and people hoped to cheat the odds and live to be 30. And you just know that, at every step, older people looked at the world around them and said, "things were so much better when I was young." It's nostalgia, and I love nostalgia.

T-Bone can look back at his younger years and recall many truly wonderful things, and I can find some things that I agree with (like the music) and some that I don't (TV? really?), but I can't judge his past. But that's kind of my point. This is his past, and he lived through it, and while his closeness to the subject makes him the most experienced source, it doesn't make him the most credible one. (Hope you don't mind me picking on you, T-Bone. I loved the good humor of your post; it's just the one that suits my philosophical slant right now.) T-Bone said it best, as did others in this thread: It all comes down to point of view.

Most of us have a fundamental need to keep the fondest memories of our pasts in some halcyon corner of our consciousness. I certainly do. I remember playing kick the can with the other neighborhood kids in my small, midwestern town in the late 70s until it was too dark for us to see the can. But there are three things I think people shouldn't do with those memories (and again, I'm not saying T-Bone is doing them, because he isn't).

One, I don't think people should present their own memories or experiences as if they were facts to show that the world was a better place for everybody, rather than just them and the people around them. (Which I was probably the most guilty of, with my original rant of All Things Crappy About the '50s, so: withdrawn. Turns out people liked lard. Who knew.)

Two, don't compare the subjective and selective memories of the experiences of a young person to the observations and world-worn lamentations of an older one. When you're young, the world is a more wondrous place, or at least a more intriguing one. I think that what people see as a downward progression in the world around them is, in many ways, simply a symptom of growing up. How does the phrase go? The older we get, the better we were. But tires still swing in the present day, earthworms still get dug out of the mud, clubhouse doors still can be opened only with secret knocks. Just not for you, anymore.

Third, even if you think that things were better way back when, don't jump to the conclusion that people were better as well. Just because I don't see a lot of kick the can games around, that doesn't mean that kids today are more lazy or shallow or substandard than they used to be. I love hearing people say, "When I was young, we didn't need video games or satellite dishes to gave a good time. All we needed was a rock and a hole in the ground," or some such. OK, but just because kids' best entertainment options used to be almost exclusively out of doors, that doesn't mean that if they did have more options, they wouldn't make the same choices, by and large, as kids today do, by and large. Or, put another way, if I could go back in time to my neighborhood, and bring my son's Nintendo DS with me, a lot of cans would go unckicked. You can say that it's the poorer choice if you want, and it may be tough to dispute that (although I try!), but don't say that kids back then were better people, just because they didn't have that choice to make.

I appreciate Ed's finding of that crime statistic. But I'll chalk that up to good luck on my part, rather than some kind of victory. Certainly Tex has used the facts before to poke holes in my arguments before, as I tend to speechify first and fact-check later, if at all. (Hey, I'm a researcher. I'm on a break!) Besides, I know there are facts that support either side, and sometimes even both sides simultaneously. (Although I would love to host a talk radio show about this very subject. People would call in and say how the world is getting worse and then we argue. No political agenda, just lots of bickering. Awesome? I think it would be.) So this is, for me, a philosophical thing, not a factual one. I truly believe that it's easier and more beneficial for us to look not behind us for a path to a better world, but to turn around and figure out how best to navigate the terrain that lay before us.

[T_Bone0806]

Well said, vails. I like that we can have (somewhat) opposing viewpoints and not go all Cold War on it.

I agree that in some aspects, even on a personal viewpoint, the present is better. Certainly without the more enlightened outlook on the needs of the disabled, and the accessibility improvements and technology to make their lives easier, I would not only NOTt be taking my trips to Disney and getting into work and theatres and things like that, it is quite possible that I would be housebound or even a nursing home patient at the age of 50, wishing I could just die and get it over with. Also without advancements of recent years, this very thing I'm typing on would not be around, meaning I would never have "met" all of you terrific peoples (of course, computers also have had an impact on the "premature maturity" of our young folk, in BOTH good and bad, as in frightening, ways).

We basically agree on the major point of all of this, that "the good ol' days" are subjective, all of our mileage varies. I CAN say with 100% certainty that I would not want to be a kid in today's world. My grandkids may very well be saying the same thing in 2038 and likely will. My parents sacrificed a lot of what they wanted so that we kids were happy, we were definitely not wealthy. But they were good times for me. It was...here comes the cliche..."a simpler time", and my recollections of my childhood are obviously colored by having had it pretty good. With most of us, our memories are edited to leave out a lot of the crap and retain the "highlight reels". I just don't see today's kids having that much of a window where they can have the luxury of that happy innocence, and that makes me sad on a personal level, because I think that is SO important.

I guess my main point was that the original post was an extreme and meant-to-be humorous poke at how far we tend to overthink things these days. While the old school approach needed some tinkering, I do think that personally we have gone too far in the other direction (popping Ritalin down every child's throat, for example..I have some personal history with that scenario). The situations were exaggerated for comedic effect but I thought it made some decent points as well. Some of the old school solutions still make sense to me, some most assuredly do not. Then again, the modern day methods sometimes seem ludicrous as well, and ineffective. So I s'pose that's how I got onto the "defending the good ol' days" horse.

[PlacentiaSoccerMom]

I guess my main point was that the original post was an extreme and meant-to-be humorous poke at how far we tend to overthink things these days. While the old school approach needed some tinkering, I do think that personally we have gone too far in the other direction.

I totally agree with this, which is one of the reasons why I made the orginal post.

My kids do not have nearly as much freedom as I did when I was a kid. They are tested and scheduled to death. While I had maybe 15 to 20 minutes of homework a night, Emma easily has two hours a night, plus stuff on weekends. It's almost as if she doesn't have a chance to be a kid.