Co-Editor's Note: Things have been awfully quiet here lately. Let's jump start things by looking at how we handle the 1950s.
I just finished my class on what I tounge-in-cheek call "The World of Leave it to Beaver." The way I handle the class is to focus on the gap between the ideal and the reality. The ideal was that "everyone" was middle class. The reality was that 1/4 of the population was living in poverty. The ideal was that all women stayed at home with their children. The reality was that a growing number of women, married with children, were working for wages. The ideal was that we lived in a democracy, standing toe-to-toe with the Communists. The reality was that African-Americans were beginning to challenge their undemocratically defined place in society. The ideal was the children were junior members in a world where "Father Knows Best." The reality is that they doing shocking things like listening to rock 'n roll and other things that appalled their parents.
How do the rest of you handle this period?
Bill Cecil-Fronsman
Washburn University
Co-Editor, H-Survey
Author: vmccombs@frodo.okcu.edu
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 14:08:45 -0500
I cover many of the same things in the 50s, ie the ideal and the reality. I particularly pitch both the civil rights movement and the woman's movement as growing out of the discontents of the 60s. Of course, we could probably watch videos until the end of the semester on the 50s alone, but I might mention several of my favorites which I have shown at one time or another in the survey or other courses. Number one on my hit parade is "The Atomic Cafe;" I only wish I had time to run and then discuss the entire 90 minutes. Another favorite is the "I Love Lucy" video when Lucy and Ethel work in the chocolate factory in an attempt at role reversal with Fred and Ricky. Another gem is the first part of the first segment of "Making Sense of the 60s." There is a wonderful segment in this that uses those "educational films" we baby boomers watched in our school auditoriums. Remember those? Using a combination of old films and personal reminiscences, the video sets up the 60s as a reaction to a rather oppressive set of values.
I have promised myself that next semester I am going to try out some of
the suggestions for the survey that I have gleaned from this list. I have
started a file!! I do think that the suggestions which incorporate students
using photographs to first discuss a topic and then write interpretations
of events should work very well in this time period.
Virginia McCombs
Oklahoma City University
Author: Rosemary Grant
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 14:09:17 -0500
Today we talked about the fifties, and what my survey class found
the most amazing was MacArthur's idea of using nuclear weapons on the
Chinese. Teaching this era after the Cold War has died down means that
students have trouble identifying or understanding the United State's
feeling of anti-communism. As long as the cold war was going on I never
had these blank looks on faces.
Respectfully,
Rosemary Bradford Grant
Monett High School, history & humanities instructor 1-417-235-5445 UMKC adjunct, fax 417-235-7884
Monett, MO 65708
Author: jimrice@CWU.EDU
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 14:10:45 -0500
Bill asks how we deal with the 1950s in our surveys. The last time I did the second-half survey I too began by having students brainstorm to create a long list of stereotypes. We then spent a great deal of time looking at the more outrageous (to modern sensibilities) features of the 1950s, such as violent resistence to the CRights movement, red-hunting (transcripts of HUAC hearings are great for this), Cold War fears (showing _Atomic Cafe_), union-busting, etc.. We also looked at features of popular culture that displayed strong undercurrents of resistence & rebellion: the James Dean phenomenon, early Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis (with a discussion of the explosive mixture of the sacred & profane in "Great Balls of Fire"). At the end of the unit students came up with new labels for the fifties, and "Decade of Madness" emerged as the winner.
Probably there's nothing unique to this approach, except that we did this at the very _beginning_ of the quarter. The 1950s raised many questions of the "how could people think like that" variety, several of which corresponded with major themes for the course as a whole. I'm not entirely comfortable with this approach, as it risks introducing a teleological perspective to the course, but at least it's not a whiggish teleology. And more to the point, it hooked students who wouldn't have found the same themes so compelling if they'd been introduced in a unit on Reconstruction.
--Jim Rice
Central Washington University
Author: peter c holloran
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 16:04:19 -0500
When teaching a course on the Sixties, of course, I had to back up and give an overview of the 1950s (which did not end until 1965, btw). I was pleased to find the PBS series MAKING SENSE OF THE SIXTIES available on video. The first tape had some useful educational films: family dinners, popularity in high school, dating, etc.
I also had students research our college year books to get a sense of campus life in the 1950-70 era. They were shocked by curfews, dorm rules, dress codes, clothing and hair styles.
Peter Holloran, Mount Ida College, pch@world.std.com
Author: tkaminsk@uwspmail.uwsp.edu
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 08:21:55 -0500
My surveys are generally structured around the differences between the ideal and the real, and those differences come out very plainly when we get to the 1950s. I spend a class period talking about the "Leave it to Beaver" image and then get into working women, the economy, Beat culture, and teen culture. When I move into civil rights I show the segment on the Emmett Till murder that is included in the first episode of the Eyes on the Prize series. That really gets students to understand what the civil rights activists were up against
Theresa Kaminski
Dept. of History
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
Author: Kirk Jeffrey
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 11:06:13 -0500
In teaching the 1950s, I too use the ideal/reality gap, but I don't think that makes the 50s particularly distinctive. In all eras there is something of a disparity between ideal and reality. Also, part of that disparity in the 50s was not really present at the time but is the result of our curious caricaturing of the decade. It is later generations that have created this image of the 50s built on Father Knows Best & Leave It to Beaver. Those were indeed popular programs at the time, but one should recall that another very popular show, The Honeymooners, dealt with working-class life in a far from glamorous setting. Problems of juvenile delinquency and youth disaffection were discussed intensely during that period and one sees this in films such as Rebel without a Cause.
Thus I wonder sometimes if it is not we teachers who have set up this oversimplified picture of the 50s which we then take pleasure in knocking down.
Kirk Jeffrey
Carleton College
Author: qpriest@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 1996 08:14:26 -0500
There are many pathways into and out of the 1950s. One I personally like is to stress the conformity of the fifties, reinforced by the new media, television. I contrast the television conformity with excerpts from the many "bad boy" films depicting juvenile delinquency. We discuss these contrasts as a form of pop-culture dialogue. I end the series with the opening scenes from "Rebel Without a Cause." The dialogue in the police station lays out all the cultural angst between the generations in the fifties (you can add the scene where James Dean insists "we are involved. We are all involved!" after he tells them that he was involved in the death of the boy in the game of chicken.
This all segues nicely into the youth protest culture of the sixties. The Port Huron Statement is excellent reading in this context. It is that search for authentic alternatives, for involvement, for redemption from material consumption that is at the heart of the white middle class participation in the Civil Rights Movement (Robert D. Marcus, "The Civil Rights Movement," in Marcus, ed., America Since 1945); the Civil Rights Movement leads to the Berkely Free Speech Movement and ultimately to the anti-war protest.
I don't mean to make it so neat and simple, but this is a survey course I am teaching.
Quinton Priest
University High School
Tucson, AZ
qpriest@ccit.arizona.edu
Author: Jim Funkhouser funkhouser@edison.cc.oh.us Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 10:54:41 -0500
Edison Community College, Piqua, Oh.
I have been following with interest the discussion on teaching the 1950's and appreciate the ideas that I have picked up from it. I hope that people haven't tired of the issue and that I'm not too late to get your thoughts of some things that occurred to me as I pursued the line of thinking that you stimulated.
It's hard to tell from from the short descriptions of approaches how the ideal-reality contrasts are presented. Is the idea that the Cleaver image was NOT part of reality the one that you emphasize? I'm trying to get my bearings in the social-cultural history of this era, but it seems like there were different realities involved. By the late 1940's a majority of Americans were home owners for the first time in the century; by 1960 more people were living in suburbia than in cities; and while 40% of women were employed, 60% were not. Wasn't the suburban life that is attacked part of the reality for many Americans? (This is not to say that we should confuse commercial entertainment with social reality.) Wasn't the *aspiration* to this style of living part of the reality of the 1950's?
"Juvenile delinquents," James Dean, and the beats were part of the reality of the `50's. Should they get equal emphasis with the conformist and materialist consumer culture? Over one-fifth of Americans were in poverty at the end of the `50's, but almost four-fifths were not, a significant change from the 1930's. Isn't that reality significant?
Teens shocked their parents by listening to rock`n' roll. Here I am relying dangerously on memory instead of research, but weren't the main themes of rock young love, fast cars, and good times? The style and sound was shocking, but weren't the ambitions and concerns expressed basically the same same as those of their parents who endured depression and war--material goods and security and happiness and anxiety that these won't be attained or won't last?
Thanks for any addition comments on this thread.
Jim Funkhouser
funkhouser@edison.cc.oh.us
Author: mdavis@uwcmail.uwc.edu
Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 14:28:33 -0500
It seems to me that the lyrics of rock and roll songs c 1956-1964 support the status quo at the time as much if not more than they challenge them. I am thinking of all the songs about being true to your school, homogonous relationships, girls looking up to the boys, honor your parents, soldier boys fighting for their country, consumerism, etc. To me this the most interesting aspect of the music and points up what I emphasize when teaching the 1950's, the wonderful contradictions of the period. Is anyone as struck as I am by the fact that the 1950's, or at least our discussion of it, seems so dominated by material culture. Why is that so, and is part of it nostalgia on our part? A great book on the period is Thomas Hines, 'Populuxe'.
mark davis
U Wisconsin, Baraboo.
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