Oh, how embarrassing…..
Everywhere you look in schools today, there are banners with slogans telling kids how great they are and how they are welcomed.
Not in the sixties–no banners, no nothing. The teacher welcomed you first day and that was it. You had low self-esteem, deal with it. A school’s job is not to re-assure you and make you feel like you were in a warm cocoon……..the space race was on and dammit, it’s a parent job to handle those icky issues.
Nobody had parents with bumper stickers about how proud they were of their kid at XXXX school. When you got honor roll (starting in jr high) you got a freakin’ tie tac. For boys who owned one clip-on tie in their entire closet! Someone said that the girls should receive a chastity belt, cuz the nerdy girls on honor roll had no interest in boys. But we’ll leave those un-pc comments for now.
Our elementary school had cork strips in the hall so that some kids’ papers or artworks could be tacked up, semi-proudly. It was rare when every kid hung stuff in the hall. And it didn’t take long for us to learn who the brains were–the teachers would recognize them, or just hand out tests sorted by best to worst grades. This meant suspense bit your ass, as your name wasn’t being read as papers got handed out–Hitchcock himself could not have invented such nail biting tension.
This led to some kids just giving up–everyone knew they were labeled ‘dumb’ they were and could never get a good grade, so they just gave up. It was very much survival of the fittest, and plenty of children fell through the cracks in the sixties. If you feel that the recognition parades that seem to be everywhere, it’s better than the 60’s alternative.
Graduation parties were for high school ONLY. No one ever threw a party for graduating Kindergarten, sixth grade or middle school. When sixth grade was over, our teacher gave a little speech. A few girls wiped tears and the rest of us just wanted to get the hell out cause it was stifling hot, even with the windows open.
I could go on about how easy kids have it these days, but