DOCUMENT by: Bob Hassenger
Subject: Mini-Lecture Part 3

8 8 Chapters 3-5 discuss some of the settings in which individuals found themselves (and do today, however different). What are some of the most striking characteristics of the range of possible Summer activities for children and adolescents? Far fewer organized (basketball, soccer, snowboarding, cheerleading, science) camps? The presence of many authoritative (not necessarily authoritarian) adults? The centrality of religion? How accurate are some of the representations of this time (and later, the 1960s and 'Seventies) in the media today? What do you think would be the biggest "culture shocks" for the adolescent boy or girl teleported to St. Nick's (or a comparable setting), today?

Douglas Sirk made a number of films celebrating life in the 1950s, such as "All that Heaven Allows". For a counterpoint, suggesting times were not as idyllic as some prefer to remember, see "Far From Heaven" .

David Riesman ( The Lonely Crowd and Individualism Reconsidered) remains a key contributor to understanding the 'Fifties phonomenon of "togetherness." See also William F. Whyte's
The Organization Man, and such films as "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" , based on the bestselling novel by Sloan Wilson. Perhaps no film so captured the sense of a conscious severing of the ties to tradition and expectations, among the young of their generation, than Mike Nichols' "The Graduate," which came out in 1967, shortly after I had launched into full-time teaching in a major (traditional) university. Its impact at the time was enormous.

What strikes you as"true," and what "false", from what you know and have heard and read and seen, about such characterizations?

Click here to go to the discussion for Module 2: Establishing a Baseline for (Modern) Social Change)

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