When I was five, and "auditioning" for private school first grade because the public schools in my town were too bureaucratic and uptight to allow a 5-year-old in,* but my mother was desperate to get rid of at least ONE of the four kids to a gainful day, I proudly volunteered to the school rep that 0 + 0 = 1. (Extrapolating from 1+1=2, it made sense at the time.)
*the next year, second grade, the SAME public school called my mom and had her come in for a conference to see about my zipping right along to third grade. I would've started college at 16! Wisely, she declined, and I spent the next 11 years with the sorriest bunch of in-fighting, back-stabbing, power-hungry Irish-Americans you could imagine.
But where was I going with this? Hunh. I really have no idea.
Two years later, there were youth riots all over the world and a sense that structural change was really possible. I am in the next generation, the one that believes that change would have been possible, if only everyone weren't so tired of the reality of trying to make a living. This comes to mind because I watched a film for City in Film class tonight called "Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000" and started thinking about the "radicals" I knew in the 60s and where they've ended up. I had older cousins, so I had some exposure to that world. (For example: one became a lawyer but gave up social justice for mergers and acquisitions, go figure.)
The point is: although cocooned in my child's world, I had awareness of conflicts, through the newspaper articles my father read to my mother every night while she was cooking dinner, through photos in Life magazine (when it was real photojournalism, not that pap that comes (sometimes) in the Friday paper, and through exposure to older kids who were dealing with college. I'll be interested to see what view my students have of the THM of the 60s.
Posted by otto0114 at May 1, 2006 10:39 PM