Generation Chasms

My 7th grade classes are starting to read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton this week. The novel is set in 1967 and that is, I explained to them, one year after my dad graduated from high school. We went through a powerpoint of 1960s pop culture and slang, and then ended on a list of things you wouldn't have seen in the 1960s. We talked about the lack of pull-tab soda cans, the internet, any form of video or arcade game, and finally, no CDs, DVDs, or even cassette tapes. Then I pulled a record out and explained how it worked (Thank you Dad for explaining that to me when I was little, my kids were impressed), and passed it around so they could all see. Some kids were familiar with records, but others were clearly fascinated. I heard them telling their friends about it in the hall.

They also have no concept of when things developed. I had one student raise his hand and say, "Didn't they have something called a 'walk...man' in those days?" I laughed and told him he was 20 years off.

Then I had other students swear that Atari was around in the 1960s. To these kids, the 1980s are retro. The 60s and 70s are history. Which makes sense; they're 15 years or so behind me. To me, the 1960s and 70s were retro, the 40s and 50s were history.

We also had a brief confusion as my students stated with authority that Nintendo was around in the early 1960s. Confused (I had just told them there weren't even arcade games in the 1960s, not even Pong), I asked why. It turns out that many of my students thought that the Nintendo 64 had come out in 1964 and were surprised to learn that they were, once again, 20 years off.

My students did, however, show a remarkable knowledge of 1960s TV shows. I guess I Dream of Jeannie will never die.