Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Retirement
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 06-20-2019, 08:07 AM
 
Location: Cochise County, AZ
1,399 posts, read 1,245,219 times
Reputation: 3052

Advertisements

Quote:
Originally Posted by JTGJR View Post
THE most useful course that I took that is no longer a standard in high school . . . Typing.
The most useless course I took was shorthand, and I had it for two years. Back then it met the language requirement for high school.

I never used shorthand once after I graduated. The majority of businesses had made the switch to dictaphones when I entered the work force.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 06-20-2019, 08:12 AM
 
13,498 posts, read 18,126,387 times
Reputation: 37885
Quote:
Originally Posted by JTGJR View Post
There have been a few posts about teaching students to learn to live their life. I completely agree. When I was in high school I had to take an economics class. .....
My jr. high and high school years were 1950 - 1956. There was a home ec classed - girls only, a shop class - boys only. However, one day a week the girls could do a shop class and the guys could do a home ec class.

My major way of learning to live (and many other students did this as well) was work. Kids often worked. If dad ran a snack counter, his sons or daughters eventually starting working in it after school and on Saturdays. If your father was a farmer, you were expected to take a big hand in doing the farm work...and since farmer's wives were still doing things like canning, their daughters helped. My own female cousins who were born on farms learned to milk cows, feed the animals and herd them in for milking; their brothers learned to plow with a tractor, drive a team of horses, milk cows, etc. If you lived in the town you might get a job clerking in the Five and Dime, working in a drug store, being a delivery boy, and some girls were steady baby sitters, etc.

There were two major benefits of working as a teenager. The first was earning your own money, of course; the second - and I think maybe more important - you learned to deal with adults who were not family members or school teachers. Being a home delivery paperboy for eighty customers early in jr. high was a major eye-opener - about how people behaved with a subordinate kid and with each other, and the real gutty part of some people's lives - people dying, chronically ill, mentally ill, abused, lecherous, alcoholic.

I learned more about growing up from working in my jr. high school and high school years than I did from my parents during those years. And as others have said, kids were out alone from an earl age and no Mommy or Daddy was doing the helicopter routine when you started working. If I saw Mr. X giving his wife a few slaps or Mrs. Y snarled and then puked on the front porch because she was drunk when she came to the door. You could tell Mom or Dad, but their bottom line was that you delivered the paper, kept your mouth shut, took the money and got the hell away from people like that asap. And that's what you did.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 09:56 AM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,308 posts, read 10,563,956 times
Reputation: 12617
Quote:
Originally Posted by Piney Creek View Post
Since my mom didn't have her own car until I was 10 or 11, all us kids were frequently sent to the store to pick up some needed item, especially if mom discovered she needed something while she was making dinner. This developed another whole set of skills in us at very tender ages (not to mention the ability to get to a grocery store, buy whatever it was, and then get back home quickly).

Yes, this definitely brings back memories for me. I'm sure there were days when my mother sent me to the store more than once. It was mostly bread, milk, lunch meat, and dog food. The neighborhood store was only around the block and I would usually ride my bike. The problem was pedaling up a hill carrying a gallon of milk in one hand.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 10:39 AM
 
Location: moved
13,590 posts, read 9,627,176 times
Reputation: 23363
The flip side of children being expected to be more self-sufficient, to seek their own entertainment and so forth, is that parents (and especially the fathers) were less obsessively consumed by the tasks of parenthood. This meant that adults could socialize amongst themselves, in matters not directly related to tending to their children. Today it seems that unrelated adults only meet outside of work at the kids’ soccer-practice. “Back in the day”, there were numerous adult functions. Adults had hobbies and so forth. This also meant that those persons who didn’t have children, didn’t suddenly lose their friends, when the latter became parents. It also meant that venues such as restaurants, movie theaters and the like, didn’t revolve around catering to families with children. The culture was, in short, less child-centric.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 10:40 AM
 
10,609 posts, read 5,585,337 times
Reputation: 18889
My parents bought a house in about 1960 for something like $12,000 IIRC. It was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath house built in 1946 or 47 in LA.

Zillow's current estimate is $1,374,000. The house has been remodeled, of course; it now lists 3 bedrooms and 3 baths.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 10:52 AM
 
Location: TN/NC
34,911 posts, read 31,030,575 times
Reputation: 47280
Everything feels much more like a rat race. I live and work in a small metro, but there is tons of job-related stress that just didn't seem to be around here a couple decades ago.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 11:09 AM
 
Location: Redwood City, CA
15,243 posts, read 12,870,379 times
Reputation: 54018
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jowel View Post
I'm noticing that the vast majority of comments are reminiscing on how US culture was better in times past. I'm not saying that is untrue, but I have to wonder if maybe the past is being romanticized to seem better that it actually may have been?
Could be. We didn't know anything when we were kids. Historical perspective is only gained with age.

I remember when I was nine or so I thought nothing about being on my own after school. Anywhere I could walk to, I could go, and no one was keeping track of me. Pretty cool, actually.

Anyway, there was a firecracker-type product that came out with a string at each end. You pulled on the strings and made a small bang. A friend and I saw the possibilities. There was a mean lady who lived a couple of doors down and across the street, so we tied one to her mailbox so it would startle her when she opened it.

Well, she called the police. A cop came out and gave us a fake stern talking-to (I could see he was grinning behind his hand at my mother) and we were suitably subdued and chastened.

No one told us that a woman named Rosenberg might feel harassed, even if it's just by little kids. We knew nothing about the war or 6 million dead. With the distance of time, of course, I have compassion for this no doubt long-dead matron.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 12:42 PM
 
10,609 posts, read 5,585,337 times
Reputation: 18889
As a corollary, do you think culture changed more from, say 1960 to 1980? Or 1980 to 2000? Or 2000-today?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 01:01 PM
 
Location: moved
13,590 posts, read 9,627,176 times
Reputation: 23363
Quote:
Originally Posted by RationalExpectations View Post
As a corollary, do you think culture changed more from, say 1960 to 1980? Or 1980 to 2000? Or 2000-today?
1970 to 1990.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 06-20-2019, 02:27 PM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,308 posts, read 10,563,956 times
Reputation: 12617
Quote:
Originally Posted by RationalExpectations View Post
As a corollary, do you think culture changed more from, say 1960 to 1980? Or 1980 to 2000? Or 2000-today?

I think the pace of change keeps accelerating and will continue to accelerate into the future. Look at cellphone and internet technology and how they have changed our culture in the past 20 years. They had much more an impact than anything in earlier time spans. For example, how much did television, telephone, or computer technology change in the 1960 to 1980 time frame?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Retirement

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top