"...education should be about the world of now."
What a 1969 LIFE Magazine poll shows us about today's high schools
You don’t have to be in school yourself right now to know that the world of education is changing rapidly. The pandemic has upended the traditional classroom structure and necessitated a major shift in how and where (and why?) kids learn.
The relationship that students, teachers, and parents have with one another and with educational institutions is definitely strained right now. But that feeling isn’t unique to this day and age — turbulent eras throughout history have led to major educational innovation and change. It turns out that “living through history” tends to cause us to look forward, to visualize a better world, including the one created in the classroom.
One such turbulence age was the Vietnam War era (a time period we’ve explored before). The country as a whole was divided on the war, and beginning to lose trust in long-held beliefs and societal institutions (see: Watergate). This national outrage — at the war, the constricting social role of women, and the subjugation of Black Americans, to name a few — ignited everything it touched, including the radical hearts and minds of teenagers. Their desire for self-determination, their deep concern for their futures, and a powerful cocktail of hormones drove high school students of the 1960s to rebel against “the Man,” or at least fight for a seat at his table.
I was so jazzed when I found a 1969 issue of LIFE Magazine at a garage sale. I fully expected it to reveal a completely unrecognizable version of the high school experience, one filled with suffocating rules and overt misogyny and racism. (Okay, it was pretty racist, I’m not gonna lie.) But reading these surveys of students, parents, and teachers felt less like looking into a portal to the past, and more like looking at a mirror image of today’s crazy world.
If there’s one thing I learned from Louis Harris’ write-up on the state of high school in 1969, it’s that the adolescent archetype is immutable. The issue’s cover article begins with a description of the students at Cleveland’s Woodward High School that sounds awfully familiar:
They are willing to be taught, but not told. They are willing to abide by rules, but they will not abide by rules which put them down. They are aware of the need for authority, but not impressed by it for its own sake.
Considering “teenager” had only recently been added to everyday vernacular, the authority-bucking adolescents of 1969 were some of the first to differentiate teenagers as a unique and important social group. More than just kids who wanted to be treated “like adults,” they had something to say about the issues of the day, and demanded an audience. The article outlines Woodward principal Harry Hannum’s efforts to make space for students’ reformist energy: lunching with student council officers and cosigning on student council proposals like structured in-school discussions on “racial affairs.”
Gen Z has been called the most socially and environmentally conscious generation yet. 1 in 6 Zoomers identify as LGBTQ+, and 51% have a positive view of socialism. Some feel hopeless about the state of our economy, climate, and politics — being “woke” has its downsides, as LIFE is quick to recognize:
A whole generation has been taught to think and question, and that is precisely what they are doing. They have been taught the ideals of democracy, have taken that teaching seriously, and have found the practice of it full of sham and deception.
Still, movements like Black Lives Matter have shown us that many young people are still motivated to make a change. Gone is the wide-eyed optimism of the Free Love movement; but the unruliness, rebellion, and passion of the teenage heart will last forever, it seems.
But radical kids make for exasperated and flummoxed parents, the poll found. Interestingly, teachers were seen as a saving grace: they were described as “the catalyst for bridging the generation gap” between activist students and their more traditional parents.
Similarly, today’s teachers have been forced to bridge the ever-widening gap between themselves and their students during quarantine, and have gained newfound respect from parents — a 2020 survey found that 80% of parents have more respect for teachers than they did before the pandemic. To parents who acknowledge the risks and trust involved in today’s learning environments, teachers still draw “respect and affection” like they did in 1969.
In some cases, however, school policies make activists out of parents who disagree with mask and vaccine mandates, “gender ideology,” or whatever they think CRT is. In such instances, parents and teachers become diametrically opposed enemies, battling out during school board meetings for the future entertainment of strangers on YouTube. (These videos are a recent guilty pleasure of mine... here’s a favorite.)
Reading through the issue, I was struck by both how far we’ve come — in information, technology, and gender and racial diversity — and also how much farther we have to go. For all the amazing strides we’ve made in education and beyond, we’re not as far removed from the darker aspects of 1969 as we might hope. While our schools are now integrated and relatively “diverse,” they can’t be described as fully equitable — race and class still limit opportunities, and disciplinary action “is often criticized by both whites and blacks as being racially influenced and unjust,” just like in Woodward High.
And teenagers still aren’t taken as seriously or given as much trust or freedom as they might want. In 1969, Principal Hannum was debating whether or not to allow female students to wear slacks to school; when I was a high school junior in 2015, my peers stood before the school board and advocated for their right to wear leggings to class. LIFE published this quote from a math teacher that echoes a frustration many high school students still deal with today:
Isn’t it a bit archaic to require a high school senior to ask to use the bathroom when six months later he will be fighting in Vietnam?
Still, I’m proud of today’s teenagers, who stand up for what they believe in and continue to learn, despite the challenges COVID poses. My own alma mater, Loy Norrix High School, is amplifying student voices through their school newspaper, Knight Life. Recent articles speak on real and pressing issues: one examines the lack of POC diversity in AP classes, and another describes what it’s like to be a trans high school athlete. Students are even organizing protests against lax COVID policies and police presence on campus (the latter a long-standing problem I remember from my time there).
I feel hopeful, not just because the kids in Kalamazoo are embodying the spirit of the ‘60s, but because I know that kids all over the world are. And that’s… dare I say… pretty groovy, dude.
