Life’s Decades - The Second 10 Years

Today I am focusing on the second decade of life. I think of it as the growing up decade. For me it spans the end of elementary school to the first years of college mostly in the 1960s; it also includes getting married near the end of the decade.

In the US the whole K-12 structure is still in place. The public schools I attended did not have air conditioning until my senior year. I assume that all schools in the hotter part of the country are air conditioned at this point. There are also more options in the classroom. The tools and resources available to teachers are dizzying to an outsider.

But even when I was in school there were experiments. I participated in an Up with People high school that traveled across the US during my junior year of high school. There were written evaluations rather than grades…and a musical show to perform several times a week. It was my first time away from home and probably the most perspective broadening year of life.

My senior year I was back home and in another experimental school - this time a public high school that was just opening that offered clusters of focused instruction. I spent three hours focused on biology and three hours learning to program (Fortran and Cobol) in the afternoon. I took an English course in-between the two.

There was also some self-paced learning although it was mostly in reading/comprehension and all paper based. Now computers make it easier to provide enriched and self-paced lessons on a wide variety of topics.

Is there a shifting of emphasis that has occurred over the years? The technology may push students toward faster pacing and shorter duration tasks. But maybe that is what is needed for their future work environments. I hope critical thinking is still underlying the other content.

I don’t remember a lot of teen age angst.

Part of it was my mother going back to college when I was in my teens and sharing her experiences with the family. That sharing resonated with me. It became a natural introduction to college life years before I went myself. A similar thing happened with my own daughter and myself when she was in her teens but focused on women in technical fields (like I was).

Being away from home during my junior year was another factor. Whatever chafing might have developed during that year had I been at home, didn’t have a chance. By the time I came back, I was mature enough to get along with both my parents.

But then came an unexpected pivot point. As soon as I started thinking about college in my middle teens I assumed I would wait to get married until after I finished. But I met the right person for me about mid-way through my senior year and we married a year later.

I used my computer skills to start a career to support us. He worked one semester and then became a full time student. I worked full time and went to school part time…but that story is better told in the next installment about the third decade.

Life’s Decades - The First 10 Years

Now that my life has spanned more than 6 decades - I’m thinking more about my own history (what was typical…what wasn’t) and how growing up has changes over the years. Today I am focused on the first decade of life which, for me, was mostly in the 1950s.

My earliest memory is of a shadow made by a Venetian blind on the wall of my bedroom. I don’t remember being frightened (although I’ve read that something frightening is usual for a first memory)…only the image. My mother thinks it was the first night in a new house when I was about 2 although she didn’t realize I was frightened. With the advent of baby monitors - do parents detect the frightening first memories of their children more often?

We did not have air conditioning at home until I was 4 or 5…and the schools were not air conditioned at all. It was very hot during the Texas summers! Strangely enough - I don’t remember melted crayons. When my daughter was growing up we had a couple of instances of melted crayons. Is air conditioning so pervasive that the crayons have a lower melting point now than they did 50 years ago?

There were lots of children in the neighborhood before I started school. There were swing sets and shady porches…popsicle trucks on hot afternoons (although Mom had made our own in the freezer most of the time) ....getting wet with sprinklers or in small pools. In the neighborhood where I live now, the density of children has always been less during the 20 years I’ve lived here and many are in day care during the day before they start school.

Kindergarten was in a local church basement - across from the public elementary school. Both were within walking distance. Dresses were the mainstay of my school wardrobe. I had enough clothes to last between laundry days…not extra. Jeans were not the norm although I don’t know whether it was a rule or just tradition. I don’t think I had a pair of jeans at all during my first decade. Now the clothes for elementary school children usually includes jeans…and lots of other fashions that was ‘too causal’ for school in the 1960s!

Probably everyone remembers some trauma they remember vividly from their first decade even though it might not have been all that import to their parents. For me it was falling down on the boundary between vinyl flooring and carpeting when I was in 1st or 2nd grade. The carpet nails did a multi-streaked scrape across my shin. It was not deep or gaping. It did not get infected. But - I picked off the scabs several times and still have the scars.

In fact - maybe a lot of ‘scars’ we carry along with us for the rest of our lives have an origin in the first decade of life. I must have been frightened by a dog very early - I don’t remember it - but I do remember having to learn to remain calm around them and I still don’t want a dog as a pet.