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.