Teen Culture Then and Now
Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Jan. 21, 2023
Walking
into the classroom for my first day of teaching was an experience that will
live in infamy. In the first period class of ninth graders I made the error of
thinking that I already knew how to teach. Had I not planned for this day since
I was 15? Had I not watched closely all of my high school and college teachers
in order to learn how to teach?
Yes and yes. However,
my confidence was erroneously based on my love for my subject, the English
language. Grammar is all about the structure of a language. American literature
and British literature are about the ideas and ideals that are foundational to modern
western history. Who could not be excited about that? Well, at least half or
more of my 120 ninth graders certainly were not.
My
error lay in my ignorance of the realities of adolescence, the rise of the
American teenager, and the resulting effect these realities had on student attitudes
and behavior. Little did I realize that during the four years I was in college
the times they were achanging.
It
was 1966. The Vietnam War was raging. The Civil Rights Movement was in full
swing. The Sexual Revolution was afoot. At Northwest Jr. High School in
Meridian, Mississippi I was trying in my first class to “identify with
students” (an insipid phrase that was just entering the land of educationese).
I revealed that I had just turned 22 and planned to be married the following
summer. “Won’t you need a better job?” asked one lad. His question sent me into
a tailspin that was intensified when a lass inquired, “Why didn’t you become a
coach? Most men teachers don’t teach English.” I was already losing control. What if the
principal were to stop by?
By
year’s end I came to realize that teen culture had arrived and that Americans
were besotted with youth. Sociologists were calling it the Teen Mystique.
Americans were actually becoming fearful of their teenagers. (“They’re so smart
these days.”) I attributed the new teen machine to Elvis Presley, Little Richard,
the Beatles, and other rock ‘n roll innovators as well as to the increasingly
sex-drenched general culture for unwittingly creating youth culture. Unwittingly
because rock ‘n roll singers didn’t set out to change the culture. They simply
did their thing, but their thing changed the culture. The sensitive Elvis,
reportedly responding to criticism, once said to his mother, “Mama, do you
think I’m obscene?” It’s doubtful that
20 years later members of hard metal bands would ask their mothers that
question.
Since
1960 nothing has been more characteristic of teens than their addiction to
music. The cell phone, of course, is a
new addiction whether for music or constant communication with friends. Of
course money has played a role. Teenagers became a market. And what big name
psychologist would miss the chance to write books on the new field of study
called “adolescent psychology”?
Around
300 BC Plato taught that in order to take the intellectual and spiritual
temperature of a society, one must “mark the music.” If we mark the music today
we find that even schools, during lunch period and at ballgames, are giving
students what they already have. On the ashes of classical and folk music we
have laid the premature ecstasy of rollicking rock. Not so at little Forest
(MS) High School back in the early ‘60s. Elvis and Little Richard, whom I
loved, were hot but we didn’t need schools to supply us with their music. At
Friday assemblies and even at halftime at basketball games we were fed a
different stimulant: music that fed our aesthetic sense, not our glands.
Four
of my five classes that first year were ninth graders. The fifth class, an
incredibly inspiring group of 12-year-old seventh graders, saved me. One of
them, Lloyd Gray, former editor of the Tupelo Journal, visited with former MDJ
editor Joe Kirby and me about 10 years ago. The three of us drove to Eddie’s
Attic in Decatur, GA to hear Steve Forbert, another student in that 1966 class
of seventh graders, sing and play his guitar and harmonica. The 68-year-old Forbert,
who in his prime was compared to Bob Dylan, will also be performing on January
25th at The Hunt House across from Kennesaw Mountain on White Circle. As Steve
Forbert plays and sings, not classical music but folk rock, he will remind me
of his class of cute, well-behaved 12-year-old
angels who kept me from giving up.
If
cultural history is to the nation what memory is to the individual, we best pay
attention to it, especially if we have kids and grandkids.
Roger Hines
January 19, 2023
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