1950s - What The Baby Boomers Experienced

the baby boom babies all over the map babies babies babies [Music] the post-world war ii rise of the middle class had produced a huge number of babies the largest generation in world history all of these young people had been causing a huge overcrowding before sputnik and schools had been straining to the breaking [Music] its points the result classroom shortage there weren't enough classrooms and desks [Music] to give every student some kind of education many schools had resorted to teaching kids in shifts students sat at their desk for just two hours and then went home and other students replaced them at those same desks up to four times a day [Music] classes met wherever there was room even in barber shops the baby boomers were stressing the entire system but this was hardest on the teachers overworked and underpaid just when we needed more of them many teachers were quitting [Music] [Applause] teachers tried to keep control of classrooms of 30 to 60 students and were forced to spend more and more of their time just being disciplinarians keeping discipline has become one of the biggest chores and those that persevered resorted to teaching their huge classes of students by rote and so to control the crowd to hold their attention miss roberts was forced to return to whole group instruction teaching the mass instead of the individual teaching by rote one two three four put your feet on the floor one two teaching no longer stimulating to the pupils or the teacher the slow learners aren't getting the attention they need and the bright ones are bored and it gets worse every day but for the time being we've got to live with it doing the best job we can even if it's a bad all we can job for the present is try the best we know how [Music] to leave no stone unturned in our self-examination leaders traveled to russia to look at their educational system to see what they were doing that was different what we found shocked us [Music] 30 years ago we had six times as many scientists and engineers as the soviet union now their colleges are turning out twice as many technical people this year as ours are in the soviet time the science was a priority in the society it was not a movie star it was not the rich man it was no rich man there it was you have to be scientist we learned that russian kids went to school six days a week that their school year was 213 days long compared to 180 days in america that every russian kid boy and girl was required to take math and engineering russian students had up to four hours of homework a night where the average in america was just 30 minutes the top-notch minds are attracted to the physical sciences and mathematics their skills are so highly valued that no expense is spared in providing them with excellent technical facilities take something like the russian satellite to put the finger on what's wrong with our education we need scientists we need technicians we need mathematicians there's no doubt about that the community's awake now i think they're gonna try to do something they're all excited about science and math i mean it's been taken for granted for so long now suddenly it's back in the spotlight again education was in the spotlight and the lessons we took away from the soviet system were plain and simple we got to do something and we need an educated population science to be able to do this and it was like somebody slammed on the accelerator and all of a sudden everything was open for discussion and examination we've come face to face with the realization that schools and survival are inseparable the time has come for a change we have to reorganize our school within just months of the failure of vanguard america began to do something remarkable something that few other nations would have been capable of we began to come together to become unified in our determination to fix what was broken we don't have an adequate education program in any of our schools are you satisfied are you really satisfied that your school and your community is doing all that it can do for these youth thousands of children are getting a shoddy education the time has come for america to realize that our citadel now is the intelligence imagination and curiosity of the trained mind the american people must improve their public schools to make the nation strong to meet whatever threat may come each citizen should do what he can to strengthen american education to make the position and prestige of the teacher understood in the community this i think they can do and they must do we were on a national mission a mission that is today referred to as the sputnik moment the search for an education which will develop the full potentiality of every boy and girl we had to find the resources to pay teachers and we needed to enlist more of them the number of students per class had to be reduced more buildings had to be built and the techniques teachers used to teach kids had to change radically and change they did yes jack the vacation will soon be over and you'll be going back to school when students returned to their schools in the fall of 1958 what they found was very different from what had been there before the pressure was on americans were redesigning their entire educational system and asking students to take their studies much more seriously for the defense of the country we used to laugh and say well you know the russians might have launched sputnik but the united states is launching us because of all these new programs that were in in the school and we all just jumped into it it was just like an avalanche because the response of the united states was to institute this huge science and technology enrichment program in every classroom and in every course of study a focus on science engineering and math was being encouraged science is fun it helps you to learn to know and to appreciate in the study of sciences found the most useful and satisfying knowledge of man people were encouraged to take physics and geometry and chemistry and there was an immense importance placed on this almost a stigma if you were going into those things an atmosphere which removes the egghead stigma scholastic achievement is now recognized and respected by both students and adults how do i get high grades i work for them i'm not going to school just to put in time i want to be somebody and it was all heavy duty college prep mathematically based we're going to train scientists and the curriculum went that way the courses became very difficult it was a revolution it's going to be tough [Music] we were just loaded down with all kinds of books and new classes and homework for many years i've just been able to drift through school i never did homework until my junior year in high school and then all of a sudden i was hit with this and it it sort of rocked me it used to be i could get through chemistry and physics you know you could slide through the coach will let me through but it wasn't that way anymore all of a sudden it was it was like they were looking for something what did you get in chemistry i had a 79 holy michael you gotta get those grades up do you expect to go to college what are you gonna major in i hope to measure in science science and with the grades that you've been getting in science listen that is football interfering with your studying i hope not folks you must have those grades up definitely it's either studies and football or just studies alone [Music] sports mattered less science mattered more study science study science because you and betty and the nazis and bills and joe's and james all over the country will find in the study of science a richer more the national science foundation came out with a whole science math program there were enrichment classes for mathematics and physics and chemistry and i was just caught up with all that science had been defined with a small s in biology this meant dissecting frogs in mathematics learning a series of equations the same with physics now science was broadening in every area of study a focus on science was becoming a critical part of what students had to learn so that you can heal the sick so that you can build the bridges and buildings and highways of tomorrow so that you can teach inspire and encourage those who come after you all these and more require a basic knowledge of science a course that boys took shop had changed here's how it was it's fun to do things that come out right here's what it became here the task is to build a transformer and test its application to electromagnetic [Music] a course that girls took home economics had changed here's how it was at home it would be a minor tragedy here's what it became in home economics the girls plan nutritious and economical menus arranging different food budgets they check price lists in newspaper advertisements educators were changing the basic ways that students learned we're attempting to find out how to use teachers best most effectively in the classrooms students who previously learned by repetition and memorization were being pushed to think for themselves a good teacher challenging students to think for themselves individualized studies now demanded work at home that took more time and concentration [Music] parents were telling their children that it was each student's responsibility to grow into a useful adult to become an engineer a scientist a mathematician or doctor and finally women were being encouraged to become scientists judy messer future lab technician mary louis she likes science and who knows celia mortimer fascinated by nuclear physics and hopes to make it a career now it seemed to be important to be a scientist or engineer and get in on all this work that was going on today students carry their interest in science lessons beyond the four walls of the classroom they see the need to understand the complex scientific ideas of the world around them teachers focus boys and girls on scientific ways to examine life inside and also outside the classroom students take part in science programs science clubs they go on field trips see films about science a wide world of science waiting for investigation [Music] individual american kids by the thousands began to create science projects on their own [Music] don delaney he wants to be an electronics engineer right now he's building his own rocket more and more teenagers are passing up rock and roll for a rocket roll at camp ap hill virginia the army plays host to some guest rocket experts amateurs teenagers all more than 100 high school boys showed up on the firing range with rockets designed and built by themselves rocket boys as they were called to beat the russians were going to try and build and launch homemade rockets i started mixing my own homemade rocket fuel my mother was very supportive of my experiments she gave me a piece of her vacuum cleaner extension and i had some fins that i cut out of sheet metal welded to these things i made nozzles out of plaster of paris and would take them out into the desert and launch these things [Music] they really weren't rockets they were pipe bombs with fins it's amazing i didn't kill myself they were very very dangerous but i was just completely fascinated and was doing my best to get rockets as high as i possibly could i had two stage rockets my goal was to get a rocket into the stratosphere if i could this is one of my early early rocket experiments notice the plaster of paris bulkhead welded steel fins plaster paris nozzle i gathered in some friends that had been my friends all my whole life and we decided we're going to form a club called the big creek missile agency and we're going to build rockets we had absolutely no clue on how to do this we started to really research rockets we read everything we possibly could our teacher miss riley got involved and she got us a book called principles of guided missile design which required a working knowledge of calculus and differential equations and i was having trouble with algebra at the time we blew up a lot of things we dodged a lot of shrapnel [Music] ultimately we ended up building professional style rockets that were flying literally miles into the sky we just felt someday what we were doing was going to help the united states to be number one in space we wanted our country to catch up with the russians and then we wanted to just keep on going forever the sputnik moment was provoking amazing changes and one of the most important changes took place when congress pushed by americans of all stripes provided a massive increase in funding science math and engineering education would receive an infusion of more than a billion dollars with huge amounts of financial aid provided for scholarships so that students could attend colleges and graduate schools the government put tremendous amount of money into revamping the physics and chemistry and the new text came out the new courses came out lab manuals all paid for by the government and a whole series of national scholarships were announced and money was flowing into universities for the purpose of getting kids into that arena and i was one of the fortunate ones the new law was called the national defense education act the name made clear the connection that everyone felt education was critical to our national defense we can no longer depend on air power whether it be bombers or guided missiles we must depend on brain power we must depend on the ability of our educational institutions to cultivate that brain power so that it may be used as well as it possibly can be through the years we've taken education for granted have even grown neglectful all around us things have been changing and now suddenly schools have a lot to do with national security and our survival now there's trouble and we realize that the trouble is with brains and training and technology if this nation should unfortunately be called upon to defend itself the real front line soldier would be the scientist with the test tube and the geiger counter [Music] the national defense education act created thousands of high school science laboratories with tools that went way beyond the traditional microscope by the use of a videotape recorder and a kinescope we are able to provide many film clips many kinds of materials that are just not available to the classroom teacher new funding brought television to the classroom and television brought the world to students and connected students to the world involvement interest judge for yourself these boys are at cape canaveral helping with the countdown of another rocket the excitement heightens but a clever science teacher has turned this program into a lesson in propulsion gravity and atmospherics [Music] language labs utilizing electronic apparatus and modern theories of learning are especially important gone were the studies of latin and greek in addition to french and german new language laboratories now taught russian and chinese who had never taught russian before were encouraged to institute russian courses and in that first year after 1957 uh there were more people applying to learn russian in this country than i'd ever seen before the sputnik moment had provoked an amazing time in america thanks to the national defense education act scholarships millions of men and women went to college to study scientific and technical courses they went on to attack problems and uncover opportunities in every area of life and they initiated american-led revolutions in electronics computer science psychology environmental and earth sciences and they created and built the internet the idea of building this network and being able to share resources and to interact with each other remotely and get programs to talk to each other was enormously fascinating it was very exciting newspapers magazines mail and messages will be sent through the air at lightning speed and reproduced in the home the space race that began with sputnik ended in july 1969 when neil armstrong and buzz aldrin landed on the moon america had caught up and won that race was now over but what about today and more importantly tomorrow is there another sputnik waiting for us ahead perhaps just around the corner or perhaps is it already here today in many ways america again leads the world but as the old saying goes those who do not remember history are bound to repeat its mistakes it pays for us to reconsider the sputnik moment and how every american felt a need to take personal responsibility [Music] and to act [Music] [Music] you

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 264,381

Keywords: Baby-boom, American education, 1950s, 1957, 1958, science, science history, American schools, Russian schools, Soviet Union, Sputnik, communists, David Hoffman, middle class, suburbia, sputnik moment, mathematics, education history

Id: jlZRHBGlBJY

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 16 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ColinHenrichon]

How did we go from a patriotic unified movement to better educate our nation’s children, and focusing on science, to this movement of anti-vax flat Earth BS?