In 1957, people had to get up and manually change the channel on their TV.
Debate over.
Cod liver oil daily spoonful in the months with the letter r in them.
The strap
Only 6 teams in the NHL and all you could watch was Toronto playing whoever.
No soccer leagues
Kids had to do dishes and chores everyday.
Kids had to play in dangerous playgrounds
Kids still do. At least mine do.
I’m not sure where that falls on the “better or worse” scale. Some of that old playground equipment was great! Even as an adult I used to enjoy some of it with my kids, but stuff like swings and most of the slides are gone…
Your OP is a little confusing. Was the primary point of the email about school in 1957? Or about 1957 in general, and the school aspect was just one example? If it was the latter, this thread is on point, though I find it hard to believe that anyone would really think that 1957 is superior to 2007 in general. A look at medicine and civil rights alone makes that near impossible. If it is the former, all you’ve done is attack a straw man, indicating that the education system we have today really isn’t doing a good job. In one case, any way.
I can’t speak from firsthand knowledge because I wasn’t alive before Watergate, but polls and anecdotes pretty much universally show that people were happier with the government back then, and that can’t be a bad thing. Personally I’m sick of everyone I know (including myself) being perpetually pissed off at our government. It’s draining. That wasn’t a big part of life in the '50s.
1957: No environmental regulation. No Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, emissions standards, or unleaded gasoline. “That’s the smell of money!”
1957: Polio scares and iron lungs.
1957: Cars that were expected to hit the junkyard long before they hit the 100,000 mile mark. Cars were notoriously unreliable, and lemon laws were nonexistent.
1957: Restrictive covenants that would restrict who you could sell your house to. Not just “those of the Malay and Ethiopic races”, but also Jews, Hispanics, Native Americans, Italian-Americans, Catholics, mulattos, quadroons, octoroons, quintroons, hexadecaroons …
1957: Very, very, very expensive long-distance telephone calls. Even calls just outside a local calling area would be very expensive.
1957 was 15 years before Title IXwas enacted.
The Salk Vaccine was in wide use by 1955, and by 1957, new cases hadfallen to 5,600 from a high in 1952 of 58,000. The scare was largely over by 1957.
I wasn’t around, but from reading books, commentaries, and back issues I can assure you that people were plenty pissed off at the government in 1957, hjust as in 1947 and 1937. The difference was that people trusted the government more back then. We’ve learned better. It wasn’t just Watergate, although some people take that as the starting point.
Watch The Farmer’s Daughter or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for two of the many, many movies addressing the corruption of government. People may not have been quite as cynical about the Presidency itself (although I don’t really have any reason to believe that either), and they certainly weren’t quite as cynical about the degree to which the President misused organizations like the FBI, the CIA or Justice as political tools, but they were plenty cynical about government prior to Watergate.
And in certain admins <cough-this one-cough> that has gotten much worse as the abuses have become much worse.
Cisco
In the UK, rivers and lakes that were biologically dead 50 years ago now have trout and in some cases salmon in then. The result is the increase in populations of otters, herons and other upper food chain predators, even Kingfisher numbers are on the way up.
Industrial pollutions is a fraction of what it was back in 1957 in the rivvers through citie such as London, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle - there is still a long way to go, but now the regulatory bodies are there to enforce laws that simply did not exist 50 years ago.
Pollution was at its height in the 1950’s & early 60’s. If the hippie movement did nothing good but make the world aware of pollution, it was worth it.
In 1957 big families were considered normal, but pregnancy, child birth and breast feeding were considered shameful and were not discussed by nice people.
Nobody knew anyone who was “queer.” There were no “queers” except maybe in Hollywood. Occasionally a couple of people of the same sex might live together, but that was strictly economical and everyone assumed platonic.
And the theater. Don’t forget the theater.
In 1957, infant car seats (hell, seat belts) were nonexistent. I distinctly remember the “bed” my mother made for us to nap in in our old Chevy station wagon (and I was born in 1962). It was the well between the back seat and the far back seat–she lined it with pillows and blankets and we rotated taking naps in it on long trips. None of the 7 of us (5 kids ages 5 and under or my parents) were strapped in.
Playgrounds were FUN back then.
Mom’s still don’t need to work - if the family is willing to live a 1957 lifestyle.
The 1950s certainly weren’t bad, but most people had kids who shared rooms - sometimes four kids to a room. They had one car. They had ham or chicken on Sundays for Sunday dinner - sometimes Roast Beef. They PROBABLY has a telephone - but they may have still had a community line on it. They may have had a TV. They may have had a dryer, but if the weather was good, Mom hung the laundry out to dry. They most likely - even in the city - had a garden for small vegetables - and if they were still a farming family, probably got most of what they needed to live out of the garden or the farm. Convience foods were staring to become more and more used, but most people still knew how to can and could do it to stretch a buck - or bake bread to stretch a buck. Who ever flew anywhere on vacation? - you might drive a few hours to the beach or the lake or the mountains. You wore your cousins hand me downs - then passed them onto your little brother - until the patches on the knees needed patches.
None of this is bad - its actually a nice way to grow up (I grew up in the 1970s, but in some ways had a very 1950s childhood - for most of it my mother stayed home, baked bread, grew a garden, sometimes had one car, I did wear my cousin’s handmedowns). However, in an era where 10 year olds think they need cell phones and you need an XBox and Cable TV - it isn’t what many people choose.
Likewise, there are still lots of Main Streets - if you choose to live in a town with one.
In 1957 children were warned “don’t talk to strangers. They might kidnap you.” Children were not told “Watch out for people you know” and exactly WHY you should watch out and WHAT might happen to you.
I remember when it was a big deal to have a dished steering wheel so the center post wouldn’t cave in your chest in case of an accident. Needless to say, this was a concern because there were no seat belts to keep you in place. This was earlier than 1957 I think, but not by much.
I remember watching my dad installing seat belts when I was a kid, and on the next car, how pleased he was that the mfr had welded seat belt anchors on the floor pan so he didn’t have to drill holes and crawl under the car to bolt the things in place.
And re wives sliding across the seat when hubby arrives: I was gonna say that it was possible for them to do so what with bench seats and no seat belts in the way. Today it’s much easier to climb out and trot around the car.
In Japan, 1956 was when Minamata disease was first discovered, the result of massive amounts of mercury being dumped directly into river and harbor of Minamata city. Had the surrounding ecosystems been completely wiped out, the local residents probably would have fared better, since they wouldn’t have then been eating contaminated fish and shellfish for years.
This was also around the time when the groundwater in Acton and Woburn Massachusetts, near where I grew up, was being contaminated by H.R. Grace.
And put me down as another who’d be dead from cancer 50 years ago but has nothing more than a scar on his leg now.
An in New York we got 7,
2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 5, 7 (ABC) 9, 11 and 13. 13 was a commercial station back then.
Rachael Carson was a hippie?
1957 had home perms…
'nuff said.