Schools in the cold war?

Question

What were the scools in the U.S. like in the cold war?

Answer 1

Well, when I went to school in the 60s, pretty much like they are now except for three things:
1) the education was better--and they still taught things like civics so young people learned how to be good citizens and not just corporate drones. I guess after the civil rights, womens, and anti-war movements they decided they didn't want good ccitizens anymore
2) a lot less electronics. Which frankly, don't make a lot of difference (I teach, so I know what's going on). Don't get me wrong--the gadgets are a plus--just not as much as they're hyped.
3) Sadly, our government has chosen to turn our schools into virtual prisons. Children are scanned, videotaped, and otherwise treated as criminals. While increasingly, teachers are allowed to exercise unlimited authority and those who abuse that power go unpunished. We are bringing up a generation that is indoctrinated to accept Big Brother's watchful eye 24/7, to submit to arbitrary authority without question, and largely unable to think for themselves. Stalin and Lenin would be envious of our public school systems in today's United States.

BTW--Yeah, we did the "duck and cover" routine. As I remember it, it was fun--a break from the schoolwork. :)

Answer 2

No different than today. In the first decade of the Cold War there were civil defense drills ("duck and cover"), but once I started in the 60s that had gone away.

Be more specific regarding what you're trying to figure out.

Answer 3

Depends on the years. Later years were not much different from the late 90s. No strange drills or anything at the schools I went to. But the Berlin Wall coming down was a huge deal, even if the fear factor was not as much a part of the experience for me.

Answer 4

Fresh out of college, I was a sub where I had gone to school. The biggest difference then was that the Yellow 3 triangle shelter sign was gone.
We had current events, but no bomb drills, did have fire drills though. We fought, got detention, stopped ourselves from bullying, played, dated, went fishing after school, went hunting, wrote "long hand", had math and spelling bees, rode bikes, walked 25 minutes to school.

Answer 5

you'll probably laugh yourself sick at the pointlessness and wishfull thinking of it all...but in grade school in the late 50's and 60's we had air raid drills in school..we were taught to duck under our desks and huddle in a fetal position in case the Russian bombers were dropping A-bombs on our city...

after a while we all realized that if A-Bombs were dropping we were all dead so we sorta cut that stuff out...and moved to San Fransisco and smoked a lot of pot......

Answer 6

nothing different really other than they had us practice hiding under our desks incase of a nuclear strike. That is all I really remember. They of course painted the Soviets out to be the enemy but not much different than it is today.

Answer 7

Just an FYI.... the drills would be effective if they were sufficiently outside the initial blast zone.

Answer 8

A whole lot safer than they are now.

Answer 9

what