Do you remember?

 Do you remember learning how to survive a nuclear attack?  We grew up in different times as these some of these skills taught in school show

In grade 1 we learned to count pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars, dollars

We were encouraged to “eat nicely,” which is a clever way of getting kids to think about dinner etiquette.

I live in a home that backs onto a school and it is not unusual to see parents dropping and picking up their kids from school every day. Back in our day things were very different, you were expected to walk to school and home on your own.

Fathers were away working or looking for work, so we were expected to know our dad's name, not mom's name just dad's. That speaks to the values of the day. This point may reflect a general trend in the ’50s of fathers often being away from home for work. It was seen as traditional for men to work, while women stayed at home to rear the children. Maybe this comparatively small amount of time spent with their dads made it important for kids to make a point of learning their names.

We were expected to know our right hand, not the right and left hand just the right hand. On the surface, this seems quite reasonable, as it’s important for children to learn their right from left. But the fact that the right-hand side was specifically emphasized instead of the other way around may be quite telling.

Because of a long-standing bias, being a leftie has historically been quite problematic for people. Left-handed kids were even sometimes forced to learn how to write with their right hands. Things started to change during the 20th century, but there would’ve still been a hang-up about southpaws during the ’50s.

All through school one of the rituals I remember is showing my hands to the teacher so they could see if my fingernails were clean. Showing children how to stay clean and hygienic is definitely important, but an emphasis on spotless fingernails, in particular, might seem a little strange.

During the height of the Cold War, there was a great deal of anxiety about the possibility of a nuclear attack. So, at the beginning of the 1950s, even schools were preparing their students for such a scenario. Basically, the kids were taught to “duck and cover,” to shelter underneath their desks and brace themselves.

An animated film called Duck and Cover was created to help teach kids about the maneuver. The protagonist was Bert the Turtle, who would take cover from an atomic blast in his shell. The film was a rather easygoing way of getting kids to deal with the grim prospect of nuclear war.

Back in the 1950s, our society held very rigid ideas when it came to questions of gender and gender roles. It was, for instance, widely accepted that men would go to work, while women stayed at home and tended to the household. These old-fashioned attitudes were actively imposed upon the children of the era, too. This attitude was wrong then and has changed over the years, which is great.

During the ’50s, young girls were taught to master skills that tended to revolve around maintaining a household. They were clothed in skirts and dresses, while their behaviour was encouraged to be more placid than that of boys. It was a strict time in terms of what was expected of young ladies.

While young girls of the 1950s were supposed to be gentle and well-behaved, expectations were quite different for boys. Male kids were widely brought up across America to be dominant and confident individuals. In some respects, it might even be said that a certain degree of mischief was permitted in boys.

Boys were often expected to do well at school and to play sports. Their ego was built up and they were given more space than girls to explore the world around them. Essentially, it was an attitude that sought to prepare boys for the world of work that awaited them down the line