The Presence of Youth Cultures and Counter Cultures

In the 1950's cars became very important, they were needed to go school, to shop, and to go to further cities, making families moving to suburbs become popular. Television and radios helped music become very known, and with lasting influences today, its strange not to consider where it all started. Something often overlooked in every historical generation, but with a big impact, are the teenagers. Youth culture refers to all of the norms, values, and practices recognized and shared by members of the adolescent society. And in the 1960's with almost 70 million baby-boomers becoming teenagers and moving onto high school and college, the separate culture and music created for teenagers created an emphasis on a social conformity. Although the reasons for the dramatic change of youth culture are countless, Id like to focus on three important things that effect every generation of teens. The education they receive, the music that influences them, and the self expression of the youth.

Many high schools began offering college-prep courses, to train some children to become doctors, officers, and mechanics (Goodwin). But during the 1960's, students took a stand against segregation, restricted free speech, and the war in Vietnam. The students thought they were creating a new America with the most dramatic challenges to American policies and conventions. Issues in secondary schools, discovered in the fifties, were being addressed in books such as James B. Conant's The American High School Today. And according to him, returning to basic thinking skills was seen to be the solution. In grade schools across the nation, phonics made a come back as teachers and reading specialists try to fix what went wrong in American education in the fifties. On...

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...and live extensively with people their own age. Although they were becoming more and more separate, teenagers in the 60's joined adults as consumers and when technological advancements helped split rock and roll from adult pop music, record producers associated youthful rebellion to rock music. Countercultures became norm with added influences by Eastern Religion, social radicalism, and evangelistic beliefs in drugs. The excursion of Woodstock in 1969 became a lifestyle for some people. What all of this adds up to is the society we have today, good or bad, we grow and change because of how we are brought up and whats going on around us while we're learning to live in this crazy world. For me this era proves that its not always the adults that know best and the sometimes taking a stand for what you believe in is the only thing you can do, whether its popular or not.