Then and now

[BF]

YOUR AVERAGE HIGH SCHOOL IN 1957 vs. 2011


Scenario 1:
Jack goes quail hunting before school and then pulls into the school parking lot with his shotgun in his truck's gun rack.

1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack's shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.

2011 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.


Scenario 2:
Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.

1957 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up buddies.

2011 - Police called and SWAT team arrives -- they arrest both Johnny and Mark.They are both charged with assault and both expelled even though Johnny started it.


Scenario 3:
Jeffrey will not sit still in class, he disrupts other students.

1957 - Jeffrey sent to the Principal's office and given a good paddling by the Principal. He then returns to class, sits still and does not disrupt class again.

2011 - Jeffrey is given huge doses of Ritalin. He becomes a zombie. He is then tested for ADD. The family gets extra money (SSI) from the government because Jeffrey has a disability.


Scenario 4:
Billy breaks a window in his neighbor's car and his Dad gives him a whipping.
 
1957 - Billy is more careful next time, grows up normal, goes to college and becomes a successful businessman..

2011 - Billy's dad is arrested for child abuse, Billy is removed to foster care and joins a gang. The state psychologist is told by Billy's sister that she remembers being abused herself and their dad goes to prison. Billy's mom has an affair with the psychologist.


Scenario 5:
Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 - Mark shares his aspirin with the Principal out on the smoking dock..

2011 - The police are called and Mark is expelled from school for drug violations. His car is then searched for drugs and weapons.


Scenario 6:
Pedro fails high school English.

1957 - Pedro goes to summer school, passes English and goes to college.

2011 - Pedro's cause is taken up by state. Newspaper articles appear nationally explaining that teaching English as a requirement for graduation is racist. ACLU files class action lawsuit against the state school system and Pedro's English teacher. English is then banned from core curriculum. Pedro is given his diploma anyway but ends up mowing lawns for a living because he cannot speak English.


Scenario 7:
Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.
 
1957 - Ants die.

2011 - ATF, Homeland Security and the FBI are all called. Johnny is charged with domestic terrorism. The FBI investigates his parents - and all siblings are removed from their home and all computers are confiscated. Johnny's dad is placed on a terror watch list and is never allowed to fly again.




Scenario 8:
Johnny falls while running during recess and scrapes his knee. He is found crying by his teacher, Mary hugs him to comfort him.

1957 - In a short time, Johnny feels better and goes on playing.

2011 - Mary is accused of being a sexual predator and loses her job. She faces 3 years in State Prison. Johnny undergoes 5 years of therapy.

[John Schmidt]

Johnny takes apart leftover firecrackers from the Fourth of July, puts them in a model airplane paint bottle and blows up a red ant bed.

====================================
No, but Johnny did take a leftover firecracker to band practice one day, lit it and threw it down the bell of the sousaphone. My dad, also the school superintendent at the time, had to buy a new sousaphone. I had to buy a new ass. 

The sousaphone is the big round tuba developed by John Philip Sousa(hence the name) for marching bands.

[Moonshot_1]

I've seen this get posted every once in a while and situation number 1 brings back some memories.

In High School, in Iowa, as a senior, we had, as part of our PE class in the first semester, skeet shooting.
We'd bring our shotguns (in cases of course) to school, with live ammo, stick them in our lockers. When PE class time came around we'd go to our lockers, get our guns, walk through the hallways, out to the bus that took us out in the country where our PE instructor would have us set up the trap and away we'd go. We were probably the most heavily armed school bus in the country.

Always disciplined and safety conscious though we did have one close call with a gun discharging prematurely. (Guy using my gun and not familiar with the safety touched one off. Round lit about 5 ft from guy loading the trap. No one was amused.)

Never thought about holding people hostage or shooting up the place. Never thought twice about walking through the hallways of the school with firearms.

Ah the good ol days

[DFragn]

1976 Parochial high school juniors Denny, Donny & Dougy {known as the 3-D's or terrible D's} pop 1/2 pint milk cartons on the cafeteria floor with their feet.
Principle/Football Coach drags them by their ears to the office, lines 'em up shoulder-to-shoulder & while they're grabbing their ankles he abruptly lifts them one-by-one off the floor with a 3' paddle sending heads into the ceiling tiles.  - Real Juniors don't show tears!

2011 Parents sue for damages. Principle/Football Coach is arrested as a pedophile because he had no supporting witnesses.

1977 Parochial high school senior men on retreat to the 'Abby'. Accused of smoking grass in the dorm.
Father Jeff demands they turn over all the cannabis in 20 minutes. All rooms empty to determine who has the worst bag!
Father Jeff comes back collects the junk & goes back to his room to indulge himself, while never notifying the parents.

2011 All seniors on floor tested, arrested & released to therapy. Father Jeff does 7 years...returns to the church to teach. Later to be arrested for pedophilia.

BTW I still have scars on my knuckles from a Nun whacking [in grade school] the back of my hands with a metal edged wooden ruler. I think it was for playfully tugging on a young lady's 3' pony tails.

No wonder I have no religion...Hey Gigi, you out there?  

[alph]

here in Eau Claire there is a middle school that has a room were the students use to have target practice for physical education, they shot .22 rifles, the students were allowed to bring their own rifles to school, if they didn't have one, there were some available.  they stopped having that class in 1975 and the room is now used as a storage. 

[solo1]

Unfortunately, most of that is true today.

I went to parochial school.  Discipline was top priority. A stern lecture but more often than not, a paddling with the parents backing the teacher.  Kids were there to learn with no disruptions and no back talk.  WE LEARNED!

Most high schools had a shooting range,  I spent many evenings shooting .22's.  I went squirrel hunting riding my bicycle and later my Matchless with my rifle slung over my shoulder, never got stopped or hassled.

Today, all that is gone except one Parochial high school in Ft. Wayne that still has a shooting range.

I won't mention the 'good ole days' as that ruffles feathers here. ..........................................

Oh Crap, I did!

[grandpaweaver]

I remember going rabbit hunting after school. 4 or 5 of us walking down the city street with shotguns to the open fields about a 1/2 mile from our house. No one ever questioned us except on our way back home to see what we shot . If I remember right we had to be 16 to get a hunting license but we might of been 13 or 14 at the time just lied at the sporting goods store, never questioned about that or buying shotgun ammo.

[MacDragon]

All that is so true.  I went to one of the largest High Schools in the US.  Norwich Free Academy in Norwich Connecticut.  (Near where Foxwoods & Mohegan Sun is now)   The school has 16 buildings... Science, Math, Social Studies etc.  Has it's own Museum and Library that is open to the public.  It also had every extracurricular activity that you can imagine.  I was on the Rifle Team and I taught Fencing on the Fencing Team for 3 of the 4 years that I was there.  (Foils, épée and Sabre).  I don't think you'll find that kind of thing in the modern schools these days... What a great time it was... 
I think we "grew up" quicker too.  I went out on my own at 17 and only came back for visiting... My 2 boys on the other hand... stayed home well into their 20s before I got my "Mancave" 

 

[HayHauler]

I grew up in a small farming community (notice I didn't say town) North of Abeline, TX.  During dove/quail season, my cousin had no less than 4 shotguns in his trunk along with several boxes of shells.  We (me, cousin, and brother) couldn't wait for the school bell to ring so we could go to the farm and hunt.  We had a BLAST and never got hassled by school officials or the LEO's.  At the end of the month, our families and friends, pooled our birds together and had a huge "bird fry" at someone's house out in the country.
Sorry Wayne, but those WERE the good ole days, little did we know. 

BTW, EVERY DAY we carried a pocket knife with us everywherre.  We never even thought about attacking anyone or defending ourselves from anyone with our knives.  They were a tool, just like the leatherman units today. 

Hay 
Jimmyt

[old2soon]

I lived in what is now considered the northern suburbs of Chicago. 50 miles north. Then it was the "country". Anyway-never knew this old mans name but he was always around. Carried a little 22 cal 6 shot revolver. Crow in Illinois at that time had a bounty of a nickel a head. That old man would go out with a box of 22shorts-50 rounds and come back with 50 crows. $2.50 then was a lot of money. Nobody was even concerned then about his open carry. I'm almost certain if he were alive today and open carry in Illinois some L E O would most likely drop him in his tracks. Your scenario 2 is how in 5th grade i met and made a very good friend. Good friend-until he went to Canada to beat the draft. But thats off topic. RIDE SAFE.

[musclehead]

it would be funny if it didn't sound like actual news.

I never got to do target practice in school, we did have archery in high school in Mahomet IL.
my history teacher (blanking on his name) brought in an array of pistols to display only, we were doing constitutional studies (yep second amendment) some of the weapons were his neighbors, a state trooper.

[bigguy]

Normally, I've got enough sense to stay out of threads like this. But I think I'll try adding a couple of observations without offending any body or stirring the pot excessively.

I was doing some research for a project a couple of years ago and looked up statistics on murder and violent crime. I was surprised to find that the number of homicides and violent crimes per capita has actually decreased since the 1970s. That didn't seem right. As I continued to check the numbers I started to notice a few things.
The number of actual murders and violent crimes did increase, but not as fast as the population. The us population estimate for 1970 was 203,211,926*. The Estimate for 2010 was 308,745,538*.
Disaster Center** lists 16,000 murders and 738,820 violent crimes for 1970 and 14,748 murders and 1,246,248 violent crimes for 2010.
That makes the per capita murders .079 per million and violent crimes 3.63 per million for the year 1970. Murders were .051 per million and violent crimes were 2.45 per million for the year 2010.
Your odds of being murdered or violently attacked is less now that it was in 1970.
So why does it seem so obvious that we live in a much more dangerous world?
My thoughts are that even though the odds of us becoming victims is lower, the actual numbers have gone up. As a result, we hear of more crime. Additionally we were still much more regional in the 70s. Unless the crime was horrific, it didn't make the national news. We heard mostly about attacks and murders geographically close to us. Then you only heard about it twice at most. Once in the newspaper, and once on the two or three local TV stations you could get.
Now we hear about crime from all over the country from any of the 200+ cable channels you get, the newspaper, and the Internet. Especially the Internet. You'll see it on Facebook, the boards you belong to, and receive a dozen e-mails about crimes you'd have never heard about before.
Finally, there seems to me to be a change in the nature of the crimes. Now days, it seems so random. It's likely to be a little girl who just happened to be on the wrong street corner when a couple of drug dealers started shooting it out. Back in the day, you'd hear that Billy Bob killed Sammy Joe. Well hell, we all knew that was coming if Sammy didn't stop sleeping with Billy's old lady. It was still a murder, but it didn't seem as bad somehow. We could understand it.
I think about the days when I'd get up before light an head to the deer woods to hunt a couple of hours before school. I'd leave my .243 in the gun rack of the truck, then head straight for the woods as soon as the last bell rang. I remember my football coach showing me how to get a better edge on the pocket knife you could always find in my pocket. I do miss those aspects of the old days.
But then I had my cancerous bladder cut out and replaced with a new one in a procedure first tried in the 1980s. The chance that I'd have had access to an MRI to detect the condition before the 1990's is extremely slim. My favorite motorcycle wasn't available until 1997.
There are things from the good old days that people growing up in the first and second decade of the 21st century will miss. But they will also have opportunities we couldn't have dreamed of.
It's OK to have fond memories of our childhood, but I think we do ourselves a disservice if we lament past too much. The creator has given us time as a one way stream. I'm sure he had his reason, and I'm equally sure it's for our benefit.

OK, getting a nose bleed from the altitude up here on the soap box, so I'll hop off now.


*   https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/census.html
** http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

[YoungPUP]

Its messed up how much things have changed in just 12yrs since I've been out of highschool. Was in HS from 96-2000. Always had a pocket knife, school handbook said it was ok as long as blade was less than 4"  Most of my classmates had shotguns in their vehicles, came into school from the tree stand and went back to it right after school.  WOW what a bunch of sissies the kids are becoming...