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Last Updated: Nov 14, 2008 - 12:49:26 PM |
Back in the 1980s, when I taught U.S. history at Midlothian High, one of my favorite periods was the Roaring Twenties, which ended, of course, with the Great Crash of 1929.
One reason I enjoyed teaching this period so much was that I had a marvelous little book to assign for parallel reading – Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday.
It’s a remarkable book, not least because it was written within two years after the Crash: before the Great Depression had become endemic; before FDR had been elected to deal with a crisis which had paralyzed the brilliant and talented Herbert Hoover; before the New Deal, the rise of the European dictators, and the return of world war.
Only Yesterday fell at an ideal time in the academic year. I usually managed to reach the 1920s by the beginning of February – easily the longest month of the year for teachers and students. In the season of sniffles, mud, and general gloom, with spring impossibly far off, even my most devoted students grew weary of the sound of my voice.
They needed a break from me -- and I needed a break from lecturing. Only Yesterday provided the ideal solution.
My basic plan was to let my students teach each other. I’d assign each chapter to a team of two, with the expectation that they would prepare a 50-minute lesson, including a quiz on the chapter’s contents. Since Only Yesterday is divided into chapters by topic – rather than chronologically – this worked pretty well. Each student team would tackle one particular topic: the rise of mass media, advertising (“ballyhoo”) and nationwide celebrities; the sources of the era’s unprecedented economic boom; the struggle between intellectual elites and rural and small-town fundamentalists; the rise of youth culture and the collapse of sexual mores; etc.
I would, of course, make myself available to my students in case they needed help – especially with the chapters on the economy. But they seldom did. Allen was a wonderful writer – a journalist with the gift of explaining complex issues in comprehensible terms. The era was inherently fascinating. And my students could usually find ample supporting materials – photographs, films, audio recordings, even surviving wardrobe items from their grandparents’ closets and trunks.
As a result, for three weeks, my students presented their lessons, and I’d sit in the back of the classroom, evaluating their efforts. For the most part, they did well – but in the end, they usually confessed how glad they were to have me back at the lectern. For all their grumbling, students usually prove more boring to each other – at least as teachers – than do the professionals.
Nonetheless, I think they learned a great deal. They got an in-depth look at the 1920s, a period in which a distinctly modern America emerged from the virtuous, agricultural, small-town, and rural nation of the Founders – or even of Lincoln.
They also had an opportunity to see their own times in perspective, for – if we are a superficially different nation today – in essence we are little changed.
In the Roaring Twenties, we became a culture of celebrity; of youth; of materialism and narcissism. We shook off old superstitions and the characteristic Puritanism of our early days. And, – in the process – we lost sight of the hardy virtues of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and thrift sustained by traditional culture and religion.
In short, we became modern, at the cost of virtue and even – in a large sense – maturity.
We are not so very different today.
Looking at the news of recent weeks, I am troubled by echoes of the 1920s. The weaknesses of our economy are once again on display and – while I still doubt we will enter a new Great Depression – we surely run that risk. The fault – now, as then – is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
I am chagrined at our continuing preoccupation with the trivial – even in a time of serious international tension, economic unrest, and unprecedented environmental danger.
I am alarmed that the celebrity culture of our own times has given rise to a candidate for president whose prospects of electoral success rest almost entirely upon the support of a far-from neutral media, a nearly unanimous Hollywood, and our youngest citizens.
But if these times provide reason for concern – even fear – the best resort, at least for me, lies in the study of the past.
It’s time I took out Only Yesterday again.
A brief note: Two weeks ago, I invited readers to join me in organizing a committee to work toward creating a Commonwealth School in southeastern Chesterfield. I’m still looking for volunteers.
No doubt most of us are pre-occupied with the election and the economic crisis, but the former will soon be over, and the latter – if it is solved at all – is out of our hands.
If you’ve ever been a “community organizer” – or wanted to be – please contact me.
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