History 476

Devine

Spring 2007

 

Study Questions for May 1st

 

 

Palladino, “Lies My Father Told Me”

 

  1. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, what did most parents and the majority of students expect from a college education?  How did these expectations differ from those of activists like Todd Gitlin?

 

  1. Why did many college students resent in loco parentis? (pp. 209-210)  Why did undergraduates at many major universities have good reason to protest their treatment there?

 

  1. What precipitated the Berkeley Free Speech Movement?  What was the significance of this movement and what consequences did it have for college students and campus life?

 

  1. What reasons did young people give for opposing the draft and the Vietnam War?

 

  1. How did the Vietnam War expose class differences within the United States?

 

  1. How did the government’s conduct of the Vietnam War undermine its claim to young people’s confidence and respect?

 

Palladino, “Up the Down Staircase”

 

  1. Why does the author believe that it was harder for middle class young people to follow adult rules in the Vietnam era?

 

  1. How did music and television reflect the new rebelliousness and sexual aggressiveness of teenagers during the 1960s?

 

  1. Why did many adults resent teenage boys’ long hair?  Why did the boys resent those who resented them?

 

  1. How did the “sudden burst of freedom” that young people experienced on college campuses in the mid-1960s affect them? 

 

  1. What part did drugs play in the youth culture of the mid- to late-1960s?

 

  1.  How did high school life change during the 1960s?  What new developments occurred that would have been unimaginable twenty years before?

 

  1. The author quotes one educator as saying that by 1970, “rights and feelings now took precedence over academics in public high schools.”  Was this a positive development?

 

  1. Why did many believe teenage freedom and the removal of boundaries was a double-edged sword – particularly for high school students who didn’t take their education seriously?

 

David Steigerwald, “The Reddish Decade”

 

  1. Why were the ideas of the Old Left not much help to the New Left in its attempt to critique the “Affluent Society”?  Why did Paul Goodman, C. Wright Mills, and Albert Camus prove more attractive to New Leftists looking for inspiration?

 

  1. Why were there disagreements between SDS (the New Left) and LID (the Old Left)?

 

  1. How did the New Left propose to address the problems of apathy, alienation, and the ills of bureaucratized society? 

 

  1. Who did SDS see as potential allies?  How did it plan to structure its organization?  What were some of SDS’s weaknesses from the very outset?

 

  1. Why didn’t the ERAP project work out like the New Leftists had hoped?  Why did the poor not make good “revolutionaries”?

 

  1. How does the author contrast Tom Hayden (who led the ERAP movement) with Mario Savio (who led the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley)?  More broadly, what is the difference between “radicalism” and “rebellion”?

 

  1. Why did opposition to the Vietnam War prove a good catalyst for mobilizing SDS on a national level?

 

  1. What was “corporate liberalism” (p. 136) and why did the New Left oppose it?

 

  1. How did the later New Lefists’ ideas about “revolution” (expressed by Gregg Calvert) differ from those of the early New Leftists (expressed in the Port Huron Statement)?  (see p. 137)  Why did they pursue revolution, when, according to the author (and common sense), revolution was “objectively impossible”?

 

  1. What happened in Chicago during the summer of 1968?  Why was it an important benchmark for the New Left?

 

  1. What explains the violence of Weatherman?  According to the author, why did young people join such an organization?