RAH Day 10 Agenda
• Goal – to understand what life was like in the ’50s and to see how it
set the stage for our culture today
• Review packet p 2 – How does this cartoon depict life in the fifties?
– Where does the cartoon take place?
– Why is her name Edward?
– If you were to continuing cartooning life in the fifties, what would you
add to this cartoon? What topic would your addition be cartooning?
• Questions from homework
• Complete pages 3 about The American Dream in the Fifties
• Complete p 4 and 5 to develop graph reading skills and to
understand the baby boom.
• Complete p 6 – Read the selection about the Organization Man and
answer the 3 Discussion Questions.
– Draw a cartoon that satirizes the Organization Man living the American
Dream in the Fifities
• Continue video about life in the fifties. Answer questions 1-9 pp 1
American Dream in the Fifties
Trends
Effects
1. Business
expansion:
conglomerates and
franchises
1.
2.
3.
4.
2. Suburban
expansion
1.
3. Population
growth: the baby
boom
1.
2.
4.
More jobs were created
Uniformity occurred in many areas like the
workforce, products and services throughout the
country
Suburbanization
More consumer choices
White flight from cities to suburbs – whites middle
class took their tax money with them, leaving many
cities blacker, weaker, poorer and less able to
provide needed services
2. Defacto segregation 3. Women’s issues developed
4. Need and use for cars
Increased economic growth
Crowded schools
3. Generation gap
More and different products 5. Housing needs
Trends
Effects
4. Dramatic increase
in leisure time
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
5. Dramatic increase
in the use of
automobile
1.
5.
6.
6. Rise of
consumerism
1.
2.
Vacations
Increased publishing and subscriptions to specialty
magazines
Post-materialist generation like the Beats and later
hippies
Sports to play and watch 5. TV
Women’s liberation movement
Highways
2. Suburbs 3. Malls 4. Trucking
Drive-in everything – movies, restaurants, banks
Unification of the US 7. population migration and
mobility
8. Pollution and noise
More and effective use of marketing
Planned obsolescence – making things that would
need to be replaced fairly soon
3. Business expansion
4. More products
5. Definition, impetus for and evidence of the American
Dream
6. Use of credit increased consumer debt
Baby Boom
1. Births dropped from 1943 to 1944 and from 1944 to 1945
2. Returning soldiers, changing attitudes about sex, marriage, and the future,
economic prosperity.
3. a) 4.3 = millions of births
b) 4.6 = millions of total new people in population (births and immigration)
c) 1.66 = millions of deaths
d) (4.6m new people – 1.66 m deaths = 2.94 million person increase in
population in 1959.
4. Births dropped more than immigration rose, resulting in a net decease in the
number of total new people.
5. 1st year number of births dropped below 1946 levels was in 1972, but 1964
was the last year before significant drop in births, as well as last year
before # of births dropped below 4 million and the birth rate dropped
below 20/1000
6. Death rose consistently slowly. births rose steeply, then dropped big
The Organization Man
1. A. O-man works in a hierarchical organization where he is not
at the top, but hopes to be able to move up.
B. He lives in the suburbs in middle class neighborhoods
C. works in a collective for the betterment of the organization
but loathes the word collective
D. Has given himself to the org. giving up individuality, family
and spirit
E. Is aware of the lack of control in his life but is delusional
about his relationship between the reality of the collective
and individuality
2. The protestant work ethic of the individual for individual
gain does not jive with the demands and facts of the
organization collective