For the most part, I'd say no, there wasn't much of a sense that things were different, or were done differently, here in Cambridge. For one thing, there just wasn't as much language at our fingertips around, say, DEI and racial integration topics -- I never once heard anyone, adult or child, comment on the diversity in my elementary sch…
For the most part, I'd say no, there wasn't much of a sense that things were different, or were done differently, here in Cambridge. For one thing, there just wasn't as much language at our fingertips around, say, DEI and racial integration topics -- I never once heard anyone, adult or child, comment on the diversity in my elementary school. I just assumed that every town, say, had school buses that kids took all over the place, and that lots of kids lived far from the school. In high school, there was more of a consciousness of the school being a special place -- e.g. those of us involved with the gay/straight alliance knew it was the first one in a picnic school on the east coast, we knew there were more languages spoken at home, and parents' countries of origin, than in pretty much any school on the country, etc. And we knew there were people who were closed minded. But we were focused mostly on the closed minded people around us, in Cambridge, who there were plenty of! I think Cambridge seemed like more of a hardscrabble, working class and lower middle class place than it does now. It didn't seem so polished, clean and self-satisfied. There were very few Republicans, but that didn't seem weird, that seemed normal -- we didn't have much exposure to the existence of people who liked Reagan, we didn't really think about the gulf between Cambridge and Reagan supporters.
For the most part, I'd say no, there wasn't much of a sense that things were different, or were done differently, here in Cambridge. For one thing, there just wasn't as much language at our fingertips around, say, DEI and racial integration topics -- I never once heard anyone, adult or child, comment on the diversity in my elementary school. I just assumed that every town, say, had school buses that kids took all over the place, and that lots of kids lived far from the school. In high school, there was more of a consciousness of the school being a special place -- e.g. those of us involved with the gay/straight alliance knew it was the first one in a picnic school on the east coast, we knew there were more languages spoken at home, and parents' countries of origin, than in pretty much any school on the country, etc. And we knew there were people who were closed minded. But we were focused mostly on the closed minded people around us, in Cambridge, who there were plenty of! I think Cambridge seemed like more of a hardscrabble, working class and lower middle class place than it does now. It didn't seem so polished, clean and self-satisfied. There were very few Republicans, but that didn't seem weird, that seemed normal -- we didn't have much exposure to the existence of people who liked Reagan, we didn't really think about the gulf between Cambridge and Reagan supporters.