How did the hippie movement all start?

Earth laughs in flowers.

Thanks, lizzzeh, for getting back to me on that. Very cool of you. THX.

So, now that you've got all of that info, does it make you want to run away and join the circus?

To ALL

So, above here, on that topic four of this group had commented on wondering what was stated in the history books. And some of us felt compelled to write a countering history book for teens to read.

This is still a good idea, yet we still need to research what the history books are stating in order to know what is said and what to counter and how to counter it.
In Short, What is Said?

So, I think that some of us actually live in big enough cities that we have big library systems that have High School History books in then. This could be searched for online on a library site.

Bottom line, we need to read a chapter. See if there's a need. And then take appropriate actions. Do any of us here enjoy reading, and can lay hands on a book?

Share your findings with the rest of us.
Skip? Rev JC you have "Boo Kue" libraries? jamgrassphan? Anyone else?

 

I have a high school art teacher friend. I'm going to ask her to find out what they're History/Social Studies teachers are using for text books and then I'm going to get my hands on one. I'm going to do some research to see if there is anything published annually with regard to which high schools use what text books.

I have a feeling that the subject matter covered in these text books with regard to content and perspective will be somewhat uniform. So, unless we discover an example of a working text book that varies widely in content and perspective - I think it might be safe to assume that there is a sort of convention in the manner in which text book writers approach the subject of the beat generation and the hippie counter culture. (I'm doing my best to suppress my conspiracy theorist tendencies - so again that remains to be seen). I'll post a review of my text book research as soon as I've gotten my hands on a text book and read it. This might also make a good forum question, put to current or recently graduated high school students (i.e. what history text book did you use, what did it say about the beats and hippies etc.)

 

I used The American Pageant, 13th Edition, By Kennedy Cohen and Bailey. It's kind of a bland page, but there's a summary of key sections in the main chapter on the sixties here:
http://www.apnotes.net/ch39.html
and there's also some notes on the movement here in the next chapter:
http://www.apnotes.net/ch40.html

Also, I'd love to help with the book. I have a knack for writing.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the link.

 

Only a little to do with the history of hippies but if you want to read about the bull shit spin that American High school text books have read "lies my teacher told me" Excellent book.

 

and of course, try "the electric kool aid acid test" not written by a participant, but gives you an entertaining look at some of the hi jinks of the day.

Sounds like it started on a tuesday-or whatever day kesey published "one flew over the Cuckoos nest" giving him a few bucks and allowing him the freedom to do the crazy shit he started

 

Omg! I was in school during the change i know! It was about Freaks( Bangers) and everyone wore bell bottoms. Anyways Punk music started getting popular and the clothes stores started selling skinny jeans and bell bottoms were getting harder to find. Then this thing called, "Emo" started happening and it was with the younger generation...it was basically a younger generation by 3 to 4 yrs younger then my age... They would wear skinny jeans and wear a lot of black...and it seemed like the army jackets would be dismissed and ball necklaces. Times were changing. Anyways EMO look came into a generation of its own because of the fashion it started and trends. So this colorful instead of black version raised a few yrs later after..and I been out of school already at this point. Seemed like a pwn on old school to who cares it's about new school...reminds me of the tacky 80s when people get a lil too far off into it... Yeah I just random commented by...and DIDN'T READ squat of what others had to say. Least with the hipster generation it changed into a more green type where now it's turning towards more hippie...I HOPE THE BELL BOTTOMS MAKE A COME BACK! done. ::breathes

 

One of the lessons I've learned in my six-plus decades on this earth is to be skeptical of anyone claiming to be the bearer of the "real" truth, of anyone making announcements to the effect that "no, that history is wrong. My history is right."

"History without an agenda" is an oxymoron, and those who claim that they alone know the truth and that everyone else is deluded ... are themselves sadly deluded.

It's not possible to find the "one true truth", because there is no one true truth. There are only a zillion pieces of truth, and our challenge as adults is to assemble as many of the pieces as we can, and make our own judgements about them.

Yes, I said "make judgements." History is nothing if not full of moral and ethical dilemmas. It consists of people making decisions that affect the course of lives, and as we all know, there is almost never a 100% consensus about how good those decisions were.

I believe that to talk about the "lies" told in high school history classes is to miss the point. I did not say that lies weren't told. No doubt they were. But the point is that history is not simply a series of indisputable facts, the veracity of which is immutable for all the ages. It's an ongoing process of evaluation of what was important and what wasn't. Sure, even if we feel confident that such-and-such event really happened on such-and-such date, what about the significance of that event? What about the motivations of the people involved? Those are not so cut-and-dried, and are open to interpretation by the authors of history books. History is not written by the victors, it's written by the historians/journalists, each of whom has their own agenda and their own bone to pick with the politicians and event-makers they write about.

When I see books with titles like "The REAL story behind _____", or "Lies your history teacher told you", or the like, I wonder if it's just a case of replacing one set of these so-called "lies" with another set. In any case, to claim to be the only one with the truth displays monumental ego and self-delusion.

 

cia

 

Well once a bunch of kids decided that they wanted to just let it all hang out....you know......just stop shaving their legs and faces and armpits....and just bathe when absolutely necessary....like when they were about to get kicked out of school or work...you know? They started making their clothes themselves (usually from burlap bags,etc) and the rest is just history man!!

 

But you know it's still alive in the Rainbow Family of the Living Light--a kind of annual Woodstock without the name entertainment but with the hippie values intact. When the middle class hippies of the sixties were leaving the movement, working class kids came into it and stayed. And then a lot of returning, burned out Vietnam vets joined. The first gathering was in '72 and it's been going on ever since--gathering in national forests to pray for peace on the Fourth of July, and in smaller regional gatherings throughout the year. It's a kind of morality play or living theater in which hippie values of peace, love and understanding are acted out in the context of get-togethers that have been as large as 25,000. Check it out!

 

Exactly the CIA back in the 1950s introduced the American public to the mind control drug LSD under the top secret program MK-ULTRA.

But instead of mind control the drug freed the mind and a new generation was born

 

It was like the big bang. All we needed was one free miracle and science explains the rest.

Hippies though. I don't see 'em much.

 

beatnik+futurist+simsoc on university mainfraims. signals and systems division of the model railroad society of m.i.t.
not top down, not bottom up as much as legend would have it. civilrights, anti-vietnam war, pacifism, believe it or not.
these were the soil and seeds. dome books and whole earth catalogue. seeing the earth from space without visible national borders.
no one thing but all of these things coming together. pot instead of beer, because kids didn't what to be a repeat of their alky parents.
whole thing misrepresented by media, which made more kids want to join for sex and parties.
love wasn't a document. nor a church. it was a dream. the goodness of freedom of imagination. the love of creative strangeness.
the standing agendst barriers of demographic seperation.
the oh so exact opposite of what we're seeing today with all the proliveration of autoritarian hate mongers, who are trying to pretend to be us.

i was born in 1948, so yes, i was there. except i grew up in the hills so i wasn't there in the cities until the early 70s, but i was very much aware of what was going on.