How far did the lives of young people change 1945 -75?

What is a teenager?

What separates teenagers from their parents?(think about all the things that make you different to your parents – taste,

hobbies, opinions, communication, appearance etc)

Do you think that young children/teenagers have and will always be different to their parents?

What do you think you will be like when your parents and what will your children be like?

Did Teenagers exist in the early 50s?

• Of course people of the ages 13-19 in the 1950s existed but the term teenager is much more than that. It refers to all the things we have been talking about – teenagers have a culture of their own.

• Look at source 1 on page 482• What does this suggest?

• Then look at source 3• Does this suggest something different?

Young people in the early 1950s

• 1950s Britain was quite a boring place to live– Lots of destroyed buildings– Lots of building sites – new council housing– Rationing still in force until 1954– National service until 1960 (army for 18 months

for men 17-21 years)– Pubs hours controlled

There were no teenagers either!

• Most young people seemed like small versions of their parents – They wore similar clothes– Went to same school as their parents did– Followed same routines – church on Sunday, visiting

relatives, listening to same music and dances. After school they worked in same place as parents.

– There was only 1 TV channel! Whole family sat round the TV together. Listen to same radio programmes together

However things start to change…..• In the second half of the 1950s Britain’s economy stared to recover . This

led to:– Low unemployment – young people leaving school could get a job– Wages increase faster than prices – more money to spend. Most

• At the same time birth control meant smaller families – easier to feed and clothe

• Young people had more leisure time – now working 5 day weeks instead of 6.

• All this meant young people could keep most of their wages – they wuld used to have to give it to parents to look after the family

• ‘The teenager was a creation of Affluence’ Dominic Sandbrook

Enter the Teenager!

• You need to add to the image of a 1950s teenager information under the headings provided on the sheet – use page 484-5

• What types of:• Music would they like• Films would they like• Fashion would they wear• Things would they do with their spare time?

If there are differences for boys and girls than put both down – make sure you distinguish between the two – I don’t want you putting than boys wore skirts!

What happened in the 1960s?

• There was about 5 million teenagers in the 1960s and they earned 1/10th of the countries income

• They spent about £800 million on themselves a year! Mainly on clothes and entertainment.

• They brought 1/3 of all bikes, motorcycles, cosmetics, and film tickets

• Most cinemas, record shops, dance halls and magazine stores depended on teenager customers.

Does this source tell us more about teenagers spending trends In the 1960s than source 9 on 486?

‘Every week I’d buy at least two or three singles. I had so much money to spend. Its unbelievable looking back. There were so many well paid jobs for teenagers connected to the car industry. I would spend £10 every week on myself, on clothes, on going out and most of all on music.’A Coventry man in in 2005 who was a teenager in the 1960s

Ready, Steady, GO!• Every Friday at 7pm almost all teenagers would watch

this new show!• In many ways this new show summed up the Swinging

Sixties

• Why was this show so popular?

• Draw a tv in you books with Ready Steady Go! On the screen. Then annotate it with what was distinctive about the show.

• Radios became portable – could now listen to music while ‘hanging out’ with their friends. Now there was teenager specific stations.

• Record players now made from plastic – now cheap enough for teenagers to have them in their bedrooms. Listening to music was no longer a family occasion!

• New fabrics made clothes cheaper to buy – or girls could make their own clothes to stay with the designer clothes

• Transport – better public transport and teenagers could afford scooters or motorcycles – made it easier for teenagers to visit each other, have freedom, go to town, or music events.

What is the message of this source

• Cartoon source on June 2011 paper

Music

• Name 4 popular bands of the 1960s• What were the key differences between musicians in the

50s and musicians in the 60s?

• How many records did the Beatles sell in 1964?• How many singles did Satisfaction, by the Rolling Stones

sell?• What was Juke Box Jury?• When did Top of the Pops start?• How did Radio Caroline lead to Radio one being created?

How was the music craze viewed by adults??

• Look at source 12 and 13 on page 488

• How does the writer of source 12 view teenagers? What kind of words does he use to describe them or the time?

• Why does the writer of source 14 like the Beatles?

Fashion • Pop stars tried to outdo each other by wearing

outrageous clothes.• Designs were all about being ‘with it’ – some

models were photographed wearing space age dresses and fabrics.

• Teenagers were not as extreme but did like new designers like Mary Quant– Mary set up a boutique called Bazaar on Kings Road in

London in 1955 – Kings Road became the capital of youth fashion for London and the rest of the world.

– By 1966 she was making $6 million a year– She invented the Mini Skirt - used many different

fabrics and bold colours– She realised the importance of models – Models

became big stars – biggest of all was Lesley Hornby (Twiggy)

– David Bailey – photographer becomes a celeb, celeb hairdressers like Vidal Sassoon.

What do you think Mary means when she uses the term ‘something was in the air?’

I wanted to design clothes that women could put on in the morning and still feel right at midnight; clothes that go happily to the office and go equally happily out to dinner. I just happened to start when that something was in the air, was coming to the boil. The clothes I made happened to fit in exactly with the teenage trend, with the pop records and expresso bars and music clubs.

Marry Quant

Cartoons page 489

• I will split the class up and you need to work out what your cartoon’s message is

• You will compete against others in the class who have your cartoon

• Who can figure them out the best?

Rebellion

• We keep saying that teenagers in the 1960s were trying to be different to their parents. This had always been the case but now in the 60s they had the time, money and confidence to express themselves differently and to rebel.

• In what ways did they start to rebel?

Satirical TV programmes and magazines made fun of respectable authority figures

John Lennon: “the Beatles are bigger than Jesus.”

• Very controversial comment made in 1966

• He meant that traditional institutions like the church were declining in importance ot young people

Were the Sixties ‘Sex-mad?’

• Use the information on page 490 and the sources on 491 to see if you can give an answer to this question.

Teenage Violence

• For most teenagers rebellion was small – listening to music, watching films, or staying out late.

• However some turned to street violence.

• Most famous incident was the violence in 1964 between Mods and Rockers in a number of seaside towns such as Margate and Brighton.

Mods Vs Rockers

Draw a diagram of both mods and Rockers

Can you write what you think caused the changes and explain how they did this?

Why did life for teenagers change during

the 1960s?