Bat timeline and cultural context

[runespoor]

I have this thing about the timeline. I snark about it making no sense and stretching for untold amount of years as much as anyone else, but the truth is, I love that. I love that Dick was a teen in the seventies, that Jason lived on the streets during the middle 80s, that early Tim and Oracle didn't have a facebook. Helena has been a teacher since the late 80s. Jason and Steph were dead/"dead" for several years, inhabitants of Gotham didn't see the release of the Sixth Sense because they were in No Man's Land at the time. The chibi Titans wouldn't have pretended to have laser sabers, Jason didn't watch Scream nor theLion king before he died, none of them played Pokemon as children, and Dinah most definitely didn't have a poster of Kurt Cobain as a teen.

But it brings to mind several issues. I'm not an American, and I have no idea what classes existed during these time periods. Occasionally, it bothers me, because I like little details in fic. I can make semi-educated guesses about music and movies, less so about how the school system worked. I'm stuck on the school thing here, but are there other obvious things I've missed, things I can't find out on Wikipedia?

So. What books would each of them have studied? What kind of classes existed? Were there school shrinks? How were teachers regarded during these time periods, and what tools were common/uncommon?

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Are we talking about high school classes, like in the 70s/80s?

In that case they'd take many of the same classes, I assume, as today with the basics: English Lit, American Lit, European History, American History or World History, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, biology. When I was in school they still taught shop and home economics (home ec). So they could totally do that.

Some of the classic fiction that people tend to study in school (though again it varies--lots of people wound up not reading some) there'd be The Great Gatsby, Sound & the Fury, Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare plays, Huckleberry Finn, Life & Times of Frederick Douglas, A Separate Peace. Those are just off the top of my head as books I associate with high school.

You could also stick in odd classes for electives. I know my high school once offered Bible Lit, there was a Journalism class that put on a news show for cable TV once a week, a psychology class, computer science. You can be really creative because every school is so different.

You could definitely have a school shrink. My school never had one, but I don't think it would seem like an anachronism. There'd also be guidance counselors.

I'm not sure how teachers were regarded--it depended on the teacher. I assume it was much the way it is today. I'm not sure what you mean by tools? There weren't too many. Personal computers just started coming in in the mid-80s but not everybody had them. You could have a computer lab in the school, but it wouldn't be weird not to have them.

Heh. I feel like I'm just babbling.

A lot of them would have studied some of the same books, I think, if we're thinking of high school English classes, for instance. They all (except Tim at Brentwood) went to public school so they all would have done kindergarten through 12th grade (or freshman, sophomore, junior, senior). You probably have a lot of leeway for school because a lot of school systems are different, but they'd probably mostly take the same ones as they'd have today for the standard subjects.

I feel like I just babbled and don't know if that was helpful!