When my oldest was in elementary school she received an assignment to ask the oldest person she was related to what invention changed your life or had the greatest impact.
L asked the question to Mimi, my great grandmother, Mamie Silver. Mimi answered that to her it was the sewer system. She always had indoor plumbing but the sewer system meant that the “honey truck” which emptied the septic holding tanks and took the waste to the processing plant.
My grandmother asked L if she wanted an answer for class or a real answer. The answer for class was the electric washing machine. The real answer was tampons and disposable pads. The washing machine freed up days of women’s time so they could start contributing to society outside of the home. It gave women time to gather outside the home and socialize which led to wanting to fix social injustices since many learned their problems were shared and not isolated cases.
Papa, my grandfather, said it was the automobile. Now it didn’t take two hours to get ready to go anywhere and he could get from Salt Lake City to San Diego in a single day (which is still true unless you drive a Tesla). With a horse and buggy, Salt Lake to St.George was a week long trip as 10-30 miles is a full day by buggy. Most out of state trips were train rides.
Even when cars first arrived, before the interstate system, it was a full day to St. George and then a day to Vegas, one would sleep all day and drive the desert from Vegas to California at night.
I was thinking today, how would I answer the question. I had to take Typing in high school and the teacher docked me points for putting my transcription book on the left side of the typewriter. He told me no office would ever allow me to accommodate my left handed “disability.” I was working for an insurance company doing data entry and brought him a Polaroid of my desk set up showing I had a left side credenza. He still gave me a C. My senior year we got a computer for the high school and a class in Basic programming was offered. Girls were actively discouraged from participating. My husband’s high school was further west than mine and they didn’t have any computers in the building even by his 5 year reunion.
My kids had keyboarding classes in elementary school. The computer lab was available to any student who didn’t have a home computer. They weren’t connected to the internet until after my kids were in junior high when the elementary school got a Microsoft grant to upgrade the computer lab.
I remember the outcry when I was in junior high and calculators were allowed to be used in algebra and trigonometry classes. Parents were sure that this was a government conspiracy to prevent kids from learning to use slide rules and was dumbing down education.
Also, I got thinking of Title 9 which passed when I was in junior high. The school now allowed girls to sign up for wood and metal shop and boys were allowed to sign up for cooking or sewing. I hated the home ec teacher (she believed soap and deodorant would give her cancer and she stank). So I signed up for wood shop. The counselor convinced my parents that I would lose all social standing if I took wood shop. So they changed my classes and while my friends were in wood shop I was in the stinky sewing class making stupid frogs and I think I made a Hawaiian shirt for my sister. I sometimes wonder if my dislike of sewing with a machine comes from that class.
Title 9 also came into play when I was in college. I tried to sign up for a business major and was told BYU didn’t have a secretarial track. I told them I was interested in sales and marketing. I got laughed at and the counselor left the office. I went across the quad and ended up in communications. Then, when I realized my communication classes were the ones I was skipping, I talked to one of my philosophy professors who suggested doing a general humanities major with a pre-law or pre-MBA emphasis. I was still a little sore about the business school so signed up for the pre-law track.
I got married one semester short of graduation and finished the final quarter pregnant and commuting from the Avenues in SLC to Provo (back then a 2 hour drive). After my daughter was born I started graduate school but soon realized that the social work degree I was enrolled in wouldn’t pay enough to cover the student loans I was taking out so I quit the and went to work. And that leads to other stories for another day.
Just So you Know 