I'm a certified, card-carrying member of an exclusive club--the last Christianized generation in American history, which, as we've seen, means that we were soaked in Christianity. But Christianized doesn't mean "born again" in the biblical sense. "Christianized" simply means that the milieu in which we lived, moved, and had our being was heavily influenced by Christianity.
It was that Christianized culture that produced my high school class of about 400, students like Hank Still and James Ellis who went on to argue cases before the U. S. Supreme Court. In debate class class, my partner and I often debated with Hank and his partner. Hank was skilled in debate and his talent has stood him in good stead over the years. James was in my high school and college Latin classes; He played football for both institutions (whoever heard of a starting quarterback taking Latin in high school and college?) He was also a Rhodes Scholar finalist. On the baseball team, he was the premier pitcher, the quintessential student-athlete.
The girl who sat in front of me in high school Latin, Carolyn Dean, would grow up to handle and study the rocks taken from the surface of the moon. Within our ranks would be those who would become college professors, like John Moeser and Mike Moorehead.
One girl, Kay Thornton, the editor of our school newspaper, "The Monterey Mirror," would move to Canada and become an author of published fiction, while another would write a book about the famous Lubbock UFO sightings, which became known in the national press as "The Lubbock Lights." (I saw them one night.) My classmate, Arthur Neill, was so brilliant in the third grade, he corrected our teacher's spelling of "encyclopedia;" he would grow up to become a radio astronomer, in Boston. The last time I saw Arthur, he and his wife were flying to Europe.
THE DRESS CODE
If there was a high school dress code, I don't remember its being in print nor any instructions given orally about it. The school didn't have to have one because a dress code was enforced at home before we left for school. The dress code had one rule, "You don't embarrass your parents." End of the code.
Parents enforced that code and didn't expect the school to do it; such would have been unthinkable. In that regard, there were no T-shirts whereby we could announce how special we were such as the young lad wearing a shirt I saw today which proclaimed, "HAVE YOU NOTICED MY AWESOMENESS?" (I wanted to tell him, "No.")
Back then, parents may have thought their children were special, but they didn't expect others to do so and they didn't bore others by bragging about their children. Such would have been considered gauche.
LUNCH-A-LOT
When lunch time came around, we ate in three different shifts: there were lunch periods A, B. and C, with A as the earliest and C the latest. For some reason, praise be, I never was assigned the C lunch period. With only three periods for lunch, that meant there were a lot of us eating in the cafeteria at those times. The teachers had their own separate lunch room where they would dine and, in my opinion, spend their time plotting against us.
There was only one spontaneous outburst in the cafeteria during my years in high school. Unbeknownst to me and the others at our lunch table, there was a group in the cafeteria which was watching the clock, and when the time hit a certain hour and minute, they burst into enthusiastic applause. At our table, we looked at each other, wondering what in the world was going on.
Then my good friend, Jim Smith, figured it out--it was May 2 and, at that precise moment, was the appointed time for the execution in San Quinton Prison of Caryl Chessman who had gained national infamy for his crimes and 8 stays of execution. (His picture was on the cover of "Time Magazine.") He had become the poster boy for the anti-capital punishment movement in America. The group was applauding because the time had come for execution to commence.
But before lunchtime was over, Jim had figured out something the applauding group had missed--the time difference between Central Time and Pacific Time. Their applause was premature by two hours, but we thought it was a nice gesture. We were up on current events and issues back in the day.
In all my years spent in the cafeteria, there was never an incident of unruliness or an outbreak of an untoward argument. Everyday, in every way, world without end, the we ate together in peace and calm in an orderly manner and cleaned up our table when we were through.
THE QUICK FIX
So, since we're partial to shortcuts, we think, "To produce a milieu such as that, let's study those days, take what they did and impose their code on our schools today and then we would have such a culture as they did--one that's disciplined, educated, and respectful of authority. Let's impose the demerit system just like Monterey Senior High School had, and, just like an assembly line, we'll turn out respectful, disciplined, moral, and dependable citizens just like schools did back in those halcyon days.
IF ONLY
If only it worked that way, but it doesn't. To impose such systems as were in vogue in the days of My Exclusive Club is appealing, but the results would be appalling. The reason for that is that it wasn't the systems that produced the Christianization; the Christianization, produced the systems.
THE CART IS NOT TO BE PUT BEFORE THE HORSE
In other words. the spiritual engine (the Christianization) in place at the time produced the systems that came into being. It wasn't the other way around where the systems produced the engine. To say it another way, it was the Chrisitanizing, the soaking of the culture in Christianity, that produced My Exclusive Club; no demerit system, no courses in English and Latin and algebra did it. The rigorous discipline system and curriculum came out of Christianity; they didn't produce Christianity.
The engine that produced the culture was based on the concept of absolute truth in which we were soaked. Back in the day, we were taught that there was right and wrong, a morality which was absolute. To be absolute, such a code has to originate outside of man and be something man can't arbitrarily change depending on what he wants to do. Whether we could articulate that concept or not, it was in the air we breathed.
My Exclusive Club was raised that way, taught that way, and lived that way, Christian or not.
TO BE CONTINUED
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