Perception of Age

I was grading through some vocabulary review worksheets tonight when I came across a drawing that made me laugh. The assignment was for students to draw pictures that would help remind them of the definitions of their vocabulary words. One of our words was 'reminisce'. This led to some pretty amazing pictures.

I remember going to Europe for the first time and laughing at their perception of age. Go to England, for example, and "new" is anything built after about 1700. Nearly 100 years before America was a country. In America, old is anything from around World War Two and back, or at least that's been my experience. My students are much less aware of this.

One student drew a picture of a bearded, shrively stick figure man imagining a party and saying "I remember when I was a boy. . . " The sign said "Happy 1980".

Yeesh.