Gen X attended school in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. They were raised in the waning shadow of the Cold War, when ducking under their desks for a practice air raid was no longer normal like it was for baby boomers, but the threat of things quickly going irrevocably sour between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev still loomed large. The lessons Gen X learned in school differed wildly from the education their boomer parents received, and many things Gen X was taught in school would make Boomers roll their eyes.
Gen X’s formative years were defined by advances in technology that now seem archaic, but at the time, VCRs and TV remotes were cutting edge. Gen X’s academic experience focused on propelling them into an inclusive, self-determined future that Boomers didn’t fully accept or understand.
Here are 12 things Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes
1. ‘Do what makes you happy’
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One thing Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes was the idea that they should pursue whatever path makes them happy. It didn’t matter if their dreams were impractical or made zero financial sense. Living for themselves was more important than a stable paycheck.
This lesson stood in stark contrast to how boomers operated, so they viewed Gen X’s concept of following their dreams with skepticism. Boomers tended to stay in the same job for the course of their entire career, pledging loyalty to one particular company until the day they retired.
But Gen X was cut from a different cloth. They soaked up the message that the world was theirs to stake a claim in. And so, Gen X set forth to follow their passions, instead of picking a steady career, something they were taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes.
2. ‘You can be anything you want’
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This mindset that you can be anything you want to be served as a starting point for boomers to complain about younger generations as special little snowflakes who were spoiled to the point of no return. Gen X’s celebration of individuality and inclusion was foreign to boomers, and their utter lack of understanding would make them roll their eyes.
Most Gen X childhoods were marked by an independence so fierce, it bordered on being feral. Their teen years were defined by a resounding “Whatever.” At its core, this blasé Gen X declaration wasn’t so different from the mantra boomers lived by in the 60s: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Yet the passage of time is unforgiving. Boomers who came of age at the height of the Civil Rights movement and witnessed the political turmoil of the Vietnam War entered the 80s and 90s as yuppies with stockbroker jobs and giant, rectangular car phones. They conformed hard, which is one reason why the idea that Gen X could do anything would make boomers roll their eyes.
In opposition to the lives their Boomer parents led, Gen X chose to center creative freedom over uncompromising career paths. They leaned toward self-employment and start-ups, which they were able to access due to the fact that they entered the work force during the dot-com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Gen X was once the DIY generation who truly believed they could be anything. Now, they’re between 44 and 59 years old. They’ve moved beyond the disillusioned slacker identity of their youth, taking their rightful place as the adults in the room. They landed corporate jobs that would make past iterations of themselves cringe. They raise their kids in the same suburbs they escaped from at age 18.
Their futures might have unfolded differently than they expected, but Gen X never forgot what they were taught in school and they still live according to the mindset that they can be anything they want.
3. ‘All opinions are valid’
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Gen X was taught that all opinions were valid, an idea that would make boomers roll their eyes. The ability to weigh different worldviews, even ones they disagreed with, was a crucial lesson for Gen X. They were encouraged to question their teachers, as opposed to boomers, who were taught to respect authority figures, no matter what.
Boomers were taught with an authoritarian teaching style. They followed the rules and obeyed whatever command their teachers gave. Talking out of turn was often reprimanded by corporeal punishment, so the mindset that each individual opinion deserves to be heard would make boomers roll their eyes. While they were taught to fall in line, Gen X experienced the classroom as a place to push against the status quo.
As far as boomers saw it, the belief that everyone’s opinion held value showed how sensitive and soft Gen X had become, especially when compared to their own rugged individualism. Boomers categorized that kind of thinking as coddling, which they blamed for the downfall of every future generation.
Most people acknowledge that holding space for other perspectives is a sign of having high intelligence, yet the emphasis on overarching validation would make boomers roll their eyes.
4. ‘Bullying has no place here’
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A major thing Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes were bullying prevention programs that made the claim “Bullying has no place here.” The implementation of zero-tolerance policies around bullying made boomers nostalgic for the good old days. They pined for the golden era of their youth, when playground cruelty wasn’t overlooked but rather, a thing that came close to being a nationally celebrated pastime.
Boomers told Gen X to “toughen up” and “stop being so sensitive” as anti-bullying campaigns gained traction in schools. Yet even with those structures in place, kids are constantly confronted with bullying behavior they don’t always know how to handle.
Clinical social worker Brock Hanson shared an emotionally-responsive approach that parents can model for their kids, starting with “some education about emotions and behaviors your kids will experience when you are not around to protect them.”
“Understanding the emotional dynamics of teasing and bullying, how it makes us feel, and why it is almost unavoidable plays an important part in emotional intelligence training for children,” he explained. “Understanding feelings and developing choices about how to respond to feelings gives us all more flexibility.”
“Children can be enormously resilient,” Hanson concluded. “The more they are encouraged and supported in developing creative responses to life’s challenges, the more resilient they can be.”
5. ‘Building self-confidence is critical’
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Gen X was taught that instilling confidence was an important part of the school curriculum, something that would make boomers roll their eyes. Gen X’s classes didn’t only cover chemistry compounds or grammatically correct sentences. Their learning material was designed to make them feel good about themselves. boomers dismissed the value of building foundational confidence as a life lesson. They saw it as emblematic of the way enabling kids made them vulnerable, which in turn made them weak.
In reality, helping kids find confidence and inner strength sets them up to be successful adults. Marriage and family therapist Ann Naimark describes inner strength as something that “allows you to pursue your dreams and goals and live your life to the fullest.”
She notes that a person with inner strength “loves their body, mind, and spirit,” an act that depends on a person’s ability to deeply feel “their value and lovableness.” Someone with inner strength, she says, “Can bend with change and embrace it [and] can ask for help when they need it.”
Naimark explains that self-confidence is the basis for building inner strength, and the first step to finding your confidence is acknowledging and naming what you feel. “This is primary, essential to knowing, loving yourself, and having a strong core,” she reveals. This initial recognition of yourself, as is, sets you up to weather the storms that will inevitably come your way.
“Life brings us challenges — sometimes unexpected, maybe painful,” Naimark notes. “Can we bend with them, can we go with the flow and let ourselves move with them, feel the feelings, and adapt to what’s happening without breaking?”
Confident people can go wherever the tides take them without fear, something that’s truly courageous and totally worth being taught at school.
6. ‘Everyone is special and unique’
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A pivotal thing Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes was the idea that they were all completely special and unique. This idea rooted its way deep into Gen X’s psyche and became the basis for the participation trophies boomers love to complain about.
Schools went out of their way to uphold the mindset that everyone deserved to win. Teachers gave grades based on effort, not just test results, which recognized perseverance over how accurate a student’s academic performance was. In keeping with the ego-boosting concept that everyone was special, Gen X was told to “be yourself, no matter what.”
The blatant celebration of every individual Gen X child caused friction among boomers, who maintained the mentality that fitting in was the only way to find success. Boomers still roll their eyes at the continuation of the “everyone is special” thought process, even though the idea took hold for the millennials and Gen Z’s that came after Gen X.
7. ‘Learning should be fun’
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Gen X was taught that learning should be fun, something that would make boomers roll their eyes. Boomers walked uphill, both ways, in the snow, to school, and they certainly weren’t taught in any way that emphasized learning as a joyful act.
Boomers were taught by rote learning, a traditional teaching method that’s been used for centuries. According to this method, students repeat information until they’ve memorized it. Rote learning allows for students to quickly access facts and say them out loud, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand what they’ve learned.
The repetition involved in rote learning can strengthen students’ memorization and lay a foundation for grasping more complicated information. Rote learning might be an effective way to teach the alphabet and multiplication tables, but it puts priority on recalling information automatically, not providing a deeper understanding of any particular concept.
Studies have shown that facts learned with rote memorization are only retained temporarily. While a typical Boomer classroom centered rote learning, Gen X was taught to think in a meaningful way and challenge themselves, with lessons from Sesame Street, The Electric Company, and Schoolhouse Rock shaping many of their fondest, most educational memories.
8. ‘Typing skills are the key to success’
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Another thing Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes was the refrain that learning how to type was the key to success. Of the many things that have disappeared from classrooms since Gen X was in school, cursive writing is a big one, much to the dismay of boomers.
Gen X and their millennial counterparts learned their way around a computer keyboard in typing class, which was designed to set them up for a digitally-focused future. They learned how to type without watching how their hands moved. In more technologically advanced schools, students even learned basic computer programming.
While boomers rolled their eyes at the insistence that Gen X level up their typing game, it turned out that they were wrong to be so dismissive. Every academic assignment and piece of professional correspondence is typed out and sent through the channels of the internet like magic, showing that boomers shouldn’t have been so quick to disregard Gen X’s typing skills.
9. ‘Home Ec is optional’
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By the time boomers left school and Gen X students entered it, one class in particular was being phased out of the national curriculum. Home Economics became a relic of the past, much like Pluto’s categorization as a planet and any number of topics Gen X learned that turned out to be disproven.
Without Home Ec, Gen X missed out on learning various traditional life skills that could have been helpful to have under their belts. A largely problematic aspect of Home Ec was how it upheld rigidly gendered ideas around the roles men and women were assigned, yet Gen X and every younger generation that followed weren’t taught basic elements of care and maintenance.
Knowing how to sew, cook, and balance a budget were skills that boomers acquired at school, which is why Home Ec being offered to Gen X as an optional elective would make boomers roll their eyes.
10. ‘Creative expression matters as much as science and math’
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Another thing Gen X was taught in school that would make boomers roll their eyes is the idea that creative expression through art and music was on an equal level to learning math and science. Boomers were raised during the height of the space race. In July, 1969, they sat on the living room floor surrounded by their whole families, watching Apollo 11 land on the moon.
That pivotal moment in outer space etched itself into their minds forever. It laid the basis for the widely held boomer belief that science was the most valuable subject and anything else was purely frivolous. Their laser focus on learning science and math made sense for their era of education, but by the time Gen X got to school, creative subjects mattered just as much.
Boomers rolled their eyes as kids played Hot Cross Buns on the recorder and splatter painted like they were modern incarnations of Jackson Pollock, but the emphasis on creativity expanded their minds and gave them an outlet for personal expression that held immense value.
11. ‘History isn’t just names and dates’
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Gen X was taught that history was more than only names and dates, something that would make boomers roll their eyes. In keeping their rote memorization kick, boomers learned history by way of important dates and the names of men who pillaged entire nations. The way that Gen X was taught to think about history captured a drastic shift in learning style, as they analyzed social movements and looked at behavioral patterns on a large scale basis.
It’s highly possible that boomers viewed Gen X’s historical education as too complicated for what it was worth, but by looking deep into the past and discussing how people related to each other, Gen X explored all the ways that history had a beating heart, still.
12. ‘Correct spelling doesn’t matter if you have good ideas’
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Gen X kids who whined and fidgeted through spelling bees were scolded by Boomer parents, who repeatedly told them how important spelling would be for their futures, only to witness the dominance of the digital age.
The shift away from correct spelling as an academic necessity would make boomers roll their eyes, only now, that prophecy has mostly come true. The days of writing essays in cursive, on loose-leaf paper with number 2 pencils, disappeared into the ether. Automatic spell-check claimed its rightful place as queen, ruling over any writing assignment.
Gen X kids were taught many things in school that would make boomers roll their eyes. The differences in their academic experiences highlight how far we’ve come, and how far we can still go.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.
