The 1960s

I gave an exam yesterday and offered three bonus questions at the end. The first one, and by far the simplest, was, "What invention in the 1960s changed the dating game permanently?" Now, we have had an extended discussion about the cultural progression of courtship, flirtation, and dating. We talked a lot about how this invention changed cultural attitudes about sex, marriage, and so on. Guessed the answer yet? I would assume that you have. It's The Pill, of course. Birth control. And it DID change the game. While the majority of my students who made attempts at the bonus questions answered correctly, I got three young ladies who answered me so:

Q: What invention in the 1960s changed the dating game permanently?

A: The car and having places to go for the first time

Sigh.

To give them some credit, we did talk about the car and urbanization as formative to dating, but at the turn of the 20th century, NOT in the 1960s. I'm sure this was careless error on their part, as they did well on the rest of the exam, but I have a good time imagining the original Model T tooting around the set of Mad Men.