Commentary: Why nostalgia for the 1950s of ‘Leave it to Beaver' persists in America's religious right

Anyone looking to drench themselves in the 1950s nostalgia currently favored by the religious right in America should consider watching 'Leave It to Beaver' stoned. Which is what I did with an old friend in the 1980s while attending graduate school at the University of California-Berkeley.
Nostalgia for the '50s — that land beyond time where Catholic traditionalists such as Notre Dame political theorist and post-liberal prophet Patrick Deneen dwell — idealizes imaginary communities of yore such as Mayfield, the setting for 'Leave it to Beaver,' where the values of faith, family, friends and flag all flourished.
According to this narrative, late-stage liberalism and the globalization of markets, with their characteristic rootlessness, dissolve this communal existence.
When I was at Berkeley in the 1980s, a large number of my childhood friends from Princeton, New Jersey, somehow found their way to the Bay Area. One afternoon, one of my Princeton buddies was house-sitting for an uncle in a Bay Area suburb. The uncle, whom I'll call Uncle Jim, had been my Cub Scout pack leader in Princeton when I was in elementary school.
One sun-drenched afternoon, my friend and I settled into a couch, he rolled some joints and we flipped the TV to 'Leave It to Beaver' reruns. The series, on the air from 1957 and 1963, is a resonant symbol of '50s nostalgia, one to which conservative Catholics have returned as a template for modeling natural law.
To Catholics who moved to the suburbs in the '50s and '60s, 'Leave It to Beaver' was a 'medieval morality play,' as Jerry Mathers, the Catholic actor who played young protagonist Theodore 'Beaver' Cleaver, put it. The show was a guide for young souls more tethered to television than to the suburban church.
Michael De Sapio, writing in the online journal The Imaginative Conservative in 2017, states that, according to Mather, Beaver Cleaver 'repeatedly succumbed to temptation, suffered the consequences, and was guided back on the path of virtue.' In other words, these archetypal storylines and characters represent a moral imagination that 'elevates us to first principles as it guides us upwards towards virtue and wisdom and redemption,' in the words of American philosopher Russell Kirk.
De Sapio continues: 'The emphasis on decorum and good manners in the Cleaver family conveyed a vision of the good, true and beautiful.'
Mathers shared that the casting directors for the show selected him to play Beaver when they asked where he would prefer to be after they noticed he was uneasy at the audition. His guileless reply: his Cub Scouts den meeting. Notably, the mission of the Scouts is to 'prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Law.'
Which returns us to Uncle Jim, my former Cub Scouts leader. He was an electrical engineer who ended his first marriage and moved to California in the 1970s, where he married a woman several decades younger and shed the trappings of his formerly decorous identity.
'Leave It to Beaver' mirrored and shaped the aspirations of millions of Catholics moving to the suburbs after World War II, and it has lingered as an idealized — and exclusive — depiction of the American Dream. The only nonwhite characters to appear in the show's 234 episodes were a Black man exiting a dairy truck in the episode 'Eddie, the Businessman' (1962) and a Black actress who plays a maid in the 1963 episode 'The Parking Attendants.'
Within months of its final episode in June 1963 — following the March on Washington, D.C., in August led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the November assassination of President John F. Kennedy — 'Leave It to Beaver' had become a charming artifact of mid-century optimism, more a product of nostalgia and romantic imagination than a realistic model for America's future.
_____
Peter H. Schwartz writes at the broad intersection of philosophy, politics, history and religion. He publishes the Wikid World newsletter on Substack.
_____

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Boston Globe

11 hours ago

• Boston Globe

That time I was headed nowhere, fast

Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up School was a break from work on the farm and on trucks, and I wanted to laugh and run wild. Still, I wonder what difference it might have made if any one of my teachers had given me a tape measure, pencils, and paper and sent me out to measure everything in the playground or draw the birds in the sky that I saw there. But that just wasn't how teachers taught boys like me. I suspect they had little doubt as to the type of man I would become — the kind I worked with on ranches and construction sites, ones with clichéd blue-collar traits, both good and bad. Advertisement My father was among them. A professional country music musician, a trucker, and operator of heavy equipment, he was also a drinker and a fighter. He espoused racist views that made no sense to me, since I'd only ever been around white people, and some of them were dangerous crooks who'd spent time in prison. My father was also the one man I spent much of my young life with — under trucks, tending farm animals, riding around in pickups. Advertisement I drank with or around him in my late teens. I spent endless hours with him as he worked and drank with other men. I often witnessed his raw violence — toward helpless animals on our farm, toward a sister's boyfriend who'd sneaked into the house. I learned that emotions can be dangerous. When I was 8, after weeks of being attacked by a rooster that left me bloodied, my father locked me in a barn with it. I had a large stick. The rooster, his spurs. I knocked him out of the air and would have killed him, but my father stopped me. He respected that rooster and called me 'Rooster' ever after. By the end of my junior year of high school in 1981, I had a grade-point average in the low D range, poor attendance, lunch time drinking, and pervasive discipline problems, including fights in and out of school. Like millions of American boys and young men, past and present, I was well on my way to becoming a member of a Advertisement So how am I writing this after a 30-year career in journalism instead of a few stints behind bars and the kind of hard-luck life I'd seen so much of? Rebellion, and a science fiction novel. As my senior year approached, my father wanted me to delay going back to school so I could work for him. Ambivalent as I was about school, I knew that if I did this, I would never go back, and I had the vague but motivating sense that I wanted something else for myself, something more. I rebelled by going back to school. Later that year, I moved out of my family home. I met the girl who has now been my partner for more than 40 years. I made guy friends who introduced me to punk rock and wild, nonviolent escapades with bikes, trampolines, junk cars, and conversation. And then I met Mark, who gave me the first novel I ever read. I had noticed that our social studies teacher genuinely engaged with Mark's challenging questions. Skinny and studious, Mark appeared more rebellious to me than those of us roughhousing, flirting, drunk or stoned or both, giggling at the back of the classroom. I was curious about Mark's ability to so constructively question authority. We spoke a few times about it, and one afternoon, he gave me ' Advertisement Briefly, 'Orphans' is about a young man, Hugh Hoyland, who discovers that his world exists inside a spaceship. This reality was hidden from him by myths and lies passed down to him that his own willful ignorance perpetuated. Only when he encounters the freaks of that world — banished mutants, the readers of forbidden books, and thinkers — does Hugh understand that there is an entire universe outside his world. There could not have been a more apt metaphor for my cramped, small, myth-laden life. The novel sparked something in me. I began to read and study. I participated in a week-long event for high schoolers on a college campus. I figured out how to get student loans and Pell Grants. I figured out how to get into the community college in Billings and then the University of Montana, where I studied philosophy and eventually earned an MFA in creative writing. For me, education was an act of defiance. It freed me from the confines and contours of a destiny as a hard and angry man, and it made me want to earn access to the world beyond it. But I had to discover my own path to the power of language and knowledge. There's a lot of talk about boys these days. How they're in trouble. How they're toxic. I hope that as we focus on them, we don't force-feed them our expectations or beat them down like dangerous animals. I hope we give them the time and space to be rebellious and build themselves up with education that welcomes them. It's a lot of trouble to let boys be boys, but I believe in us. Advertisement

Buzz Feed

16 hours ago

• Buzz Feed

The Hidden Dark Side Of Gifted Programs Revealed

I don't remember precisely when I first heard the word 'gifted,' but it must have been in early elementary school. I do remember being pulled out of my first-grade class and led to the fifth-grade classroom, where a teacher told me to choose a chapter book that was 'more at my level.' I appreciated the chance to choose from all sorts of new books, but it marked an early example of what would eventually be both a privilege and a curse: my foray into being 'set apart' academically from my fellow classmates. By the time I reached middle school, the gifted and talented program in my district had taken wing. The timing makes sense: In 1998, many American schools were provided with official K-12 standards for so-called 'gifted education' by the National Association of Gifted Children. While the NAGC first promoted advanced academic programming in the 1950s, its work in the late '80s and '90s represented a more structured approach to educating students who were found to be gifted. K-12 gifted education standards were preceded by the passage of the Jacob Javits Gifted and Talented Act in 1988, which secured funding to 'orchestrate a coordinated program of scientifically based research, demonstration projects, innovative strategies, and similar activities that build and enhance the ability of elementary and secondary schools to meet the special educational needs of gifted and talented students.' In those early days, my experience with Gifted & Talented (or G/T, as we fondly called it) was almost entirely positive. Our G/T class was tucked away in a windowless classroom whose walls we decorated with silly drawings and posters. Several of my close friends were also in the program, and there was nothing better than getting to hang out with them for an hour or two per day while working on our largely self-assigned curriculum. Our teacher was warm and encouraging, always pushing each of us to incorporate our individual interests and skills into projects. In fact, nearly all the teachers I worked with in G/T were engaged educators who genuinely wanted their students to thrive. I'm forever grateful for their personal guidance, regardless of my later reflections on the program. In so many ways, G/T was a safe place at school — a place where I could be my true (weird) self and engage in more self-directed learning. But there was a troubling flip side to the G/T experience that took me years to unpack. From what I could gather, most students qualified for the program based on standardized test scores. While the NAGC defines gifted pupils as 'those who demonstrate outstanding levels of aptitude (defined as an exceptional ability to reason and learn) or competence (documented performance or achievement in top 10% or rarer) in one or more domains,' it seems inevitable that many kids would be excluded from gifted education for factors beyond their control. In her 2016 book Engaging and Challenging Gifted Students: Tips for Supporting Extraordinary Minds in Your Classroom, Jenny Grant Rankin, Ph.D., outlines gaps in gifted education. Nonwhite students, socioeconomically disadvantaged kids, girls, and those classified as English language learners are disproportionately excluded from gifted and talented programming, Rankin reports. She also cites a 2016 study by Jason A. Grissom and Christopher Redding that found that Black students were 50% less likely to be considered for gifted and talented programs than their white counterparts, even when both groups recorded similar standardized test scores. What's more, students of color were less likely to be labeled gifted when their teachers were white. In G/T, I learned quickly that much of my self-esteem came from academic praise and approval from adults. The 'gifted' label seeped into everything I did and was a stumbling block at times — if I struggled to master a concept in math class or didn't understand a question on a social studies test, I'd avoid asking for help. After all, I was gifted. I shouldn't need help with anything, right? It felt like my so-called 'natural' giftedness should pre-qualify me to succeed in any endeavor, which led me to prematurely give up on new hobbies later in life when I didn't immediately feel like a master. And when a project in a non-G/T class earned anything less than an A, I often found myself in tears and seeking reassurance from my family and friends that I was 'still smart.' The question of 'potential' was another overwhelming aspect of G/T. Gifted kids at my school were encouraged to pursue all sorts of fields — with the unspoken message that no matter what we pursued, we were expected to be excellent. Most of us went on to take as many Advanced Placement classes in high school as our schedules would allow, driven by the sense that we simply had to be high achievers. Academic excellence would translate directly to excellence in career and life in general, many of us thought. It wasn't until college that I first experienced the lingering impacts of the gifted education experience. Suddenly, I was a very small fish in the massive pond that is the University of Michigan. I wasn't the 'smart kid' anymore— I was one of thousands of 'smart kids,' all of whom had ambitions on par with or beyond my own. College instructors rarely offered direct praise, and the occasional B in a class became commonplace. When I couldn't maintain perfection, I felt like I was failing the version of myself I was supposed to become. Unsurprisingly, college was also when my mental health took its first major nosedive. Alongside a handful of personal issues, my sudden sense of academic invisibility had triggered a crisis. My path felt unclear. Wasn't I supposed to get to college, breeze through with perfect grades, and immediately jump into an impressive career? When graduation rolled around, I got a dose of validation by heading off on a Fulbright teaching grant to Malaysia, but my life beyond that looked so blurry. It took a long time to admit that I didn't want to go to grad school, which felt shameful. Without academic validation or 'high achievement' on the table, would I be untethered forever? In the decade since, I've drawn connections between my most plaguing anxieties and my early education. It's taken practice to feel more comfortable with accepting professional criticism or admitting when I'm not sure how to do something at work. I see how my G/T years merged self-worth with accolades and grades, and I feel sad for the younger version of myself — along with other 'formerly gifted' peers — who internalized so many false measures of success. At times, adulthood feels like an ongoing battle to remind myself that I'm a valuable, worthy person, regardless of outward achievements. I'm not alone: In recent years, the 'formerly gifted kid' trope has become something of a meme, with TikTokers cracking dark jokes about their lingering sense of anxiety, perfectionism and perceived failure to live up to parents' and teachers' expectations. It's funny because it's true. Data shows that while gifted programs can result in better long-term academic outcomes and college success for some students, these benefits still reflect inequities. A 2021 study by Grissom and Redding found that small associations existed between participation in gifted programming and long-term achievement in math and reading, but there was no evidence to support a correlation between gifted kids and their general engagement with school. Most glaringly, even these small positive associations were skewed toward higher-income white pupils, with low-income or Black gifted students excluded from long-term academic gains. What's more, this research doesn't begin to explore gifted education's extended impact on social and emotional development for all participants. I don't regret my time as a gifted kid, but I do wish G/T had offered more care for students' mental health and more inclusivity for children who didn't fit the program's relatively narrow mold of exceptionalism. I wish I could unlearn the idea that outward praise equals true success, and measure excellence in the form of learning for learning's sake. Above all, I wish we'd had an environment where every single student was reminded how smart and talented they were, and given the tools to explore their gifts — no matter what form they took.

Chicago Tribune

17 hours ago

• Chicago Tribune

Sister Rosemary Connelly, Misericordia head, helped bring dignity to special needs community

Sister Rosemary Connelly spent her life working to change the standard of care for the developmentally disabled, making a positive impact on the lives of countless individuals through her decades-long leadership of the Chicago nonprofit Misericordia Heart of Mercy. Well-connected and equally versed in administration, fundraising and finding common ground with the powerful and influential, Connelly, who was part of the Sisters of Mercy Catholic order, took over Misericordia in 1969 and grew it from a residence for 132 children under age 6 — 69 of whom had Down syndrome — to a full-fledged campus in the North Side West Ridge neighborhood, serving 620 residents. As Misericordia's executive director for 52 years, Connelly expanded the nonprofit to serve adult residents, who then have been given opportunities to work — a significant departure from before Misericordia, when the developmentally disabled had few opportunities to learn how to be responsible employees or improve social skills. 'She was one of those people who created something unique and incredibly valuable,' said Scott Early, a Misericordia parent and the co-chair of the Misericordia Family Association. 'The uniqueness aspect of it is, it's not just caregiving, but she developed a system where you're guiding people who need this guidance to have a life. And while we all need guidance and many of us get it at church or school, the special-needs kids need a little more, and she saw that and provided it.' Connelly 94, died of natural causes on June 19 at her home on Misericordia's West Ridge campus, according to a statement from Misericordia. She had recently been in hospice care. Raised on the West Side, Connelly joined the Sisters of Mercy at age 18. She taught in several Catholic schools while continuing her studies, earning a bachelor's degree from St. Xavier University in 1959. She picked up a master's degree in sociology from St. Louis University in 1966 and a master's degree in social work from Loyola University Chicago in 1969. In 1969, Connelly was called to lead Misericordia, which means 'mercy' or 'compassion' in Latin, as its executive director. At that time, Misericordia, which had started in 1921 and was managed by the Sisters of Mercy as an agency of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, operated the Misericordia Home for Infants on West 47th Street in the Southwest Side Brighton Park neighborhood. The facility adjoined a maternity hospital where Catholic women pregnant out of wedlock would deliver babies. The Sisters of Mercy then typically placed those babies with adoptive parents. However, those with developmental or physical disabilities were not put up for adoption and instead remained at the Misericordia Home for Infants until age 6, when they were sent to state-run mental institutions. Connelly immediately changed Misericordia's practices. She stopped shipping children to state facilities, and she launched programs to give Misericordia residents a path to greater dignity and meaning. It was a marked change from Misericordia's earlier lack of services for children with disabilities. 'She was assigned as a 39-year-old nun to care for society's discarded — babies with developmental disabilities — until they were old enough to commit to state institutions, where they would have been warehoused and forgotten,' said longtime political strategist and former Tribune reporter David Axelrod, who is the parent of a Misericordia resident. 'But she was determined that these children and others like them would live lives of dignity and joy and purpose. And through her caring heart, iron will and the canny and charm of a Chicago tavern owner's daughter, she built this miraculous community that had touched the lives of thousands of men and women, and their families. She was truly a living saint.' 'I believe children have the right to a good life,' Connelly told the Tribune's Eleanor Page in 1977. 'Our secret is our staff.' In 1976, Misericordia expanded its operations to the former Angel Guardian Orphanage, on 22 acres in West Ridge, with Connelly, 39 children and 35 dedicated staff members moving there. The orphanage had closed after losing government funding as the state had lost faith in the orphanage model of care in favor of foster homes. Connelly substantially expanded Misericordia's services — and, the number of individuals it cares for — because Connelly, her staff and thousands of volunteers together raised millions of dollars a year in private money to supplement government support. Over the ensuing decades, Connelly was behind Misericordia's broadened services, including taking on adult residents starting in 1983 and purchasing and operating group care homes for developmentally disabled adults. The West Ridge campus also expanded to become more than 30 acres, with the additions of a restaurant, a gift shop and a bakery, all of which provide places for Misericordia residents to work. 'The day I walked into Misericordia, I knew it was God's work, and it was one of the most beautiful gifts of my life,' Connelly said in 2016 at the annual Heart of Mercy Ball, according to a 2016 Tribune article. 'We stress abilities, not disabilities, and feel that everyone deserves a life of dignity.' Connelly was known for her success at working with politicians and deep-pocketed individuals to benefit Misericordia, whether through gaining grants or government assistance. Connelly frequently downplayed her reputation and aptitude for knowing how to ask for large donations from important individuals. 'I'm a simple Sister of Mercy,' she told the Tribune's Mary Schmich in 2011. 'I told my parents at 18 that I wanted to become a nun to live a quiet, unassuming life of service to the Lord. This 'powerful woman the politicians are afraid of'? I have no idea where that came from.' Early, however, noted that 'for 40, 45, 50 years, she marshaled the necessary support whenever she needed.' Lois Gates, who worked alongside Connelly for almost 55 years and retired recently after three years as the Misericordia Foundation's executive director, called Connelly 'our champion.' 'To meet her was to be truly captivated — she greeted you with a warm welcome, like you were the only one in the room,' Gates said. 'I know when I started working at Misericordia and became one of her charges, she had me at hello. She was the kind of person who had a sacredness about her, and she really really cared about our children and their adults and the services they receive.' One of Connelly's signature moves was to provide visitors a personal tour of Misericordia. She observed in 2011 to the Tribune that 'it's a good, loving place our world needs so desperately. When political people come here, once they take the tour, they're a believer.' Gates also highlighted Connelly's enthusiasm at showcasing Misericordia and its residents to outsiders. 'To tour Misericordia, your life would never be the same,' Gates said. Today, Misericordia serves 620 children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 'For more than seven decades as a religious Sister of Mercy, Sister Rosemary gave proof to the principle that every person is created in God's image and worthy of respect and dignity,' said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Chicago's archbishop, in a statement. 'A fearless pioneer in making that core value real in the lives of the people she served and their families, she created innovative programs and gathered the resources to bring them to life.' Connelly retired in 2021 after 52 years as executive director but continued working, taking on a new role as chairman of the newly formed Misericordia Foundation. In 2023, Connelly was awarded the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal for outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society. 'I live in a good world,' she told the Tribune's Mary Schmich in 2011. 'I'm really convinced this life is only a brief moment in time, given to us by God.' Connelly is survived by a sister, Kathryn Connolly ((CQ)). A visitation will take place from 1 to 8 p.m. on Monday, June 23 at Misericordia Home, 6300 N. Ridge Ave., Chicago. A funeral service will take place at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 24 at Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N. State St., Chicago.