TeachRock

Entry Ticket Activity:

1. Have students read the selected biographies in Handout 1 – Ronald Reagan & Jerry Garcia. Ask each student to arrive to class ready to share as many similarities and differences about each that they can identify.

Motivational Activity:

1. Invite students to take turns sharing one similarity and one difference they identified between Reagan and Garcia. Write the responses on the board at the front of the classroom, organized into columns of “Similarities” and “Differences.” Save the responses to revisit and review at the end of the lesson. Ask students:
   • Noticing in particular the differences between Reagan and Garcia, might they have a different set of values that inform their individual lives? What might those values be?
   • Might their supporters also have a different set of values?
   • Could those who approve of Reagan’s political views also support Garcia’s artistic work?

Procedure:

1. Play, Clip 1, “Not the Band, but Deadheads.” Ask students:
   • According to Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, why did journalists first want to cover the Grateful Dead in the 1980s?
   • At Grateful Dead concerts, what did journalists find to be more interesting than the band?
   • Who are the Deadheads?
   • How might the Deadheads be different from other fans of the Grateful Dead?
   • Why might someone want to be a Deadhead?
   • Considering the 1980s Deadheads seen in the clip, how might you characterize their community according to age, gender, economic status, etc.? Is it difficult to characterize Deadheads by this criteria? Why or why not? What might these characterizations say about Deadheads and the Grateful Dead in the 1980s?
   • Might the Deadheads remind you of any other fangroup communities? If so, which ones? Might these groups share similar characteristics?
     

     Image: Wikipedia

2. Display, Image 1, 1980 US Presidential Election Electoral College Map (Numbers attached to each state are the respective electoral votes that a candidate received for that state). Ask students:
   • Looking at the image, which candidate won the election? How did you determine the winner? What do the numbers listed with each state signify?
   • Did the winning candidate win by a significant amount in comparison to their opponent?
   • Might candidate Ronald Reagan’s victory lead you to conclude that voters supported his campaign themes and values over those of his opponent? Do you know any of those values?
3. Play students Clip 2, President Reagan’s Radio Address to the Nation on the American Family. Ask students:
   • What might President Reagan mean when he says that we may not be able to “go back to the old family ways”? What might those “family ways” be according to him? Do you think his version of “family ways” are the same as others’? Why might he be nostalgic for “the old family ways”?
   • Why might President Reagan feel it necessary to “preserve family values”? How might his list of “family values” (faith, honesty, responsibility, tolerance, kindness, and love) contrast with those of the Deadheads? Might both Reagan and the Deadheads share some of those values? If so, which ones? Why?
   • What might President Reagan mean when he says that his administration will keep “trying to create a better life for those who follow” those values? What particular groups of people might he be referring to as followers of those values? Might he be excluding those that don’t “follow” those values? Might the Deadheads be excluded from the group of “those who follow” Reagan’s values? If so, why?
   • Considering President Reagan’s address in total, how might his views contrast with those of the Deadheads that you just learned about in the previous video? Why might they contrast each other? What might be biasing your opinion?
4. Distribute Handout 2 – The Television Family in the ‘80s and organize students into small groups to have them discuss and answer the questions in the handout. Students will need to select a scribe from their group to notate the group’s answers. Once completed, ask students to present their group’s answers to the class. After group presentations, ask students:
   • Do you think all of the families from these television shows followed the family values (faith, honesty, responsibility, tolerance, kindness, and love) President Reagan expressed in his radio address from 1984? If so, why? If not, why not?
   • Do you think a family must identify as “conservative” like President Reagan did in order to follow these values? Can you think of groups that aren’t families that may follow these values?
5. Display Image 2, Yuppie Handbook Cover. Explain to students that the character Alex Keaton from the 1980s show Family Ties would proudly identify (and be labeled by society in the 1980s) as a Yuppie. Provide the background on the term by explaining that the term “Yuppie” was purposefully borrowed and modified from the 1960s counterculture term “Hippie” as a statement against the values of the counterculture. Ask students:
   • What impressions might you get from this illustration of Yuppies?
   • Their belongings are specifically labeled with brands — do you get the idea that these are the “right” or “ideal” things to do, own, wear, etc.? What would be considered the opposite?
   • Might a Yuppie only be from a particular demographic? Can you list the characteristics of that demographic?
   • Are we supposed to aspire to be like Yuppies? Why or why not?
   • Why might the Deadheads want to reject this culture? Might it be possible to be a Deadhead and a Yuppie?
   • Does the figure of the Yuppie exist today? If so, what characteristics might define them and how might they be similar or different than the Yuppies of the 1980s?
6. Tell students they will now view a clip where the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia specifically comments on the band’s fan culture during the 1980s and how the Deadhead experience of following the band on tour from show to show had a particular significance during this decade. Play Clip 3, “New Lame America.” Ask students:
   • As the clip explains, the band’s following in the 1980s began to include young people who weren’t even alive during the Dead’s early years. Why might Grateful Dead music and culture attract new fans in the 1980s?
   • Why might these new fans in the 1980s become Deadheads and embrace the traditions of that particular community: following the Grateful Dead on tour, communing with other Deadheads and fans of the group, and attending as many shows as possible?
   • How might the social and cultural norms promoted by President Reagan during the 1980s have influenced people to embrace alternative lifestyles and communities like the Deadheads?
   • Might the appeal of these alternative lifestyles and communities contrast with Reagan’s defined “family values”? Why or why not?
   • What did Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia think was appealing about the band? (Prompt students to recognize that Garcia argued that the Grateful Dead cultural experience might offer an opportunity for “adventure.”)
   • Why might young people in the 1980s in particular have been looking for an adventure? Might their seeking of adventure have been influenced by President Reagan’s promotion of “following” “family values”? Might it be possible to have an adventure and still follow those values?
7. Distribute, Handout 3 – “Communing with the Dead,” and read as a class. Ask students:
   • Considering the content in the article and President Reagan’s list of family values (faith, honesty, responsibility, tolerance, kindness, and love), might the author have been able to follow those values and also be a Deadhead? Why or why not?
   • What particular aspect of the author’s life noted in the article might conclude that she does follow those values?
   • Considering the content in the article and the previously viewed video clip, “New Lame America,” might it still be possible to have an “adventure” in America? What else was the author seeking with her journey besides an adventure?
   • It what ways might the author view her Deadhead experience besides traveling the country to attend music concerts?
   • Are there any other cultural traditions that you can think of that require someone to make a journey for specific purposes?

Summary Activity:

1. Deadheads are still around today, but how do you think the Deadhead phenomenon would be covered in the news if it were new today? What similarities do you see between the cultural and political climate of today and the 1980s? How do Deadheads relate to today’s “Stan” culture?

Extension Activities:

1. Read “My Disciplinarian Father, the Deadhead” (Mel magazine, June 13, 2016). Write an essay answering the following question: What do you take away from the article’s portrait of Grateful Dead fandom, family and community, and how the values followed by the father in the article relate to Deadhead culture and President Reagan’s promotion of family values?

Handout 1 – Ronald Reagan & Jerry Garcia Handout 2 – The Television Family in the ‘80s