PROTESTS at school board meetings are nothing new (Shutterstock).

Ever have the feeling that you’re reliving something from your past? 

Geez, I hope not. There was actually a time that – outside of jeans – a man simply could not buy pants that were not flared. *Shudder*

At recent meetings of the Garden Grove Unified School District Board of Education, capacity crowds showed up with signs and anger to protest against gender-related issues in general, and the as-yet unknown fate of a high school teacher who was somehow involved with that.

I got flashbacks to the late 1960s and early ’70s when the board room was filled to capacity with signs and anger to protest a hot-button issue of the time: “sensitivity training.”

According to one definition, sensitivity training is “group training that focuses on making employees and employers aware of their attitudes, behaviors and their impact on themselves and others.”

At that time, the John Birch Society was strong in Orange County and it was among other groups calling sensitivity training a new form of “brainwashing” which was probably encouraged or originated by communists.

Now, at the last two board meetings, board members have been accused of being Commies (and some worse stuff). I’ve been observing the school board since I was in high school and there were certainly a few trustees over the years who may not have had both oars in the water, but those tended to be the ones who thought communism was people living in hippie communes.

The district back then denied conducting any such stuff, but that didn’t cut any ice with the folks with the signs. They were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it any more.  It’s fun to be angry. It beats staying home and doing the laundry (we had clotheslines back then).

Until, of course, it was overtaken by a controversy far more dire: fighting the crisis of long sideburns on boys or short skirts on girls.

When will it all end, or come back? All you have to do is wait.