When my three sons were little this was my least favorite time of the year. School supply time. I bought the basics all summer for awhile, but then I had to stop because the lists became so specific that I was wasting my money. Back then we didn’t get the lists until right before school started, when you pre registered your kids.
So, a week or two before school I was frantically trying to find specific brands of pencils, pens, notebooks, binders, glues, folders (and those had to be specific colors too), crayons, dictionaries, calculators, and on and on. Sometimes teachers had items on the list not even made by manufacturers listed.
And I, who learned how to prove theorems and construct pentagrams and calculate sines, cosines, and tangents all without ever owning a calculator by the time I graduated high school, I resented those calculators. I knew then that they weren’t aids that helped my young sons think and learn, at that age they were crutches.
No one will ever convince me otherwise. I needed calculators in college level math and physics. I was so much better off without them in school. Believe it or not, when I took my first trigonometry class at college level, the instructor would not allow us to use calculators on an exam, and I was fine with that. When I sat down to take those exams, because I understood triangles, sines, cosines, and tangents, I could remember and use any formula I needed myself, specific to each problem.
When I took chemistry in college there was even a calculator for that. I was the only one in the class who didn’t have one, because I couldn’t afford it and the tuition too. My kids were in high school then, and on the way to school one of my sons drilled me on the elements, and on the formulas and basics I had to know. I was the only one in that class to get an A, and the next year when my son took chemistry in high school he easily made an A as well.
Calculators are useful, but we have allowed them and computers to become crutches, and critical thinking skills have suffered. I learned to problem solve from math classes, a skill that has served me well in all areas of my life. Could it be possible that some of the problems our children have with anxiety these days is partially caused by the fact that we no longer teach them the tools to cope with life, as well as solve an Algebra problem?
The ability to think logically and analytically is a crucial skill, and we need it. Maybe we have a bunch of young adults running around feeling threatened by actual free and different thought and expression and opinions because they only know how to emote, not really think deeply.
So, one of my two main pet peeves with the schools, and teaching, was ridiculous school supply lists, and the second was projects. I still believe that some of the stupid, expensive projects kids have to make are just excuses for teachers not to teach while kids construct fake nuclear devices out of the $200 worth of materials I had to find back in the day when there was no Walmart after work. And no Amazon. I’m sure now it’s all climate change model stuff, and back to the topic of the post now, that can be for another time, Stupid Expensive School Projects.
I just saw a comment from one parent about her kid having to buy one specific and expensive Thesaurus because the teacher loved it. It was a deluxe model and cost way more than the basic thesaurus that would have been fine. I also saw parents comment on a number of items their kids never even used during the school year.
Several parents named a protractor. Good grief, sometimes I used mine so much that it would break and my mom would get me another one. And I was in junior high school then, what they call middle school now, at one of the worst schools in the city. I’m just guessing, but I think I probably learned more then, at that school, than private schools often teach now.
And I base that opinion partially on my own kids parochial school education. Often, I demanded that they show their work on math problems, rather than just the answer. I made them stick with units, knowing that just a numerical answer without a unit of measure was jibberish. I made them re-write English assignments and compositions, even when teachers accepted less than stellar work.
And those skills I used to push and tutor my own kids, most of them I learned by junior high school from good teachers, not in the college classes I later took. Indeed, I was often shocked in college classes at how little some instructors cared for detail, accuracy, and good sentences and paragraphs. When I was in school, if you had to write a paper for history class it was usually going to get almost as much scrutiny for form, punctuation, and spelling as the English teacher would give it. It made us better.
I used to be a manager at Staples, and I hated this time of year from the other side of the list, the retail employee trying to help frazzled parents on their ridiculous, demanding, and unnecessary school supply treasure hunt. One poor mother had the usual page long list, and in addition to all the specific supplies, paper towels, wipes, etc. listed, at the end the teacher had asked each parent for a cartridge for her laser printer, somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 if I remember correctly, on top of all the other stuff, including the scientific calculators that weren’t cheap.
This poor mother had tears in her eyes and was at the end of her rope when she saw what it was, and told me she had other children to supply as well. I told her to ignore the item and get what her kid had to have. I know teachers have no money in the school budgets for things like printer ink, and I know that they spend a lot of their own money on the classroom and kids. But parents are not able to be an open pocketbook either.
I well remember the frustration I felt at having three very different lists to fill at the last minute. I was spending at least $60 per kid in elementary school, and way more when they went to high school. That was a lot of money for us, and worse for many others.
Anyhow, I know lots of us here are grandparents, and help out, at least with money, on these lists. I thought it would be interesting to hear your experiences and strange items on the lists. Having googled this before doing my own post, as well as working at Staples, I know I’m not alone in hating this time of year, and the lists.
When I was a kid, we really went to school on the first day with a cigar box our mothers somehow cajoled out of the stores for us. In it we had a couple of those thick pencils you used for a couple of years when you were learning to write, a box of eight crayons, a brown bottle of Elmer’s glue, the kind with the sponge on the top, and scissors. That was it.
When I was in school (born in 1950), students went to school with nothing. We brought our books home on the first day of school so that we could cover them with the brown grocery bag paper. No plastic then! The school supplied all of the pencils, paper, etc. Also, for heaven’s sake, the teacher supplied cookies for our break time and unbelievably, no one had a peanut allergy.
We covered our books in those paper bags ins school too, all the way through high school for me.
Admittedly we sidestepped a lot of back-to-school anxiety by homeschooling, but both my brother and my husband had the as yet to be recognized ADD issues way back when, and we were seeing early signs of it in our young sons.
A calm environment with a flexible schedule, with lots of LEGO breaks, taught them to focus on the task at hand.
“ADD” and all it’s subsequent versions are horsepuckey. These so called conditions are due primarily to a high sugar-low exercise lifestyle people have with their kids today.
I guarantee if we took our son down to the publik skool camp they would, by the end of the first day, have him diagnosed with all sorts of BS. Then would come the attendant meds.
What crap.
Thank you Menagerie what a beautiful post.
As regards A.D.D.
Maybe, but my own
experience was a bit different from thesouthwasright.
I was one of three brothers, all had the same diet until 17 or so. Father died of alcoholism at 42,mother had long since gone.
Caring grandparents took over.
We three were above average competitive swimmers, soccer and volleyball players.
I despised school, couldn’t concentrate etc.
One brother excelled in school, and I was amazed and envious of his ability to concentrate.
The other, left school at twelve, hated the sitting, and droning on of the teachers, and other distractions.
He worked on a commercial fish boats,and tugs etc. Continued schooling on his own time and in his early forties earned his stripes and Pilots ocean going cruise ships, oil tankers and the like.
The three of us have done okay, all still married, all have adult children now.
Our two, one is A.D.D. the other not. Both are terrific they just need to be handled differently.
Both are athletes around 30, each likes “ the sugar” too much as do I.
Both are married have excellent careers, and each has gifted us with a grandson.
I have worked with many, many folks that struggle with A.D.D. or the A.D.H.D.
Socially we pick up on each other’s challenge, and laugh about it.
Is it sugar, lack of exercise, or the neurotic tendencies that many children of alcoholics have that contributes to A.D.D.
Who knows for sure?
But the revelation that I had A.D.D. in some form other was a “game changer”
Cheers to and God bless PDJT
I know that managing sugar has changed my life. The enemy in food is not fat. It’s sugar. This is what will pack on the pounds AND IT IS EVERYWHERE. I’m on a permanent keto diet and I feel great. It’s tough finding delicious low carb food but they are out there.
So what have I eliminated? Desserts obviously. No pasta, no bread, no fruit of any kind, no chinese, no thai, no mexican food.
Sorry this got slightly off track. Couldnt resist. Been on keto for two years. Under 30 carbs a day. It works. My message is: Stop counting calories and start counting carbs. A 2000 calorie, 30 carb diet a day is WAY better than 1200 calories 200 grams carb diet. I’m proof.
Children would have to be better off cutting carbs out of their diet.
Every ethnic group is different and how their diet has evolved. Eskimos had no carbs, but Asians almost all carbs. Back before the diets of different parts of the world went all over the world, it has affected people differently.
Nutrigenomics the study of genes and nutrition reveal these things. You can get tested and find a doc to interpret results. These are usually “functional” medicine types. Most Registered Dieticians are old school and don’t treat their clients with this.
Atkins noted this 40 years ago. Some of patients maintained an ideal weight on 100 grams of carb daily while others needed to stay below 30 grams carb daily.
100%! You probably are familiar with Dr Berg YouTube. The best source – and I’ve been researching this topic for years – for improving your health with keto, nutrition and intermittent fasting.
and the special government subsidies to the school to deliver all those “needed” services
Agreed, and parents who think their kids have ADD/ADHD here’s a clue, if your kid can sit and watch a movie that they really like or play a video game that they really like, they do not have ADD/ADHD!
The ability to concentrate and think through difficult problems has never been hurt by my addiction to sugar. Not that sugar is good for me, but it doesn’t give me ADD.
For reference, statins fog my memory and codeine fogs my thinking. And any doctor who still insists that I be dumb and/or forgetful after I inform them of MY side effects to their drugs loses MY business. I even had a doctor disbelieve me despite memory problems being listed as a possible side effect for statins.
Anyways, we are each different in many ways. Doctors believe pharmacists over patients. Yet every medication prescribed is treated as an experiment to determine and regulate the unique effects of that medicine on that patient. Which is also how the doctor makes money from prescribing medications.
Since you are their guinea pig even when prescribing approved medications, it must be easy for doctors to let you be a guinea pig for unapproved jabs. And they don’t believe any of your complaints if the pharmacist tells them differently.
Lots of that has applied to ADD. Have drug and follow up tests or observations, will diagnose and rake in the cash. And of course we will encourage schools to diagnose and use these drugs to control children. We still rake in the cash on the tests and observations.
Eat fish
I have it every day
Or take Omega fish oil
Durham school in the UK did a double blind study where they gave the kids of one class fish oil for 3 months and the other class nothing
The class that got fish oil(Omega 3) improved reading, maths,concentraion and behaviour
The they swopped over and same result
Parents feed their kids MuckDonalds because they are too lazy or poor.
Probably my biggest regret in life was not homeschooling my oldest son, who was truly a square peg in a round hole in school. He was diagnosed with ADD and then they changed it to ADHD later. I still don’t know if it is a real thing, or a catch all excuse to label hard to teach kids.
He was born when I was just 18. Now I could and would homeschool him and do well, but back then I totally lacked the confidence, the discipline, and the courage. I was too young when he was born, and he suffered for it. I’m still sorry for that.
It is one of the reasons why I get really angry at people who demand everyone homeschool. I could not have done it then, for the reasons listed, and more, including working. I have grandchildren who are autistic and need their classes, their therapies, and special help they get. I have friends who are good people but incapable of teaching or maintaining control of kids in a learning environment. Of course it’s a great option, often the best. But I have no respect or tolerance for people who cannot or will not consider that not everyone can juggle life to fit one and only one option.
Ive already deleted comments reflecting that attitude. Sad.
My apologies if I ever said anything that offended you. I completely understand that homeschooling can be very demanding. I had my first child at 18, and then 3 more in quick succession. When I attempted to home school, it was a complete disaster. I didn’t have the skills back then. The public schools weren’t as messed up then, as they are now. I couldn’t afford private school, although for a time I worked at the school in order to get a discount on tuition – I just couldn’t financially swing it no matter how hard I tried.
What would be really nice is if the government, on the whole, would support education, in whatever form the parents chose. The money should follow the student. That way a parent could hire a tutor or in home teacher, special help, etc. The parents could also form, as many homeschooling associations have done, community home school “guilds” (can’t think of the right word). This way, the community, together, educates the children without the gross influences of the state breathing down their necks. The parents could choose the curriculum and work together to educate the children. It does take a village.
What I think is sad, is having to make a hard choice between public education brainwashing and trying to go it alone. I think we should fight for “equity” in education. Meaning, the Parents get to choose and the money is there. Either that, or defund public education entirely until they “shape up”.
I agree entirely. What we have done is give the public schools and money, means, and control to destroy our kids and our society. The teachers unions are greedy, evil behemoths that will fight to the death to keep money in public schools. If they could, they’d make private schools illegal, just as they try to do with homeschooling.
They have more success advocating against homeschoolers because the wealthy and powerful will always privately educate their kids, and they know not to tackle that. Homeschoolers have less money and clout. But they are increasing in numbers, especially after the past year+ of school closures and increasing parental rage at CRT. I look for them (unions and politicians) to up the battle against upstart parents who want control over their kids education and development.
I was one of three boys.. the youngest. Always got my brothers hand me downs. Everything but the underwear that is. My mother, rest her soul, was Irish and Norwegian and she never wasted anything. There was always another use for whatever. She was a registered nurse and the wisest person I have ever known.
I have two relatives who cannot read and graduated High School .
I think this is another example of public schools failing.
Everybody should work on their weakness before they are promoted.
Don’t beat yourself up.
Years ago parents didn’t have the knowledge and tools available on the ‘net that they have today to deal with these problems
I remember kids who now would be diagnosed as ADHD, ADD and austitic who just couldn’t learn and were disruptive in class and who would be sent to the headmaster for caning.
So very sad.
It was compulsory for kids to stay in school until they were 16.
So those poor kids suffered mightily at the hands of teachers.
Some became farmers, mechanics, truck drivers etc so they did end up leading fulfilling and productive lives.
That is a system that is currently used in Europe. Each student receives the same amount of money and that money follows the student. The schools there compete against each other to hire the best teachers and offer the best extra curricular programs, such as aeronautics, scuba, robotics and equestrian programs, in order to attract more students. More students means more revenue which in turn provides more upgrades to attract more students.
Teachers operate on an annual contract. Each semester the students evaluate the teachers on their performance so if a teacher receives inadequate scores their contract is not renewed for the following year. There is no such thing as a teacher being vested after a couple of years and not being able to be terminated for under performing. The teachers are motivated to strive to make the classroom environment interesting and enjoyable for students which shows in the student test scores.
Please don’t take it too much to heart. People say things out of frustration all the time that they don’t mean. And after further reflection they regret many of the things said in haste or ignorance. Peace
I agree Menagerie.
The one-way-my-way-or-the-highway people who have that kind of opinion about everything is annoying.
Not just about homeschooling but about shopping or not shopping at certain stores both brick or online.
Many of us are not in the position to re-arrange our lives to live, or work or do what ever it is that others think we should do.
And they really love to express their opinions as to how we should do now or should have done things.
Oh yes. I remember those times. We didn’t have to buy books until college! These lists are absolutely stupid and a waste. Nine times out of ten they don’t even use some of the supplies and having to hunt for a specific color of folder can be a nightmare. As for critical thinking, we taught our children that and their mothers, in turn, are teaching their children. I don’t know if we did the right thing but we covered for each child one time when an assignment was not completed in the midst of multiple projects, tests, etc. But they knew it would only happen once and learned to manage their time wisely. My pet peeve has always been group projects. I understand that the aim (ostensibly) is to learn how to work with others, but inevitably my children ended up doing the bulk of the work while others shared in the accolades. They would ask why, and I couldn’t give them an answer. To this day, even though they work well with others, they prefer to do their own work!
Yup! I think we should challenge today’s young ‘uns to a book covering contest. We oldie goldies would win hands down. If we were really mean we could insist they use a rotary dial phone, too.
You made me laugh at that one. Would they even know what an old rotary phone was?
I hope this works… your wish is my command regarding if kids would know how to use a rotary phone…Funny!
That is sad. But also hysterical!
Hilarious!
While kids would stare for a few moments, they would figure it out, then dismiss it as cumbersome and unworthy of their time.
And, write everything on the cover in cursive.
Interesting that the Montessori teaching method recommends learning cursive before block printing for primary school. The flow of cursive makes it easy to form words when writing sentences.
Yes we would Packrat.
Last year my 5 year old grandson was visiting my husband while he was in the hospital briefly.
I needed to use the hospital phone which was not rotary but still the old fashioned looking kind with the receiver attached to the base with a curley winding cord and had the push buttons on it.
He was curious about what it was and what I was doing, so I told him I was calling down to put in the order for Grandpa’s lunch and dinner on the phone.
He told me that was not a phone and argued with me like the little alpha male five year olds like to do.
Finally I had him call down to the cafeteria and order Grandpa’s breakfast just so he could see what i was talking about.
He was amazed and for once in his life speechless.
Looking back there was something therapeutic in the task.
Menagerie: Book? You mean, like, words? I remember those.
Yeah, we covered all our texts in cut-up grocery bags.
then you made your own artwork on them…oh the days of multiplication tables, reading with phonics, sentence diagramming, handwriting, civics, recess and showing all your work in math…all gone, sacrifices at the altar of the teacher’s unions and “public education”
I remember doing that too, it was fun getting the book covers perfectly done after a couple of tries, lol !
Amen!!! It was a treat to go to the 5 and 10 cent store to get a pencil box for the first day of school.
They provided graham crackers to us and little cartons of milk that we had to BUY. Yes, buy. Novel concept, but parents had to send “milk money” weekly with the kids. Only 2-3 cents a day, but some didn’t have it and the teachers just quietly gave them milk anyway.
In all likelihood, the peanut allergies that we see today have been caused by a “confused” immune system due to over vaccinating little ones whose bodies are still developing. Encourage all parents to delay immunizations, getting only the ones that pose a high risk to infants and toddlers. Unless your baby is getting tatooed, Hep B can wait.
As far as allergies are concerned yes best to delay some vaxs.
I remember George Carlin saying at one of his comedy shows that his gang of kids never got the polio or other ailments because they ” swam in a river of shite ” namely the Detroit River.
He figured it tempered their immune systems like steel.
So maybe it is good to lick a few doorknobs and eat a bag of dirt when you are young.
without a doubt. God knew what He was doing when he created man. Babies put everything in their mouths, including their hands. We would be negligent if we didn’t vaccinate our children against life threatening disease, but many vaccines are on the “doctors” corporate protocol list and there simply is not a high enough risk (IMO) to shoot up our kids.
… eat a bag of dirt when you are young.
Not exactly that, but I have read (can’t recall exactly where) a benefit of children playing outside is to develop their immune system.
Little kids playing in the sandpile, making mud pies, soaking up sun, climbing on the playground equipment, etc. Lots of intangible benefits.
I wonder if being around not only the great outdoors but animals helps.
It seems like farm kids who grew up shoveling all kinds of manure and feeding and caring for animals were pretty healthy.
So maybe not just the good out door fresh air but being exposed to all kinds of “nature”.
Milk money. Take a lunch from home in the tin box with a thermos if you had soup… Except every Thursday was “Hotdog Day” and every Friday was “Pizza Day,”. You had to bring “hotdog money” on Thursday and “Pizza money on Friday if you chose to do that. (There were cafeteria ladies that only came on Thursday or Friday, They were, of course, the Hotdog Ladies and the Pizza Ladies…
lol, thursday was our hot dog day also! You were living large with a pizza day also. Our grammar school did not have a real cafeteria. We ate in the basement of the school, when it wasn’t being used for air raid drills! Hot dogs were brought in with steaming trays. Other days it was PBJ, Tuna (on Fridays) or cheese sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper on big trays that the lunch ladies handed out. We went home for lunch most days, except Thursdays for the hot dogs. Thanks for sharing!
Can you even imagine now-a-days, having two days every week in a elementary school dedicated to hotdogs and pizza? Horror of horrors!
???
hmm our Fridays in school were always fish day in deference to the Catholics at a public school even
Mine was Catholic school as well. Only cheese pizza for all of us!! LOL!
That, or grilled cheese and tomato soup.
We had a cafeteria that provided a lunch for us and very few kids packed lunches for some reason.
We never had the fun of hot dogs or pizza, just what ever the cafeteria ladies slopped on the trays.
Some times we had no idea what it was but we ate it anyway if it didn’t smell or look too bad.
During grand school in the early sixties, we were blessed to have basically a bunch of grandma’s cooing in our school. The main dish and deserts were always homemade, and yummy.
Oh yes, I remember those times as well. Carried a peanut butter and jelly sandwich everyday for lunch. ?
Still like peanut butter and jelly too!
Our children would be better served getting back to basics.
My school lunch go-tos were boloney or PBJ sandwiches. Didn’t have a cafeteria so we had to bring our own.
Yep, no cafeteria! Oh the humanity! We had to walk home for lunch and then back to school. There were only 2 students who were allowed to eat in the basement because they were the only ones with working mothers. This was not in some rural area. Paterson, New Jersey, the city that now looks like Beruit.
Strawberry or grape jam? ?
Apricot jam and peanut butter
Or cheese sandwiches
Apricot? Didn’t see that coming!!
Believe it or not, growing up in California in the 80’s I don’t remember having these lists. We went to school with a backpack, some paper and pencils. My first experience with a list was back when life was normal, way back in the summer of 2019, when my son started kindergarten.
I think the lists are ridiculous, we’re not buying the items for our son but to put them in the supply where there doled out to the kids as needed. We’re taxed and taxed and taxed, but yet the schools can’t provide the basic necessities? With private schools, that should be included in the tuition (I have no experience).
I taught a few college courses in the fire science program. Let me tell you, it was the most unrewarding experience. Some of the students simply took the class for units so they could hopefully get a better registration time the next semester to take classes they actually needed. Over half of the class had no business being in a college class.
My wife did her pre-reqs for PA school at the same college. She had to get special permission to take to science classes in the same semester because 1 was technically a pre-req for the other. She needed to do this because she was determined to apply for PA school by a certain date. If she hadn’t done that, and I believe there was another class or two she had to get permission to take, it would’ve taken 3 years to get all the pre-reqs done instead of the 1.5 she did. I was looking at the class schedules and determined if a student wanted to do “pre-med” and go to the community college for the Freshman and Sophmore years it would take 4 years or 3 years with summer school to start from scratch before they could transfer. All of the science courses overlapped times so you couldn’t take more than 1 or 2 a semester. It was almost as if the college was doing on purpose to a) coddle the students and b) keep them there for a little longer – you know because they’d have to pay for useless classes to keep 12 units.
Counselors are no help either. My wife would’ve been screwed if she followed the counselor’s advice. I got her a plan to get it done quickly. I finished my AA in 3 semesters with a summer class or two by taking 19 to 20 units a semester and the actual classes I needed – I can read a list as it’s all spelled out in the catalog along with the transfer requirements.
The people who choose some of these jobs as “careers” like College Counselor think kids need to be coddled. We need to stop. Failing out of school is OK, maybe it’s not for you or maybe you need to go back a little later in life like I did. In fact, we’ve diluted the value of a “college” degree with all this coddling. Like Sundance said, he actually learned math and English in middle school more so than they teach in high school today.
I can relate to your comment about the college “counselor” –our middle daughter mapped out her 4 year degree (in biology) and figured out she could do it in 7semesters (which she did) even adding in a J term in Spain…but every semester that she went in to register for the next, these “counselors” kept trying to “advise” her to take some other “electives” but she held firm and they finally “let” her follow the course she had mapped out –saved beaucoup bucks in the process plus got some well earned scholarships and she graduated with no debt! just what the “system” hates to see 🙂
Counselors are judged by the students retained keeping the pipeline filled and coin coming.
I did not even know that schools had counselors until one of my young son’s was sent to the grade school counselors office for a few weeks because of an argument he got into with another boy.
We, the parents, were not told about this “counseling” that that was going on and the only way we knew it was happening is he mentioned it one night at dinner.
After that we sent letters with the boys every year saying that they were not to be sent to counseling without our permission.
I have a feeling a lot of parents do not know that their children are routinely being sent to psych counseling without their knowledge or permission.
I am not against counseling, I think it is over used and parents should know when their kids are sent.
I learned quickly while at Community College that college was a business and made decisions to maximize profits often at the students’ expense…to this end I would counsel fellow students to ask guidance counselors for direction but to keep in mind that their advice was not always correct and held no repercussion to them when they were wrong
Yep, born in the ’60s.. we just showed up with a pencil (and wearing a tie).
Where I went to school all little girls wore dresses, and boys wore nice slacks usually and shirts tucked in with belts, rarely ties except on picture day. Sometimes the boys wore crisp, nice looking jeans. I was in about 8th or 9th grade before we girls began to wear the new hot fashion, jeans. And oh, by high school how good I looked in my hip hugging bell bottoms. I won’t ever have that figure again.
Same here just a couple years older! They only thing I got at the start of every school year was a new pair of basketball shoes for gym class! Those were kept clean until the end of the school year and then they would be worn everyday that following summer. It was a simpler time when we were just boys and girls!
Ah, new school shoes!!!! My worst year for shoes was 3rd grade. My Mom made me get black and white saddle shoes. All the other girls were wearing the new fashion: Penny loafers! (The horror!)
It really was “Bubby”.
And we had a lot of whiny complaints just like kids do now days but the adults were smart enough to not allow us to run the show.
Good Song and Video , Bubby ! Thanks ?
My niece is 7 loves peanut butter and jelly (me too) she nor any other child in her class is allowed to bring pb&j FOR THEM SELVES because someone has a peanut allergy. I was dumb struck. Or maybe just dumb.
A bag of corn chips ,peanut butter and jelly, and an apple or banana in a brown paper was my lunch.
I feel sad when I think this is an illegal lunch in today’s schools..
Loved this essay! Yes, it is about learning how to critically think and communicate. And a good education teaches you how to teach yourself. For me the ultimate was when a HS teacher (parochial school) insisted that I get a $150 graphing calculator for my sons math class, even though the school required all kids to buy a MacBook with MS Excel!!! I thought that was the height of insanity-the instructor just didn’t want to change and show the kids how to use Excel. The $150 graphing calculator has sat collecting dust ever since.
Graduated High school in the late sixties .
In grade school one year everyone had to own an abacus.
I lived in a cheap neighborhood.
Man that’s cheap.
Not even a slide rule.
I am a math teacher and I refused to let students use a calculator, except for specialized subjects like trigonometry. But it meant I had to reteach how to do basic fractions because students had forgotten how to do them, due to the widespread use of calculators. Sad. We who grew up in the 50s can still do most calcs in our heads but these kids are helpless without their calculators. Up to me, I would ban them until high school geometry and then only allow them when necessary, which is not most of the time.
NASA sent men to the moon using slide rules and crude computers. The slide rules provided quick solutions and the computers did the iterative grunt work required by more in depth problems. Those were real engineers and scientists back then.
Yes, watch the movie Hidden Figures. Of course, you must get past the social justice message.
well to be fair slide rule use logarithmic conversions to come to the answer…the conversion in both direction has some built-in error to it so they are IMPRECISE for today’s engineering uses
The calculator was one of the first tools of dumbing down America
The only thing you left out is that you’ve already paid for school supplies when you paid the taxes that fund the schools. If the school budget doesn’t leave enough for supplies after it’s paid the teachers’ salaries, then the teachers can buy the supplies. Start going to school board meetings. Parents have got to stop this grift.
It has gotten worse because the misuse of funds has gotten worse. By now, in our high school, there are NO textbooks. It is harder for parents to understand what is being taught that way.
Also, the cafeteria is so horribly mismanaged that no student wants to eat what they make. At lunchtime most of the students, except the poor freshmen who must endure the cafeteria, walk to nearby fast food places! Many hop in their cars for fast food. It’s unbelievably dangerous from so many aspects.
Our cafeteria ladies back in elementary school turned out some impressive dishes, and we kids loved interacting with them. Later, the junior high school cafeteria made huge cinnamon rolls and cookies, they were, well, memorable.
I think today’s horrible state of affairs is simply down to mismanagement.
This was a great essay – while I am in that 20-50 cohort (barely) I can relate to everything in this essay. Since they don’t teach anything anymore it feels like my kids are at a disadvantage. There is not critical thinking, there is no problem solving, there is no understanding basic English etc. They don’t know how to write a thesis paper, have no idea how to come up with a bibliography and would be lost in a library. They have the greatest source of knowledge at their finger tips (phones) but have no idea how to get to what they need.
This is not just a charge against teaching but against our technology driven society as a whole. I feel like we are living in a fantasy Wall-E movie – we are all lulled and comforted while the world is destroyed around us. Ask kids to find something in the Bible but without a phone and they can’t do it. Same for anything they should know.
Pray for our nation; this is who will lead us in the 50s assuming we as a nation survive as long.
“They don’t know how to write a thesis paper, have no idea how to come up with a bibliography and would be lost in a library.”
Or maybe show your children how to do these simple tasks yourself? It’s because so many parents leave education *entirely* to schools that we have ended up in the mess we have. Let’s hope the Zoom experience has woken up the population to the laziness/ineptitude of many/most teachers.
Don’t tell me nobody has time to teach their own children: our ancestors worked much longer than most office workers and still found time to study with their children in the days when there were no schools.
Our children are taught to the test, it has many names H.E.S.P.A. being just one of them. However the amount of federal funds to be given to any one school district are based on those test results. The result is they have one year, your childs senior year to prepare them for writing college level papers. I had a teach begin her senior year open house address to the parents by apologizing for what the school system has done.
Teaching to the test has been very detrimental for sure. We need to have a common base line but still….
That’s a bit wrong – to think I haven’t is crazy. On top of that, you assume these are “simple tasks”… when we went to school the Internet wasn’t a thing, bibliographies were “simple” because you had like x number of sources you wrote down on note cards from a library that you had to learn the dewey decimal system on. Kids just “search” for the info, copy paste, tweak a bit of the verbiage to bypass the bot copyright checkers and that’s acceptable. How many sources did you use son? I don’t know, I just click click click click etc…
They learn to do this in school… not sure how I would catch that before hand.
When I was in seventh grade our teacher told us our big project for the year was a college level research paper, due at the end of the year. It accounted for a very large percentage of our grade.
she set out the requirements at the beginning of the year. Getting approval for our topic, submitting an outline for approval, number and quality of sources, not just anything was acceptable because it was printed. Bibliography, which would be composed from the index cards you mentioned.
We were doing this a number of years before computers, and people were poor and did not have typewriters, so we had very specific requirements for writing the papers out in blue or black ink. Only one very neatly crossed out word per page if we spelled something wrong. The borders in line with no more than a half in variance. Word counts.
Each stage we submitted for approval. I never had to complete so hard a research paper in college, and for all the thousands of dollars we paid in tuition, my kids never even came close to what I did in seventh grade.
God keep you Mrs. Elizabeth Sorrels.
When my sons were in elementary school the teachers decided every child needed to supply pocket folders with 3 binder clips in 6 different colors. Each color was to be used for a different subject. I will go to my grave remembering the hunt for the orange one. At Walmart, Kmart, Zayre’s, Big B, even a teacher supply store. We never found them. I’m convinced they didn’t exist. The next year, the PTO turned supply lists into a school fundraiser. You could hunt for all the items yourself or you could buy the pre-assembled packet available at registration. I bought the packet.
I still enjoy doing math problems by hand. There is something about proving your work that is satisfying and gives you absolute confidence.
I was once on a cross country flight and was seated next to a middle school student. We were talking and I found out that he was taking algebra. We spent a couple of hours solving and resolving the quadratic equation. He was quite excited and was looking forward to showing his math teacher.
I sat next to a high school student who kept asking me what the time was. I asked didn’t he have a watch? He said, no he didn’t own one; he used his phone to tell the time, and we could not get a signal up in the air. I wondered if he could read a round clockface, or had grown up with digital timekeeping.
Maybe not for long…I read there are some school districts in the U.S. that are dropping algebra from the middle school curriculum. Why? Guess! The lower achieving students weren’t “succeeding” in the algebra classes. I’ll find the source if some one wants…
Yes Now Maths is RACISS!
My dad was an engineer, so he taught me short cuts for solving quadratic equations. That was handy!
LOL…some Physics and higher-end math problems can span over 10 pages when done by hand
I went to school in a small country school through eighth grade. Ten students was a big class. I learned more there in one year than I did in all of high school. The basic algebra and chemistry in high school have served me well. After almost fifty years I have yet to be asked to diagram a sentence though or quote any of the literature we had to learn.
“After almost fifty years I have yet to be asked to diagram a sentence…”
Some of the exercises you performed in high school were done in anticipation of your continued education.
It is a useful thing to know diagramming if you ever take a Symbolic Logic class. Learning sentence structure is helpful in studying ancient languages like Greek and Latin, too.
Even informal logic requires you to understand the difference between a coordinate and adversative conjunction or dependent and independent clauses.
I haven’t diagrammed a sentence since 8th grade. That was in 1960!
Colleges continue the hype, some professors need certain very expensive books (now come with software website signins too for additional $) for their courses tho some are never even used in the class.
For those not aware, a single college semester of book cost purchase or rental can cost upwards of $500
Especially when the “professor” is the author. I posted a video a few weeks ago where a guy talks about how he figured out the college scam. The professor required the newest edition, this guy bought the edition before and couldn’t pass the homework. Turns out his edition and the required one had the end of chapter questions in a different order (it later turn out that was the only different in the textbook – the order of the chapter quiz questions ?). He figured out this was the only thing different and ask the professor if he graded the homework by hand to which the professor replied yes. This guy offered to hand write the question and answer out so the professor could see he knew the answer to which the professor said no, you need to buy the current edition.
The guy dropped out and started a successful computer board repair business in NYC where he has 14 employees that he paid their full salary in the first few months of the lock down before business started ticking up again.
College has become simply a business model and not an education system.
Went back to University for a professional degree in 2004. The book scam I overcame by reading the course syllabus which had all reading assignments and lab work listed.
The university had a 3 week return policy. I bought the books and scanned the relevant pages (sometimes only 50 pages were needed) then returned the book. Some lab books with 100 case studies, professor required 10 for the course. Scanned those also.
As to “new “ editions, all have an appendix which lists the changes. Many “changes” are updated websites, illustrations, fonts, order of material with in the chapter, rewritten confusing paragraphs, etc. With no significant changes, I bought on line the cheapest old edition.
The required microbiology book was on its last semester as it was to be replaced the next semester. I found online a beta microbiology textbook to use before the textbook was finalized for printing. Passed the course with an A grade.
Copying pages was cheaper at the copier store or printing scanned pages. Also some schools require all course reading materials be available in the school library reference section, no checking out but a copier is in the library.
With the World Wide Web, no need to keep textbooks for future reference.
So instead of hundreds of dollars in books, I maybe spent $50 per semester. Read the syllabus, it will save you $100s of dollars.
Awesome!!
We use to loan, borrow or share the expensive science and math text books needed for our college courses.
Someone that we knew had the book or had a friend who had the book and every one was pretty good about sharing.
That was then, now I suppose you would be lucky to get you expensive text book back from a stranger you hardly knew and loaned it to because he was your room mates boyfriends room mate.
Your article succinctly captures the frustrating scavenger hunt faced by many each fall gathering all the items on the teachers’ lists. Now parents stand in limbo re masks, face shields, hand sanitizer.
Was in staples recently and had a checkout clerk ask me to “donate” to school supplies. I smiled and said no thanks, any extra goes to pay for my children’s college tuition.
It’s interesting to see the number of organizations and movements associated with the rounding up and spur the moment donations that past for charity nowadays. I’d rather be deliberate than end up funding SEIU or something.
You could always tell the rich kids from the middle and lower class students. They always had the 64 count crayons.
Lol
Now days it is the low income kids that go to school with $300 Nikes and expensive things.
My kids were shocked when I showed them where one kid who seemed to have all the expensive trimmings came from.
I was visiting a friend who was living in low income assisted living housing after a divorce and I took my kids with me on purpose.
They were stunned to find out where two of the kids in their class came from who constantly wore expensive clothes and had new things.
They asked me how this could be and I had no answers.
My oldest didn’t have this problem but my youngers did.
First few years was orders pencils crayons erasers etc… After about a month my daughter said she needed more pencils. I asked how she went through a case of pencils in a month. She said the teacher collected all supplies on day one and then dispersed to whole class as needed. Needless to say after that I got the items on the list but only gave my kids one of each and for things like pencils a extra to hold in their bag for backup. Told them if teacher had a problem with that to call me.
School list are pure BS part teacher whim requesting crap they will never need or don’t really need to complete mixed with them trying to socialize the kids into buying the supplies for all the other kids parents that didn’t participate.
About five years ago I took my granddaughter to speech therapy at her local elementary school during the summer. She was only three, but the therapy was in the school. Once while I was waiting for her, a few weeks before school started I heard a teacher instructing one of the janitorial employees to clean out her closet and get rid of all the stuff in it. Specifically they discussed lots of rolls of paper towels, among other things apparently left from the prior year.
He asked what she wanted him to do with all of it, and she replied that she didn’t care, kind of implying that could could throw it all away if he wanted too. And I sat, wondering why she would dispose of unused but perfectly good items. I guess because she knew the parents were going to stock that closet all over again. God forbid she modify her list and ask for less.
We used to have a friend who was a janitor in the LA Unified School District.
At the end of each year he was instructed to dispose of unused supplies.
Unused supplies meant that a school’s budget could be reduced.
Prestige and influence for governmental bureaucrats, including school administrators, is based on the size of one’s budget.
While the taxpayer’s desire is to reduce the budget, the administrator’s desire is to grow the budget.
You can’t grow next year’s budget if you aren’t using everything that was budgeted for this year.
I worked off and on for years at WPAFB and it made me sick (hence the off part) watching what they did with my tax dollars. Perfectly good machines were scrapped in order to justify exorbitant budget requests. !@#$%^&*(!!!!!
THAT is government in general….when they DO have a budget, the federal government spends 10% of their allocated dollars in the last two weeks of Sep…they do this so their account is zeroed and there will not be a reduction in the new budget cycle…GAO rents large warehouses to store many of these late purchased but unneeded items at additional cost
I remember at a certain part of the school year, the [fun, perhaps lazy] HS gym teacher gave a few of his students the gym supplies catalog and said we had to hurry up and order several thousand dollars of gym equip, or the $$ would go away and next year there would be a smaller budget for gym class. I remember putting in a request for neat looking pole vault pole. I’m pretty sure we got it. I recal this being such a strange concept, instead of saving and being rewarded, being “punished” for it.
I don’t remember the lists of school supplies other than a few notebooks and pencils that stayed in my own backpack which wasn’t replaced until the zipper was beyond broken, backpacks lasted years!
My family never participated in back to school clothing sales. At the time it felt like a big deal not having new clothes for the first day. Mom always waited until off-season and we bought only what we needed off the back of the store sale racks. And even then rarely Nike or Columbia other brand names my friends were flaunting, though we could afford it (and didn’t understand how the poorest of students could). I have since also adopted my parents attitude against societal pressures, trends and fads.
I dislike all the drives for supply school materials at stores and churches. With homeschool we can get by with lined paper (even recycled printer paper)and pencils. And clip boards. We really like clip boards here. I don’t understand all the fancy needs for the present day classroom.
I’m willing to accept that perhaps I’m just resentful because no one has ever had any sort of drive or door to door sales for the community to sponsor our home schooling or extra curriculars. (Resentment is unattractive and not charitable or useful… I’m working on it. Giving is good, we give! And people are generous to our family in many ways if not school supplies – which we don’t even need.)
Though I was once the benificiary of end-of-year public teacher closet cleaning. That was exciting, though I find a lot of the art supplies just taking up room in my cabinets now.
I am sympathetic with your attitude towards these “drives” for the needy “NeighborlyM”.
Quite a while back when my two youngest were still in school, the locals had a drive for coats for the needy children in the community.
One of the communities thrift stores was the drop off point.
I had a couple of very nice, in good condition coats that my boys had outgrown and I took them down.
When I told the man at the thrift store that I had some coats for the needy he said to follow him.
We went into a large back room and he told me to just “put them there”.
“There” was a huge massive pile of children’s coats. This pile was at least 8 feet high and I have no idea how big around.
The coats that others had donated had not been sorted or handed out, perhaps the people working on this project were overwhelmed.
This was going on into October and I knew that they would never get that many coats sorted and distributed, if they were ever really needed.
There is so much waste and ingratitude and yet we are still asked to give give give give give…………….
Makes one wonder!
That’s true in business too. I worked for a company that provided inspection equipment to automotive manufacturers. We often got orders at the end of the budget year for just this reason.
You have just made a good point “C-Low”.
The schools also like to use the peer pressure that young kids suffer from to make the parents jump and do some of their bidding.
My next to youngest son was in 1st grade when the school system decided they needed to provide “free” breakfast for all of the kids along with the “free” lunches that were available to low income students.
On my son’s school list was paper bowls, plates and cups.
A custom this school also had was an open house meeting for all parents to attend and meet with their child’s teacher who would answer question etc.
All of the parents wanted to know why they were asked to send paper cups, plates and bowels on a MONTHLY basis.
We were told this would be used for the kids to eat their “free” lunches in the classroom.
The parents whose children attended this school were totally against the “free” breakfast idea in the first place.
Many were blue collar working parents who worked hard to pay their way through life and they were not happy about financing this.
As far as I know none of the parents, including us, ever bought any paper products for the school to use in handing out their “free” breakfast.
We felt like they were nickeling an diming us to death already.
When I was in school, there was a store off the library where students could buy paper and pencils and other supplies. The school would stock them so everyone got the same stuff. For those without money, they always got what they needed. Sometimes we would share, and sometimes they just got them. You bought what you needed as you needed it and it cost a few cents at a time. It was a good system.
80 percent of my property tax goes to the local public screwl. I’ve never sent a single child to the public school either. They have all attended either Amish or Mennonite private schools.
The money wasted by public schools on extracurricular activities is mind boggling. It’s long past time to abolish the communist propaganda system.
Menagerie, I appreciate your thoughtful and insightful commentary on “the lists.” I have a grandson starting kindergarten next week. Today, we may very well be on the quest for his school supply list. Curious to learn what is requested, how much is necessary, and how much is superficial fluff. Noticed that your list in the picture informs parents that the items requested will be shared…
I live in a fairly affluent county in Florida. The education foundation just had it’s annual fundraiser last month. They proudly introduced their most generous donors who happen to be mega philanthropists to multiple institutions (including hospitals). One of their contributions that was highlighted was their providing masks for the elementary students for the entire county. I’m certain they will be designer masks with appropriate logos, etc. Grocery stores are collecting donations for schools at the registers. There is a big push for the back to school back pack campaign. Every civic organization generously donates funds and collects supplies for students.
We have well surpassed supplying the necessities and have invested in funding fluff.
Growing up and going to school in Belgium, I had never seen parents buying paper towels, Lysol wipes, and other cleaning supplies.
We went to a book/ paper store where my mother bought us pencils and pens and necessary note books and an agenda. ( for listing our daily homework and lessons)
Imagine thousands and thousands of children bringing all these supplies to the schools. Thousands of dollars that is only an extra unseen tax for us if you look at it.
I grew up here in America and my parents never bought paper towels, lysol wipes or cleaning supplies for the class room either.
This is something that started a few decades ago when teachers started begging for stuff and complaining that they were not given enough money to out fit the class room with necessities.
The played the victim and parents were willing to help out a bit when it was just a few pencils, erasers and tubes of glue.
Now the schools are asking for the moon and are getting it from “donors” and places like Walmart and others who ask for school donations for the needy at checkout.
Parents are starting to ask why in the world do they need so much non academic stuff and where in the world does all of the money that the schools get go in the first place.
You would be gobsmacked at what I see in companies. They buy 100k of equipment then realize they’re using it as a portion control device instead of a combination weigher capable of hitting a target weight within 2 grams.
Management with business degrees come to me and ask where they can get operators that can understand frequency and amplitude combined with observation and correction skills. I answer plenty but you won’t pay them what they’re worth.
Skilled labor isn’t cheap, cheap labor isn’t skilled. Been there, fought that.
When in grad school in the late 70’s, I was the grad assistant to the professor who taught Mine Surveying. You know, like the guys you might see with their tripod and instruments on a highway or new construction job. In other words, lots of data to take and lots of calcs to do to make locations and elevations of survey points balance. I didn’t have a calculator until I was a senior in college as I too couldn’t afford one at the prices of these new-fangled instruments in the early 70’s. I learned to do quick calculations IN MY HEAD! What a novel idea; use my own personal calculator (brain) to do the work. By the way, I graduated magna cum laude from a very difficult technical university. Back to grad school. During outdoor or in a small underground mine the collage owned, the students would use the instruments to perform a simple survey. Lots of data to be balanced. They would work feverishly on their calculators and, somehow, seldom arrive at a balance in the data. I had mostly over drinking age kids in the class so I challenged them weekly to take a set of data and balance it with their calculators while I did it in my head with the loser buying pitchers of beer at a local watering hole. In two semesters of being a grad assistant for this class, I ALWAYS drank for free each and every Friday afternoon after class. I not only taught the undergrad students the basics of surveying, I also taught how to use their BRAINS. And from what I observed of new hires during 40+ years of technical work life, this issue has only gotten worse as the vast majority of new grads could barely have a thought without their calculator or computer by their side. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful! My goal in life as a grandpa now is to ensure my grandkids do actually use their brains and not the crutch of other devices.
I absolutely understand what you are saying. I had a career in management for several good retail stores, including Home Depot, where employees needed to be able to think, but few could.
One thing that always aggravated me was that since people could not mentally calculate things, or even manually do it with pen and paper, they had no sense of proportion. So, I would see people who used square footage of a room and multiplied it by the square yard price for flooring be gobsmacked by their own answer, sometimes outraged.
And again I say, a basic part of teaching kids math ought to be that every.single.answer needs a unit of measurement, and they need to understand conversions to make them compatible. Also, doing calculations in your head just makes you have a sense of proportion. You immediately know if you get six decimal places when you are calculating smaller numbers that something is way wrong. You immediately understand if you are adding 397 and 524 if your answer is more than a thousand or less than nine hundred it is wrong. You start to get really fast by rounding up and subtracting three from 24.
And I am amazed by the number of people who think those skills don’t matter. It never occurs to them that they can’t make basic life decisions without angst because they just can’t think. I know a lot of indecisive people, and mostly if you get to know them much, you can see that they have a problem making decisions because they can’t trust their own judgement. They don’t have good, solid judgement because they can’t problem solve and think logically. And they will argue about not needing their kids to take advanced math classes when they could be having soccer practice. Not that I am opposed to athletics because I absolutely know kids need that too, and no longer get enough basic, wholesome exercise.
Lol on the sq ft X sq yd price
“ I know a lot of indecisive people, and mostly if you get to know them much, you can see that they have a problem making decisions because they can’t trust their own judgement. They don’t have good, solid judgement because they can’t problem solve and think logically.”
“Don’t worry; be happy.”
The government has the training and experience to make your decisions for you. Any apprehension you may have regarding their competence can be quickly resolved through consultation with Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Let others do you thinking for you while you relax with your friends at a soma spa.
Relaxing at the soma spa while mommy and daddy pay the bills Christian Warren.
My grandpa (born in 1915) had the same dislike for calculators and he would always bring it up whenever we got together and then proceed to throw numbers at us grandkids to add up (in our heads 🙂 and the first one with the correct answer got a nickel….I always beat my cousins at this and to this day I do mental math ALL the time …it’s a “brain” game for me 🙂
My siblings and I use to borrow money from each other when still in grade school and used board games and baseball mitts etc. for collateral.
Our Dad encouraged us and tried his best to teach us lending principals, we did the best we could but usually got bogged down in calculating interest payments.
We did learn young the risk of borrowing but could never bring ourselves to collect on non payment from a sibling.
I went to a one room school where books were passed down from class to class furnished by the school itself. Keep them nice, no writing in them and they were to be returned at the end of the school year. Pencils were lead with erasers on top. No. 2. Brown paper bags carried our lunches with a one and only grocery store to buy a pop and small cake if you could afford it. A calculator was the use of your brain, spelling Bs where the reward was a no. 2 pencil. You got us in front of the classes and recited the multiplication tables.
I graduated HS in 1990. All of my books were checked out to me always & if you didn’t have it to turn in or it was trashed, then you had to pay to replace it. In college we bought books but then sold them back at end of the semester.
My kids are transitioning from high school to college. I’ve said for 20 years that the school supply lists are stealth taxes. About half or more of what we bought filled the teacher’s supply cabinet. There are also fees for everything.
$60?
Try >$200 per child.
The Government renamed taxes “fees”.
All our kids did Kumon up through calculus. I’ve never regretted that. Two of three have had all or most of their college calc/math classes eliminated because they can math.
Great article! Brought back memories long forgotten. When my friends and I started teaching (in the early ‘70’s) we would spend August going around to various department stores and lingerie shops begging for stocking boxes. (As in nylon stockings.) They were the perfect size to fit into desks to hold supplies that the schools then provided.
Holy cow! That picture of the cigar box brings back a lot of memories. I had completely forgotten about them. I used those all the time when I was growing up.
I recall items on the list like six boxes of Kleenix, a dozen pencils, and then the teacher would basically “confiscate” the stuff and then hand items back out over the course of the school year. I found my daughter with a teeny stub of a pencil from home, the same one she started the school year with, and I asked her where all the other dozen pencils went. She said the teacher took them. I called and asked the teacher and she told me she hands the pencils out at need to whatever student needed them and she was out. So eleven of the pencils I bought went to other kids. I refused to resupply the entire classroom and paid extra to have a set of bright pink pencils with my daughter’s name on the side. The teacher was furious with me but my daughter no longer worked with a teeny stub.
My wife just spent $1000 on books for our two high school kids. Add book scams to the list along with supplies and projects.
there are three major publishers for high school and college texts in this country…all engage in profit bumping schemes making a purchase of new versions at least every other year necessary…they try to minimize the used reselling market as much as they can
As hard as this is to believe, it took first hand experience(job requirements) to go this it just not sometime of abstract painting with a wide brush at work here.
Many millennials can not tell time off an analogue clock. It has to be digital.
And to take it a step further.
I had to make up a time conversion chart because our job function required reporting time on a 24 hour military time because several recent hires could not add 12 hours to the current time.
Kid you not.
It was then that I observed those that needed the chart, would read the time off their phones even though a wall clock with hour and minute hands was right in front of them.
So when Mr. Putin, goes because of our abysmal education system…
He is making an observational comment likely based on a report of analysis that has reached his desk.
Heart breaking.
All sad but true.
Even more disturbing is the collective tribalism of banding together I was met with and the corporate enabling there of.
When I tried to make this a learning opportunity of growth.
I.E. learn how to tell time and add twelve hours.
Nope.
It became a HR issue, where I was creating a hostile work environment through get this, “Invalid expectations that where not applicable to our diverse workforce ethos.”
Quote unquote.
And the technology of thinking for us just keeps marching on.
(Actually it is not the technology of thinking for us. It the assumption of those behind the technology that we need our thinking done for us.)
Should have proof read.
It is ‘some type’ not something
and
‘were’ not where.
I turn off auto complete and spell check for those very reasons.
More often than not, replacement is incorrect.
Yet, every time some software component and/or the OS updates.
It gets turned back on.
! My niece doesn’t understand what “a quarter to 3pm” means! 2:35???
And using term “North East corner” of intersection also blows her mind.
Ahhhhh the dreaded school supply lists.
My biggest frustration was the people who “shopped early” depleting supplies in July while I waited for my list to arrive during the last week of august. Picking out a new backpack was often fraught with issues as well.
My kids were 4 grades apart, and even w/in that time span so much changed between the 1st & 2nd child.
When my son went into HS—-private catholic school—-we were told your child will be assigned an iPad…that was it, that was the list. We didn’t have to buy it & it eliminated the whole school supply process. I asked him, “what do you mean you don’t need anything else, not even a pen?”
Everything was done via the iPad: homework, text books & tests were all done on the iPad. Even before he entered HS, it became apparent that writing & reading cursive text was becoming a lost art.
Kids are graduating unable to sign their own signature. Scientific calculators were a must by “middle school” aka as 6th grade. And that was over a decade ago for me.
Now in college we all found out that when your child is on the schools portal completing assignments or tests, the software is simultaneously tracking what if anything else they are doing online. Now many are stuck on zoom calls rather than actually going to school. “How refreshing” amirite?
And don’t even get me started on “new math”.
But as crazy as that time of year was. I miss it. It was a rite of passage & we often managed to make it fun.
Thanks Menagerie, I always love your posts!
I loved this. I have watched education degrade over the decades. My biggest pet peeve (and this is in reference to my former, and formerly beloved, state of CA) is that the property taxes are outrageous and let’s not even discuss the LOTTO that was also supposed to fund education. Teacher salaries start very high, some at $75K/yr. Many Working Parents who absolutely cannot afford the state have moved out. I want to know where all that money has gone – money that the state rakes in hand over fist. Not only do the kids have to supply everything including a box of kleenex, the actual education is substandard. The state has been turning out overly emotional and ill prepared Social Justice Warriors, not educated human beings.
I formerly taught at the University level. We had “rubrics” for grading papers that made it impossible to correct and properly grade student work. Most of the college level students didn’t have basic writing skills and yet we “had to” pass them. Needless to say, I don’t teach any more.
Public education is broken beyond repair.
IOW, the good old days Sundance.
“The ability to think logically and analytically is a crucial skill”
I am old, educated in the 60’s-70’s, so the last few years I ask every teacher/educator I meet, a question I cannot answer myself…. “How did I learn to think critically and to reason?” I still have not gotten an answer but last night, I found it!
Watching 3 of our children try find elementary schools for their children is truly sickening and exposes the ugliest side of what our goverenmental structure has become. I never knew how bad it has gotten. Public schools are destroying the minds and souls of our children.
Last night I decided to see what I could do to begin a new Christian school – somehow. I hadn’t a clue where to begin.
Our church is very small and dwindling. I prayed. I soon found a 1947 address of an educator to Oxford University that nailed exactly what the greatest goal of public education is: the destruction of Christian civilization
The Lost Tools of Learning. 1947 Dorothey Sayers
https://classicalchristian.org/the-lost-tools-of-learning-dorothy-sayers/
Sayers warnings and analysis led me to an organization which I hope can help me in my quest. It is…
The Association of Classical Christian Schools
Dedicated to restoring Christian civilization through Christian education.
https://classicalchristian.org/
Their history and America’s weaponization of public education against Classical education is really worth a look.
https://classicalchristian.org/our-history/
May God forgive us and the Holy Spirit give us the strength and wisdom guide us in this fight for our children and our civilization.
My son volunteered helping elementary students. He is not an educator, what he told me he noticed was a complete absence of critical thinking.
please send him the links above
If you look at the Ivy Leagues and the Seven Sisters in the NE of the US all were started as Christian colleges and in the case of the Ivys as SEMINARIES…they are all so anti-Christian now it is sickening…this is what has happened to America’s education specifically and in general as a society
Puritans were among the best educated men of their times. In the colonies, reading was encouraged as a necessary means to understand the Bible, giving school-age children insight into the proper relationship between church and state, parent and child, husband and wife, employer and employee.
Children grew to adulthood knowing their role as citizens in a free society.
Enter the state to abrogate this voluntary arrangement and indoctrinate children in the tenets of statism through compulsory education.
Whereupon reaching adulthood, they discover unelected bureaucrats will decree labor standards, redefine marriage, sicc Children’s Services on them if they don’t like their parenting skills and ruthlessly suppress any religious appeal to conscience that is at variance with public policy.
But yeah, the Puritans burned witches and stuff, which means religiously educated children will grow up to be intolerant persecutors, lusting to unleash the next Inquisition on unbelievers.
This suggests that the road forward is all uphill.
As Lord Acton observed, freedom of conscience is the groundwork of political liberty. Conscience must be guided by God’s word to man. Absent a revival of religious education we will remain enthralled to Post-modern strictures of tolerance for perversity and hostility to every institution that is rooted in venerable law codes.
Are there enough good parents willing and able to religiously educate their children beyond the few short hours they now get in Sunday school?
From the admittedly limited scope of my own efforts and inquiries, the churches are reluctant to step forward and answer the call to “teach all men whatsoever I have commanded.”
Until community in Christ’s body becomes the defining characteristic of professing believers, we will continue to drift with the tide.
Fine insight.
That uphill trek starts with facing these ugly realities and taking the first step.
The complications I had not expected is how many churches have been infiltrated by the Marxists and, the due diligence required to evaluate Christians schools as such.
The surprise for me is the rapid level of awareness of parents. Charter schools and private schools here have impossible waiting lists.
Of all the research I have done so far, it looks to me that the The Association of Classical Christian Schools is addressing the root cause.
Pee Chee folders!
Subbing for many years, especially in middle schools, has allowed me to observe what’s going on in classrooms and it’s often disheartening. Looking at the use of technology, so many homework and classroom exercises are assigned mainly to have the kids use their school-provided tablets. The School Board authorized their purchase, so the teachers knew they had to use them and come up with schoolwork and homework to justify the purchase. Yes, there were some advantages in having multi-media resources to help learning, but very often it was just so much busy-work.
When I was in school, we walked ten miles to school and back, in the snow, barefoot, uphill both ways.
You had feet? You must have been rich. Bwhahahahaha.
?LOL? , Hardnox ?
My biggest pet peeve is the so called fund raisers my kids’ school did practically every week. There were chocolate bar fund raisers, wrapping paper fund raisers, case of fruit fund raisers, and so on. Each time the cost of the stuff was four to ten times when it should have been with the school getting only a small portion of the total cost. Mostly the companies that created these made huge profits because they overcharged for the actual item knowing parents and grandparents would fork over the money because it was “a fundraiser”. The worst part was how the kids who sold the most would become the class hero and get heaped with praise, often simply because Mom was the seller. It was a constant strain on the budget, these stupid fund raisers.
I was a working single father and I had enough on my plate without having to help my son sell candy.
I usually ended up buying all the unsold candy and then it just sat around as an unhealthy temptation for me and my son.
I talked my son’s school into allowing “buy outs.”
As you mentioned, the school only gets a small percentage of the candy sales.
I explained that, if they gave parents the option to not sell candy and instead pay a fixed amount directly to the school, the school would get to keep 100% of that amount rather than receive 10% of candy sales.
It was a win for parents like me and a win for the school.
For parents who couldn’t afford the “buy out” option, they could still sell candy the usual way.
Very true Justin Burch.
A lot of these working mothers took the stuff to work and sold it for the kids.
We really hated seeing these people coming.
They constantly had something they were selling for their kids sake trying to boost the kids self esteem among its peers.
Sometimes the kid whose mom sold so much would get their picture in the local paper because the kid supposedly sold a ton of candy for his class.
These kids were the envy of every young impressionable student and of course the school system works on that a lot.
Wish you’d been my parent. I’m 75 and I just learned about PEDMAS. (The order of doing math through several operations)
(Parenthesis, exponents, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction).
I went to Parochial Schools all the way through 4 years of college not one unit on PEDMAS.
Graduated with an English Degree, teaching certification. Taught English to Vietnamese Soldiers for one year in Vietnam.
I was a Claim Supervisor in Omaha. I taught trainees to handle claims, write clear, concise coverage letters explaining the insurance policy.
Crazy.
16 years of education and not one teacher explained PEDMAS.
Just Crazy.
Nessie. . . . Former math teacher here. . . .
Students were taught PEMDAS . . . . “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.”
I learned it early on. Don’t remember that cool acronym, we just had to memorize the order of operations.
I learnt BODMAS in the 50s
Brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction.
I used to teach. When it came to calculators, I never let my students use one until they proved that they didn’t NEED it rather that it made things faster. Calculators are frequently dropped and, like many other electronics, can give false answers (maybe that is why some call math racist–it can give you the wrong answer and if you aren’t smart enough to know how to estimate what the answer should be then you can get the WRONG answer). It is the same with computers. Sometimes you just need to look things up in a book or magazine and FEEL it.
I had to scrounge around and find ways to get things for my classroom. Beg for books or money to buy them, pick up pencils or pens from motels, buy school supplies when they are on sale (even if they sat for months), brought Kleenex from home (toilet paper too as well as clothes for some kids). Sad but that was the life of a teacher.
“I never let my students use one until they proved that they didn’t NEED it ”
Calculators should be introduced to the classroom after basic algebra.
When I entered engineering school we used sliderules :).. Like you say, one has to understand advanced mathematics like logarithms to find the power of a slide rule. Same thing with the first calculator I got. It was RPN (reverse polish notation) and using it without a good understanding of algebraic equations would be a exercise in futility.
ahh old HP calculators…always used TIs myself…first was a TI-59 in junior year of HS but it got stolen out of my locker one day (sniff)…once got to college and calculus and diffs got a TI-89 programmable…it would all but wipe you after going to the bathroom
I sent my son to a parochial school and in addition to “the list” there was also “the uniform.”
Don’t get me wrong, I was in favor of school uniforms.
What irritated me was the seemingly endless modifications to the uniform which usually made the previous year’s uniform out of date.
Then there was the year that they decided to require that uniforms could only be purchased from Lands End, because Lands End has a scheme that kicks back a percentage of purchases to the school.
The cost of uniforms tripled and many parents who were already struggling financially decided to send their kids elsewhere.
Went to school in a small midwestern town in the 1950s-60s. Going back to school meant a new pencil box, a tablet and a pair of shoes. The ruler, protractor, and scissors were used from the year before. And yes, I remember the brown glue with rubber foam top. In high school it was a new loose leaf binder and paper, and maybe a slide rule if you were in advanced math.
Reading was learned with phonics. grammar with sentence diagramming. Multiplication tables were memorized and recited out loud. Students were called on to come up and show their work on the board – multiplication, long division, and sentence diagrams. If you did it wrong, the teacher would use your mistakes to explain the right way to the class. Work was corrected with a red pen, and the lower grades, good work got a gold glue-on star. Everyone around you could see the grade in red at the top of the work or the color of the star.
Unless it was a howling blizzard or a deluge, we went outside for recess in grade school.
One of my responsibilities as Elections Committee chairman for the Alaska Libertarian Party was registering college students to vote.
One day, while soliciting signatures at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, a noticeably younger student came through the lobby carrying a load of math books in each arm.
I greeted him and suggested that he looked much too young for me to offer him a voter registration form. He agreed that he was only just twelve years old.
“Are you studying these books that you carry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you home schooled?”
“Yes.”
I paused briefly as I studied his slightly sheepish demeanor.
“It is evident your father loves you and has made a strong commitment to your education. Remember to thank him tonight when you sit down to dinner for the sacrifice he has made for you.”
He grinned broadly as he walked away bearing his burden.
That young boy would be in his early thirties by now and I suspect he does math in his head.
I remember my school supplying the basics back in the day. Anyone else remember that flat box of thick Crayola crayons? It had the basic primary colors and were flat on one side.
Gosh, for a Monday morning, it sure was nice to just take 5minutes and drift back through time to picking out a new lunchbox, wearing a new pair of shoes, and walking to the bus stop on a crispy autumn morning…ahhh, simpler times. Thank you Menagerie ?
I 100% AGREE with you!!!!!
Look at IRS instructions for teachers to deduct out of pocket expenses to supply items for the classroom. Yes they get a tax credit for it.
“ Teachers can claim the Educator Expense Deduction regardless of whether they take the standard deduction or itemize their tax deductions. A teacher can deduct a maximum of $250. Two married teachers filing a joint return can take a deduction of up to $250 apiece, for a maximum of $500.”. Turbo Tax 6/21
I sense your resentment. To put the tax credit in perspective . . . .
Many students have no respect for the value of anything. Out of my 95-100 students, I’d say more than half of them wasted their supplies. For laughs they would break their pencils, throw the pieces in the trash, open up their 3 ring binder and flip the pages of notebook paper scratching a line of ink over each and every page, take pens apart to make shooters, etc.
After my first year, I realized most of my students would be out of paper, pens and paper by Oct. or Nov., so I would shop right along side of parents in July. I bought boxes of notebook paper, pencils and erasers IN BULK..
I know the supply lists are ridiculously expensive. As a math teacher it would have been money better spent if put toward a YEAR’S supply of paper and pencils and nothing else.
Really, parents. One pack of notebook paper for an entire year?
$25o tax deduction? Ha. Between “room decor” (required) and providing supplies for students for 3/4 of the year, I ran through $250 and more of my own money before the first day of school.
What you say is what I have heard from many teachers “rvsueandcrew”.
And I always ask where is your teachers union when you need it?
Instead of forcing financially strapped parents to buy stuff for the whole class and sell candy and christmas decorations why does the well financed teachers unions not hear your problems and help you solve them.
As parents we were supportive 30 years ago when all we purchased was a few items for our own kids use but it morphed into buying things for the whole class over and over and over.
I would cringe when I saw one of my kids walk in the door with yet another small printed piece of paper pinned to his jacket (before email).
I just knew it was another begging request from a teacher who needed “something” for the class and needed it tomorrow.
We got very little advance notice of when the school was going to need something and my small child would almost break down in tears when we had to tell them we just could not afford to do it.
This was making my hardworking husband very very angry and he was not alone.
Our last two boys seem to bring fewer begging requests from the teachers because I think the parents were so fed up and let the school know.
Here in Colorado we also have gobs of money from LOTTO that are suppose to go to schools.
The public school system gets gobs of money yet some of the buildings in a few areas were in such bad physical shape that the districts had to sue the state of Colorado to repair them.
When on Gods Green Earth does all of the money go that is funneled to K-12 public schools?
Haha. When I went to school it was “free.” They provided the supplies. Just another great example of another hidden tax, all a part of the continuing destruction of the middle class.
I stopped using a calculator to do my logbook. I forgot how to add+subtract. I had to relearn how to do multiplication and divison too.When I was a kid every classoom had at least 1 abacus and bundles of math sticks. And we had phonics cards none of that stupid see/say method.It was the stone age. I also forgot how to write longhand. Now all the letters and post cards I send are done longhand. Next up- relearn how to tell time on a clock with minute, second,and hour hands. The pain.
My parents got me a few pens, pencils and a note book. That’s all I needed.
I was given a slate and a slate pencil, and other books were handed out daily and packed away back into the press. We never took them home. This lasted for a few years before we had pencil and paper.
I have nothing to add…other than my experience as a child, parent, and now grandparent is pretty much the same as the author (sans the good math and science knowledge and background).
My pet peeve for school supplies is the items we are told to buy that are never used or hardly used. I’m convinced their is some kick back scheme I haven’t figured out. In our case composition notebooks are always required but then at the end of the year only the first page has any writing on it at all. And because of the way composition notebooks are bound they are the least useful for just grabbing a piece of note paper when you need one.
Our solution is we simply reuse anything we can that wasn’t worn out. Notebooks, folders, and binders.
And you are right that schools and teachers pass on costs for wipes, gal bags, and dry erase markers for themselves. I don’t accept the budget excuse. Our school budget is huge. My property taxes are outrageous. The school should be buying their own dry erase markers. I never had to buy my teachers in the 70’s and 80’s chalk.
Not sure why a school supply list needs to be featured as a negative. There is enough negativity here already.
As a retired educator those not able to afford them could seek assistance and no one was denied. I would tell parents to focus on paper, pencils, and crayons. The rest would come later.
This is a ritual ( since kindergarten) I look forward to every summer. My granddaughter and I have a special day to spend together watching her excitement at all the brand new things we buy. We also get shoes and clothes for the first day. Afterwards, we have a lovely lunch.
Sadly, she is going into junior high and her mom says it will be at individual teacher’s requests. Still, there will be other things to get excited about and I look forward to it all!
I appreciate the post. It’s not negative — it’s refreshingly honest.
If you grew up poor, seeing a list of school expenses is not a warm and fuzzy memory. That, plus the advertiser’s constant drumbeat of back-to-school “needs” and “wants” puts a damper on a poor parent’s relief over kids being back in school after a summer of shuffling affordable caretaking options for the kids.
I grew up poor and don’t remember anyone stressing out. Even if it was a small box of crayons and one pencil and notebook I got it. My parents valued an education. As I posted, poor families and those with many children could find help within the school. Just not sure why everything has to have such a negative spin around here. Have a wonderful day!
It’s a little more than a small box of crayons, a pencil and a notebook.
It’s not negativity, it’s more like what do my taxes pay for?
Our list was 3 reams of paper, 24 pencils, a couple boxes of crayons, a pack of fine point dry eraser markers, a pack of color chisel point dry erase markers, pack of erasers and a few others items.
Fortunately we’re in a position it’s no big deal plus we can get one of everything on the “like to have” list: paper towels, Lysol wipes, hand sanitizer and tissues.
Why do parents and teachers need to supply these very essential items?
For “health and safety” some schools across the nation are mandating masks and social distancing but we won’t provide teachers with paper towels, Lysol wipes, hand sanitizer and tissues without them coming out of pocket or begging parents??
The system is broken. All these items need to be paid for in the school budget (hint they don’t need to pay taxes on the stuff and can get better pricing buying in bulk) and our taxes go up a few bucks a month.
Our taxes did pay for all basic school supplies.
Prior to top heavy school administrators coming on board.
^^^^THIS x 1000!!^^^!
When I was in school, +/-65 years ago, my father made us all a cigar box size box with metal hinges that I used for my whole grammar school career. A cigar sized box was required because our storage space was a 3″ high space underneath a sloping little desktop built to butt up to the seat back of the chair in front of us. All the seating was in columns of connected seats/desks built long enough for 7 kids to sit front to back on the same unit. Under each seat was an attached metal rack where books and papers were sort of stored. Usually the book and paper pile was a hideous mes by the end of the first week of school. If I remember, there were usually about 5 of these units lined up side by side with isles in between to accommodate up to 35 kids. So cigar boxes were almost a requirement if we didn’t want to lose our supplies on the floor underneath the big mess of books and Big Chief writing paper tablets. Parents were expected to supply the pens, pencils, one eraser, writing tablets, crayons, crappy round point scissors, and even crappier jars of paste with applicator brushes built into the lid. Since the lines were always long at the pencil sharpener, we could get a head start on an assignment by using a little pencil sharpener that easily fit in the cigar box. All of this could fit in your cigar box. I don’t remember teachers ever telling parents what brands to buy, and they always seemed to have these supplies to give kids who seemed to always be losing theirs. The teachers used the school office’s mimeograph machines to make work pages for the classroom tests and for homework assignments.
We all learned lots of reading, spelling, writing, language, arithmetic, geography, science, history, music, and art. My favorite was geography, because I could daydream about going to strange places that I knew were preferable to this stinking grammar school classroom.
Thanks for this posting, Menagerie, it was fun to remember the old cigar box that my dad made me. The box was also useful for marble racing on the driveway during the Summer.
“Why do parents and teachers need to supply these very essential items?”
Because our school systems are overweight on the administrative side due to teacher’s unions. You could probably cut out 50% of admin costs and put it into school supply needs and never skip a beat.
Of course the unions would be up in arms, so we can’t have that. (sarc)
why know the reason why for these expensive administrators and still do nothing about it???
Your taxes pay for: Administrators!
Then: the buildings, teachers, supplies, light bills, etc.
Then: all the other “less affluent” school districts in your state (administrators, buildings, teachers, etc.).
Oh, and…
When an administrator is terminated by the School Board, you get to pay their settlement.
*the settlement is pretty much a “given”, unless he was led away in handcuffs.
Depends on what state you live in. Time for home schooling
If you were poor then it was your parents over stressing out, and they would not want to put that stress on you.
First identify your children as *poor* into the school records. Not a happy day. I was the Mom. I also never fretted in front of my children. But silently I puzzled how to make it work. I recall cutting up my son’s jeans and re-sewing them to fit my daughter so she’d have *new* clothes for school. I borrowed eggs not to eat but to bake a flour and water gingerbread I needed one egg. One square piece was breakfast, one was for school, one was dinner. We also valued education; I attended every school board meeting and got the term “Football Field” and “Baseball Field” to be changed to “Athletic Field” to make a way for use by girls sports. My children were A students and went on to colleges. We couldn’t afford the expenses of team uniforms or athletic shoes or music instruments so they couldn’t participate even though one could run 5 miles and one was voted most talented voice and Jr. Prom Queen. I’m not complaining. We learned life lessons. But the opening of school each year is a burdensome, impossible day for some working Mom’s. You deserve your happy memories, no question. Putting your poverty on permanent record that follows your children like grades, understandably isn’t necessarily a wise choice for everyone.
Instead of sending money to crooked politicians and woke charities with high administrative expenses, my husband and I started a fund that buys “extras” like sports jerseys, prom tickets and yearbooks for students in need. We also provide funds to feed needy students over the school breaks when they can’t get meals in school.
It is very satisfying to help local families anonymously. My single mom struggled to make ends meet, and I know how it feels.
“Crayons are one thing. Laser printer toner cartridges are quite another …” ?
Darn, you got pounded so I am going to say something to cheer you up. How lucky you were to have parents who were poor but managed to make it so fun for you and that you have been able to carry the tradition on with your granddaughter.
Not making any other judgements … as it’s all been said and then some… just pointing out you are blessed.
The last year my oldest daughter was in high school we had three students grades 7-12. Our school supply lists cost about $100 per student and their “fees” for the academic year ran about $200 per student. This is a stealth tax on parents.
Much of the post was about the damaging effects of calculators. As a math and physics teacher, I can say without hesitation that the ability to learn higher levels of math are 100% dependent upon the ability to quickly solve arithmetic problems accurately without the use of a calculator. That’s not a negative either. It just is. Like Menagerie, I grew up learning advanced high school math using the tables at the back of the textbook looking up sin/cos/tan in the tables. When I got to college and a calculator become more necessary, I found it to be a convenience but never lost my knowledge of where those numbers came from. The importance of mental math skills cannot be overstated. Each year that I taught, I watched student mental math skills erode. One day, while teaching geometry, I was going through the simple concept of reducing square roots. The student was confused, and so I asked “Well, what two numbers multiply together to make 16? You know, like 16×1. What other ones could you try.” He paused for about 10 seconds, then looked at me and said, “To be honest, I never learned my times tables and I don’t know them.”
There is no way to teach math to students in that situation. I can’t teach 9 years of math that should have been taught in the middle of the 10th year of school. Negative? Yes! It is absolutely imperative that we be negative about the fact that we are failing our students.
I agree with this Hokkoda.
I worked for one of the most brilliant engineers in the late 80’s. He could out think and out design every engineer in the company. He still used a slide rule.
I myself have seen a loss of cognitive ability and it is not only from old age and chemo brain. I believe it is a function of use. I do not use those skills anymore so they are disappearing. I set aside the calculator and started doing things longhand, when I can, to regain my thot processes. I also started working on memorizing phone numbers as well. Amazing how those skills fade when they are not used.
As for the thoughts by Menagerie, I am on board as well.
By the 2nd grade we knew the multiplication tables up to 12.
But that was in another world where the teachers had God on their side and if you made a mistake on 12×11…
…OMG! You were toast destined to the 12th level of Hell.
It is pervasive that kids do not know their basic math facts. Even for simple stuff, I’d ask, and they’d pull out their calculator. Literally for 7×8. It is appalling. Then you try to explain to the idiots who run and teach in these schools that and they look at you like you have three heads and make excuses like “Oh, 2/3 of these students are never going to college. You expect too much.”
We had to memorize our multiplication tables by the third grade – this was the early 80’s in Florida.
You have no idea the struggles of others until you have lived them, you are fortunate to have never had to chose between food or the lights being on, perhaps if you had you would understand
Very true Kulafarmer.
I have friend, single mother of 5, who struggled to provide for her children.
She was a widow who was working as hard as she could to provide the necessities and these school lists was something she dreaded.
She would try and save a bit each week for months so she could get most of the stuff that was needed for her 5 boys but it was always a struggle and when teachers would add things on to the lists that were needed for the room and not for my friends children she was more than frustrated.
Like you say when you are the parent you try to shield you little ones from the stress and strain of difficult times so they well feel safe and secure.
And it was not just with the school supply lists but two or thee times a month the teachers would need money for something.
Just two or three dollars from each kid in class is what they would say, but if you have 5 kids in school that adds up to quite a bit for some one on a tight budget getting hit up for unexpected monetary output.
Dear retired educator ,
You think a discussion on how to make our schools better is bad .
Hmm
Petzmom, I don’t believe the article was meant as a negative re school supplies. I think the greater point is that there was a time when children learned a lot more with a lot less “fluff”.
Very true “cplogics”.
And I have several friends who are now teaching and who do a great job, or at least are trying to.
Their main complaint is the administration where they work, this is something they will not say out loud.
They are good teachers and care about their students but they feel that the teachers union and the administration is out for something else and it is not something that has the kids best interest.
They are all looking for jobs in different fields.
Sad
The school should be covering for many of these materials and not relying on parents to subsidize school budgets. It gets worse and worse each year. Parents handle the clothing, shoes, backpacks, pens pencils, binders, and paper. The schools need to allocate funds to handle everything else. I don’t think any parents OR teachers should have to supply wipes or tissues for a classroom. Any other private employer has those things budgeted in, but the state makes taxpayers do double duty.
It’s a scam.
If the schools were supplying BOOKS instead of worksheets with internet links to reference if the student had problems/questions, they wouldn’t need all that toner. I mean, I pay my property taxes, and students aren’t even given books anymore????
I can’t tell you the number of times as a kid, when February rolled around, and I had to look up something we learned back in October. Thank heaven for books and notebooks! The kids today have loose leaf paper, which are thrown away after they aren’t needed anymore–usually within a day or two.
And to show my age AND how poor my parochial elementary school was: the nuns handed out our books at the beginning of the year. We were expected to go home and use paper grocery bags to make jackets for the books to protect them. Why? Because at the end of the school year, we had to hand the books in for someone else to use next year. If the book was damaged, we had to pay for it. (And no: we were not allowed to write in the books, let alone leave the answers in math books etc. We weren’t perfect, but honestly: it didn’t occur to us to cheat like that.)
For the record: I still recall and use the knowledge I gained from those nuns in a tiny rural parochial school in Minnesota. Second to none. Valuable beyond measure…..
I hear schools now lend out tablets (iPads) for students to use at home. And this was before the Covid lockdowns. Our school district now has a superintendent of business. Gone is the world of pencil cases, rulers and black and white notebooks.
From what was for personal use, my kids got reused school supplies from the year before. I’m not buying a new box of pencils or crayons if the last one is still usable.
That^^^^is a great lesson to teach to kids!!
We have sooo much to be grateful for!
How does a kid have gratitude for “what they have” if they can so easily throw it in the trash??
That is just good “parenting”!
My youngest daughter is familiar with the phrase, “Go check with your brother and see if he has any left from last year…”
We have an extensive collection of summer reading books that will be donated to the school library someday.
Waste not, want not.
“… those not able to afford them could seek assistance and no one was denied.”
No one wants to do this.
Wrong! That used to be the case b/c people actually had pride and didn’t want people to know they were poor. Now it is just the opposite. My g-daughter and I were at a Walmart looking for items on her list before school started. This was about her Sophomore year in high school and after school started each teacher would add items needed for their specific class. We were looking at binders and a mother with about 5 kids made a comment to no one in particular that she did not understand why she had to buy any supplies what-so-ever b/c people who owned property paid school taxes. Another lady nearby answered that she didn’t have to buy anything. Just send your kids to school and the teacher would give them what they needed from the ‘community box.’ This is where the extra packs of pens, pencils, markers, etc. and other items that the other parents sent with their kids were deposited. It was probably more like a closet b/c what child can store 3 boxes of Kleenex, 3 reams of copy paper, 5 composition notebooks and on and on at their desk?
Petzmom,
Your response is typical teacher union mentality virtuosity: you’re entitled to dictate to parents and because you get all from the government you see nothing wrong with your “parents” swallowing their pride” to ask for small monetary awards for supplies, as long as they pay their taxes to fund your remuneration and post retirement pension and lifetime benefits; benefits which the private sector (the wealth generators; actual taxpayers not pass-through government workers) have not enjoyed since passage of the 1974 ERISA law. …
To be clear my experience with many different districts and authorities (and as child myself and raising children, and through extended family and friends) is there are many good teachers who eventually cannot do anything but submit to the “lowest common denominator” thinking of today’s K-12 pedagogy, standardized testing and mediocrity of the majority of teachers and administrators and their unions. …
In the majority of situations public education has little to do with teaching children how to teach themselves and about the vast body of knowledge in human history, it is all about the “teachers, administrators and union leaders”; and of course “voting blocks” to git mo money.
Lagman, you are shooting at the wrong target. ‘Sorry to tell you that, but as a parent and a retired teacher I can say that what you are saying is correct, but still misses the point.
Today, if you go to a “parent / admin” conference concerning your child’s performance in school, you might find that the administration believes that *THEY* are better at deciding:
What your child should be taught (usually mandated by the state)
How your child should be taught (teaching practices are only dictated by adminstrators)
What your child is capable of (which changes with each teacher’s assessment, btw)
What your child should be exposed to (they may or may not ask your permission: BEWARE!)
UNFORTUNATELY, parents attend these meetings with the belief that they are working as a team with their child’s teacher(s).
SOMETIMES, they are! Sometimes, they are not!
BEWARE of any meeting that requires that you sign paperwork!
IF you find yourself in such a meeting, WRITE YOUR OPINIONS AND EXPECTATIONS ON THE PAPERWORK BEFORE YOU SIGN IT. A really great admin. or teacher will write this in during your meeting and will only ask you to sign the paper after everyone at the meeting has come to this agreement.
Consider that this is like any other LEGAL CONTRACT.
Those who sign, must agree.
I guess it depends on the school district, and that is reflected in your property values.
Our city’s school district, specially the schools on our part of town nearest the university, do NOT teach down on the parents, specially as most parents have at least a Bachelor’s degree… so the educators know they are not dealing down, but in many cases, up.
I found that dealing with the teachers was indeed a team effort and they did work hard with us.
Once, I was like 2 minutes late into the classroom on Back To School Night ( big school, had to walk from end to end…). So, I muttered: “Sorry, I was smoking in the Boy’s Room“… to which the teacher, not missing a beat, accuratedly guessed: “Oh, you must be ####’s dad“.
The parents were laughing their heads off on that exchange.
It’s indeed a great school district and our property values reflect that.
If money was spent wisely by our schools there would be no need for long silly lists like this. Why do we need such a bloated high paid administration. Even the teachers parking lots are filled with $70k cars. In a community where the fact that I can afford a brand new base Honda Civic. Draws comment.
A few years ago, there was discussion on the topic the first comments on the page being somewhat planted to offset the whole discussion. I think your comment was a perfect example of this statement the article. I agree wholeheartedly with the statement, in general.
FTA: The ability to think logically and analytically is a crucial skill, and we need it. Maybe we have a bunch of young adults running around feeling threatened by actual free and different thought and expression and opinions because they only know how to emote, not really think deeply.
Well said, and much needed. Ever since that post a few years ago, checking the first comment(s) has been key for me. Thank you.
I, too, am a former public school teacher. I taught 7-8th grade history. I never issued a list. I just wanted them to have a notebook with 2 pockets and plenty of pencils. No one at my school would dare ask parents to provide printer cartridges!
I also raised 2 daughters and I, too, HATED the beginning of school. It’s just hard to find and afford everything. Shopping for clothes, in particular, were a constant source of stress.
I also agree with the post on special projects even though I always offered one to replace a lowest test grade during a grading period. The project’s subject matter had to pertain to the material on their lowest scored test.
I disagree with the post’s assertion that teachers assign projects to get out of teaching. Projects take weeks to grade when done correctly. Two, the wider state or school curriculum often mandates that teachers assign a certain number of protects (along with “group work”—which is another pile of B.S. and another topic altogether.)
OMG ..the projects! I will never forget the ‘ancient structures’ project that cost an arm and a leg to build.
I had three children within three years. One after the other, they all built these special school projects. One day, my daughter came home from school and announced that she chose an ancient grotto for her class project.
Exasperated, I opened up a closet and pointed to a pyramid-shaped monstrosity called a ‘Ziggurat’ on the shelf, next to three discarded bridge projects.
The Ziggurat had expensive spray-painted cones glued onto boards with intricate staircases, plus all these tiny little figures.
“Tell your teacher you had a change of plans. You can make it your own!”
And she did.
I built a paper mache sructure of the Pantheon.
Painted grey
Still have it
I’m still very proud of the paper mache shark I helped my son build in the 2nd grade. He’s going to college in a few weeks, but it was hanging proudly on his bedroom wall for a decade.
I got an A!
Hokkoda , ?LOL?
That got me Laughing this Fine Monday Morning ?
Thanks ?
I didn’t see it as negative but rather matter of fact, especially on the use of “technology” as a crutch.
Chrome books, calculators, online “beyond text books” nonsense is destroying children’s ability to think reason, and write well.
goodness are you for real???
I thought the post was very, very kind , generous and forgiving towards the alleged adults in charge of Public Education nowadays.
I am 66 now. Grew up and went to school in a poor neighborhood in Southern California. I do not recall any of these lists of parent supplied “school supplies” in K thru 8. There were a few items like gym clothes and drawing tools for a drafting class in high school (which I had to mow lawns to earn the money for myself). I was astonished years later when I heard about these lists being given to parents to provide for basic supplies.
I have always understood since then that the money was not (and is not ) getting to the classroom because it was going for more important things like staff salaries, staff training, staff vacations , new buildings and new buildings and new buildings (and occasionally to do basic maintenance on buildings) and most importantly, for staff pensions. This is very true in California where a lot of the money also goes to the Unions and then to bought-and-paid for politicians.
There is not a business I think that is more deserving of being ended than Government funded schools.
You are correct that calculators become crutches, even among the sharpest of people, reliance on calculators will dull your calculation skills.
I was once asked to do a speed math competition. 80 problems, each harder than the previous one, 10 minutes to do them, and your score is all the problems you got right before the first wrong or unfinished answer. I think I did 10 problems but only scored 7. While some did all 80 problems with pretty high scores. So I was fast, but not good enough. Yet, the more I use calculators and computers, the slower I become calculating simple change. And the more I don’t trust myself to be right when doing so.
And college professors had to constantly fight against stupid math mistakes. Had one professor start subtracting one point for every math mistake in every line. That shaped us up right quickly.
And physics professors had to mark an answer as completely wrong if you couldn’t get the units right.
The DUMBING DOWN air America continues –
My 3 kids (NYU grad, UGA grad and non student)
All I do now that they are 22,24,26 is preach the importance of
– Reading And Comprehension (BOOKS not blogs)
– Math Basics- even if that means starting over (they learned with calculators)
Entire civilization, Logic , reason is BUILT on MATH
– last but not least
CRITICAL Thinking
My belief is 90% of the kids born after 1995 have NONE of these skills –
– it all starts and ends right here
90%? What an optimist!
Schools in Chicagoland are pretty much filled with children of illegal aliens.
I remember putting my boys in private school in 1990.
It was right after their grade school stopped teaching in English.
Jim in Oak Ridge, LOL
Liked your comment, too.
Once was. A brief interlude. But I have moved around a lot. Before and after Oak Ridge. And I have come back to TN and been here for a while.
The speed math test was in Longview Texas, but not where I lived at the time. That was much further back than when I lived in Oak Ridge.
And thanks for the like.
Tennessee is my home too, only other state I’ve ever lived in was Georgia, just across the state line. When it was time to sell our cabin there we wanted out of state taxes and moved back to Tennessee.
Before entering nursing school curriculum you have to pass 100% the Nurse Math Test with no calculator. Heparin doses ml by kilograms weight of patient. Insulin doses by units. IV fluids drip rates. Converting adult doses to pediatric doses, etc. You can take the test as many times to pass it. Being a “mature” learner I passed the first time. Most took 3-4 tests to pass it.
This is important. I recall reading on a nursing blog — a nursing student noting her current struggle with multiplication, because “nice” and sympathetic teachers had passed her based on her friendly personality, without her ever learning her multiplication tables from grade 3-12.
My brother drilled my “times tables”using flash cards. My own children had some teachers who tried to forbid flash cards as “rote memorization” and “not creative”
In college, a fellow student who sought a teaching degree was forced to take another semester because he had used “rote methods” to teach math.
This BS needs to have a light shone on it, and it needs to be changed. Our kids are being dumbed down because of neglect by adults responsible for paying attention to what they are taught using our tax dollars.
All the money in the world can’t fix a perniciously bad curriculum
Former ICU/CCU nurse here – you are right. All those calculations are pretty straightforward if you understand basic math. Always a necessity in ICU to be able to double check drip rates of vasoactive medications running via pump because the responsibility is yours if they are not. I ran into quite a few of the younger nurses who did not know how to do this – you use just a few basic algebraic formulas. Believe me, I’m no math genius, but they made me charge nurse because I showed everyone I worked with how to figure it very quickly and accurately. It made me sad that these otherwise intelligent women had been so ill-served in their education. BTW, I dropped out of HS due to family issues and got a GED before earning a degree in Nursing, so I didn’t get some elite education. There were just better standards and methods when I went to school.
There was actually a columnist for the Tennessean who asserted that no one needed to be able to do math due to calculators. She was a fool! She didn’t realize how many calculations are made by surgeons etc when they are in the OR. Can you imagine a surgeon pulling out a calculator when he tries to make split second determinations?
My three sons did Kumon math. All Kumon is consists of worksheets and repetition each day. I have no idea why this cannot be done and the sheets made by schools. It is so simple. It involves daily repetition.