The Back to School sales are in full swing.
The Sunday newspaper is full of ads for crayons, markers, marble notebooks, plus other necessities such as see through lunchbags, face masks and hand sanitizers.
How can these types of ads bring back memories of growing up, when so much has changed? But they do. As I grow older, it seems I just want to slip back into memories sometimes, instead of moving forward.
Were things simpler in the early 1960's?
I remember how a rite of passage was the increasing size of my crayon box. In elementary school, very September, I would be given a box of Crayola crayons for the school year. As I made my way through early elementary school, I worked my way up from a dozen crayon box, to 24, to 48, and finally, the coveted 64 crayon box, complete with crayon sharpener. The smell of crayons sticks with me. These still exist, although some of the colors have changed.
There was the back to school briefcase (we didn't use backpacks in those days), smelling heavily of leather. I started out with marble notebooks and graduated to looseleaf (they call them "binders" where I live now) books and spiral notebooks.
Cigar boxes that served as pencil boxes.
Textbooks needed to be covered. My parents would take brown paper from the laundry who did my Dad's shirts (a luxury my Mom used) and make book covers. My Dad was really good at it; I never got the hang of it. I also remember book covers from the local milk delivery service with logos of New York colleges - Cornell and Colgate stick in my mind.
The day we were herded into a large room and waited to get our polio shots.
Not all the memories were pleasant. I can remember physical discipline was used in my first grade class. And the fate of those who needed special education was not necessarily a good one, as I found out when I married a man whose younger brother is autistic and learned about his elementary school days.
But some of my memories were very nice indeed.
I'm sure you have memories, too. I'd love to have you share them in the comments.
I started school in Payson, Arizona in first grade with a teacher, Julia Randall, in her 46th year of teaching. She started teaching before Arizona was a state. Talk about shock and awe. Her method of discipline was slap you full in the face. Nobody thought a thing about it!! It got lots better after first grade.
ReplyDelete...I remember all of this from the '50s!
ReplyDeleteMy elementary school memories ...i grew up on Long Island. in first and second grade I went to a very traditional school, I was not allowed to wear pants to school. In the fall of 1968 we moved to a new neighborhood, where the public school was much more progressive and modern.
ReplyDeleteA friend grew up in Brooklyn. Her leg was amputated when she was 7. Her school wanted to put her in the special ed room because of her physical disability. Meaning, she’d be in a class where most of the students were learning disabled. Her parents pulled her out of public school and sent her to a Jewish Day School because they knew the public school would not give their daughter an adequate education.shes a lawyer now.
I think I started kindergarten in 1962, but it was nothing like your experiences, or Yogi's! This was Northern California, SF Bay area. There was NO physical discipline whatsoever, not then or in any of the years of school. The schools provided our supplies until high school, when we would need folders (I hated when my mother bought the cheap Peechee (?) ones with athletes on them!), binders and other supplies we kept in lockers. Our books had to be covered too, usually with old grocery bags we would decorate. We just carried what we needed for homework in our arms, not bags or packs. In elementary we had those desks that opened with connected chairs. I remember cleaning them out the last day of school. Some students had so much stuff it was amazing they found what they needed for class! Unlike the schools in CA and OR now, elementary schools did not have cafeterias then, and no other food service, so we all brought our lunches. Most moms were home and packed them.
ReplyDeleteI remember lining up with my parents at a nearby school to get a sugar cube with a drop of the polio vaccine (if a liquid ingested is still called a "vaccine") to eat. I was thrilled to eat a sugar cube!
I don't think things were simpler though. We had scary drills. Not just fire drills, where we left the classrooms for the playground. We had duck and cover for earthquakes (under our desks) and for attacks from the "Russians" (under our coats where we hung them, although what we'd hid under in warm weather I don't remember), which was the scariest. Hiding under coats for protection from a bomb? Nuclear attack? The special ed kids had their own classroom, and shared recess with us. I actually went to school with some of the same kids from kindergarten though high school graduation, and I mean in the SAME classes!
It wasn't until recently that I realized my childhood, my neighborhood, my education, was (with very few exceptions) very much what some would call "white privilege."
In elementary school in the 50's I remember air raid drills and hiding under my desk. If that wasn't bad enough, during summer vacation we couldn't play in the sprinklers because we might get polio. Yeah. Great days, lol.
ReplyDeleteWe used shopping bags!
ReplyDeleteMy elementary school had the severe special ed kids. I didn't realize at the time that that wasn't normal for the other elementary schools. This year is certainly going to be different.
ReplyDelete