Wednesday, September 22, 2010

and About those School Supplies...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Taxes to Go UP Another 5%?":


The whole world is trying to "go green," worrying about emissions and using organic products, yet our school supply lists ensure that our community is doing our part to fill up landfills with lockerfuls of plastics that, if they even manage to survive the school year, get thrown away.


Educators believe that the more supplies you have, the better education you will get.


I had one binder when I went to middle school. It was denim and it only came in two sizes - small and large. The widths were predetermined and there weren't choices in 1/4 inch increments.


I never remember a teacher asking for anything specific in terms of inches for a binder except some didn't allow the small looseleaf. Mostly teachers didn't get involved beyond asking for something specific like a protractor or compass. Their focus was on teaching, not worrying about what paper we were using to write our notes on, what type of pen we used and I certainly was never asked to provide dozens of sharpened pencils as if I was expected to copy War and Peace straight through without the aid of a sharpener.


But back to that denim looseleaf. It had the multiplication table and useful formulas like converting feet to meters or inches to centimeters (which I never used) pre-printed on the inside back cover and a built-in clip on the inside front cover with killer grooves that really pinched your fingers if you got caught in it. Like everyone else I personalized the cover with hand drawn logos of rock bands, copied from popular albums and agonizing over details. Pink Floyd, KISS, AC/DC, the Rolling Stones tongue were all popular.


All my subjects were in this one looseleaf and as it got filled, I simply took the used pages out to make more room. We had textbooks that had our homework questions in them and we answered them on a sheet of paper in our looseleaf. We didn't get hundreds of pages of xeroxes to put holes in and manage.


I learned with these primitive supplies and methods. It seems like that by today's standards, providing only one source to keep school papers in is akin to child abuse.


Watching my child struggle to manage a file folder, agenda and various notebooks of different types and widths, I wonder how different his education would be if he didn't have to think about all the organization required by the learning and just focused on the learning.


Not only would it be cheaper (sorry Staples!) but I truly believe it would be better. Less is usually more.