Back In My (School) Day...

September 2002

As school goes back into session, many adults reminisce about their own school days. Everyone has heard an older relative talk about how things were when they were kids. "Back in my day, we had a fifty-mile walk to get to school. There was only one desk for all 53 of us. And we were lucky to have it!" Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but you get the idea. I never gave those stories much thought; I figured school was basically the same for every generation. At least until recently.

My daughter, Amanda, just started Kindergarten. After getting through the first week of tears and separation anxiety (for me -- my daughter never stopped smiling), I was surprised by how many things had changed since my own school days. I mean besides the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

Coming home the first day, Amanda's backpack was full of drawings, announcements, and, to my surprise, a thick envelope containing a fund-raising package. I know as soon as you sign up for a school activity, they hand you a box of candy and send you out on the street. But expecting it from every student on the first day of school? It doesn't seem right to expose kids to cutthroat competitive commercialism this early, some of whom are still learning to hold the crayon in the hand and not the nose.

I'd like to see other government-funded institutions need to fund raise this much. Imagine some army general go door to door and ask, "Pardon me, sir, but would you care to buy some nice candy, or some wrapping paper? We're saving up to buy another stealth bomber. The soldier that sells the most gets a boom box and a pair of roller skates."

When I got to see my daughter's class, I noticed something new next to the blocks and the art projects: a computer lab. It amazes me to see little kids mastering technology at such a young age. We'll eventually get to the point where Microsoft will send recruiters out to maternity wards to hire new Tech Support people. ("Lesson One: The Hold Button.") We didn't have to worry about computers when I was in Kindergarten, mostly because technology hadn't gotten past the abacus yet. In high school, the closest thing I ever got to computer training was my weekly unloading of 17 pounds of quarters into the local Space Invaders machine.

I don't know when they all became extinct, but the standard-issue gray-haired round old-lady Kindergarten teacher has been replaced by a physically-fit good looking young man. When I went to Back to School Night, I realized that not only is my daughter's teacher younger than me (I can feel my arteries hardening at that one), he was getting eyed up by a number of the young mothers in attendance. Right now, some mother is praying her child misbehaves and brings home a note from school asking for a private conference.

I guess it's just a sign of how things change, for both better and worse. Although I know someday it'll be my turn to tell those old school stories, and I'll have to make sure I turn my Cranky dial to 11. I'll be telling my then-teenagers, "Why, back in my day, we didn't have virtual reality Phys. Ed. in class. We had Dodgeball! You lined up, you got your skull cracked with a playground ball, you were out. And we were happy to have it! And we didn't have cable TV in class either. If we wanted to see moving images, we had to hold down the button on the slide projector and pretend the people were in motion."

I imagine decades from now it'll be the same for Amanda as she tells a new generation of children, "We had it tough in my school. We didn't have cell phones embedded in our heads. When we had to ask the teacher something, we had to raise our hands! And we didn't have teleportation pods, either. We had to travel to school on bumpy school buses...with seat belts!"

Come on, say it with me, "...and we were lucky to have it!"

LEGAL STUFF: All content copyright © 1996-2006 Daniel O'Leary. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication, publication, or distribution.

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He has previously written online editorials to NJ-shout.com (RIP), Great Society.org, and Songsource.com, among others. He has also been featured in ShoreGuide and AbsoluteWrite.com.

Dan is a current member of the NetWits humorist's collective.

Since his early twenties, Dan's writings have also been prominently featured on the refrigerator in his parents' home. "Sure, they make no sense," Mrs. O'Leary comments, "but we're proud of him -- no matter what everyone else says."