October 3rd, 1962
Svelte Rusk Elementary teacher Myrna Chun-Hoon wheels in the cattywampus TV cart, so students can learn the details of Walter Schirra’s orbital flight during the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission.
The Way We Were
Tag: School
I’ll Be Your Shelter
Miss Ruby Forsythe, 1987, Pawleys Island, South Carolina
one-room schoolhouse teacher for 50 years
Speech Defects Class: No Shirt, No Shoes, Whatever
Take A Seat (Literally)
Back in 1985, the ill-equipped school system of Managua (Nicaragua’s capital) couldn’t provide desks for each student. In order to make sure she always had a seat, this young student carried her desk to school and back from the barrio she lived in.
Lest you think this is a thing of the past, a 2012 article reported on Central China’s Macheng City in Hubei province, where the elementary schools had 2000 desks for 5000 students. In some cases, grandparents helped bear the burden.
Fortunate families strapped them to the backs of scooters. I guess the police don’t fine you for that.
Makes a simple classroom chore seem like nothing.
Back-To-School Fish Stories
Barefoot In Scottsboro: No Tenderfoots Here
Scottsboro, Alabama, 1936 by the great Carl Mydans for Farm Security Administration
More 1935 Goodness From West Texas, Part III
When Students Took Books To School
P.S. They really don’t use books any more. At least not here. Our school district leases Lenovo laptops to students once they enter middle school and they can continue with the same one for years. Families pay for them yearly. Back in my day, we were issued used textbooks and we covered them with paper ads, such as Mrs. Baird’s bakery or Big Red. We had to fold them just right at the corners to keep them in place.
This is one I’ve actually kept for 40 years. Any of you recall doing this with paper bags?
Granddad’s Monthly Test #1
My granddad Bill was born in 1920. Wasn’t he a happy toddler? As a child of The Depression, he tended to hoard things–things others might toss without batting an eye. Much of it was unnecessarily saved, but among his piles of things salvaged were monthly tests. Today I share one that he took in 1930, just after he turned 10 years old.
I hope that you have found this interesting. You can see how children only 9 and 10 were already learning about Fascism before they ever learned about Hitler. One wonders if children nowadays are so aware of their political system. Actually, one is certain they are not. They are busy playing Fortnite. Perhaps I will share more of these in the future, as a testament to the lives of those in The Greatest Generation.
Back To Cool
The evil big-box stores have already stocked their aisles with back-to-school items, an affront to all American children, trying their durndest to enjoy the apex of global warming seasons. As a parent of a teen, my days of purchasing Elmer’s Glue and huffing markers and dull scissors are over, but we’re still expected to pony up for supplies. Evidently, $7000 in property taxes on a mighty modest home does not cover Kleenex.
To all this mid-summer school rigmarole, I at least ask the makers of supplies to look backwards for inspiration, and not to the future. This ad makes education positively dreamy.
Let’s not forget that Donny nor David would give you the time of day if you weren’t svelte. Lace stockings look gauche on thicc (yes, thicc) thighs.
But what if you’re too thin, and you need to bulk up? Simply sport a Hugh Downs jacket!
Hugh Downs was a once-relevant broadcaster who is still kicking it at 97. Look how attractive his family is, wearing bulky red-orange. And who’s the lady fondling his son’s hood? Go back to Paris, Simone.
Maybe you’re too young and hip to wear anything from an old fuddy-duddy and his family. Maybe you’re avant garde like Pat Boone, who lives life on the cutting edge.
Dressing like Pat Boone ensures that girls think you are a liberal arts professor. And maybe they’re into that kind of thing. Remember, remember, you’re mine… Wow, he really did wear white shoes.
Speaking of white, perhaps you missed my earlier post on putting more sugar in Lisa. Here’s another misguided Sugar Information ad, advising moms to put more sugar in their teens, so they can become slovenly-dressed sugar-swinging freaks–just in time for back to school!
Turtles don’t need seat belts, y’all. They just don’t.
No Large Paintings In A Quonset Hut
Another Brick In The Wall
These cutie patooties in Mrs. Staples’ class sat in an overcrowded classroom in Nome, Alaska in 1904.
A small gathering of folks posed in front of this sod schoolhouse in Custer County, Nebraska in 1886.
I Don't Get It 