Stupidest school supply

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

My son’s list this year consisted of gym shoes, gym uniform (left over from last year) and folders. I believe that’s it (he’s in 8th grade). I was going through some school related paperwork last night and noticed that as a child gets older, the list gets shorter, but costs more. Go figure.

Oh - his school has no lockers (except for gym class) either - he carries every single book for the year home in his backpack every day. I do not know how he carries that kind of weight. I offered to get him a rolling backpack, and his eyes rolled so far back in his head I thought I was watching The Excorcist or something. Apparently, eighth grade “I hang with cool people and now I’m the oldest in the school so I’m a tough guy” kind of dudes just don’t use wimpy, rolling, mom-those-are-for-GIRRRRRLLLLLLLSSSSS backpacks. Ms Robyn, enjoy yours - and may your neck be pain free because I know a little guy in the Chicago 'burbs who’s going to be bitching up a storm in about two weeks. :smiley:

62

No backpacks allowed at my daughter’s school, and you don’t get a locker until you sign a “compact.”

This is a ridiculous piece of paper signed by the principal, the teacher, the parent, and the student that they will do what is needed to help the child learn. I have refused to sign it for the past five years based on the fact that it’s insulting and pointless. Of course they’re going to teach my child, that’s their job. Of course I’m going to help her, she’s my daughter. The thing is, good parents will help their children study regardless, and bad parents won’t help no matter how many papers they sign.

I wrote a letter to the school saying as much, and we’ll see if she gets a locker.

63

Well, Kricket, I grew up there, yes, but I am only 20, and have not lived there to pay taxes or anything like that, and certainly no kids to put through school. School fees? Never heard of 'em, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. There are taxes for school that everyone pays, but I’m not sure if you had to pay extra if you had a kid in public school, I mean, it’s public, doesn’t paying a fee kinda prevent it from being so? If a family can’t afford the fee, does their kid not get to go to school?

As for supplies, I think it’s just that a lot of communites in VT put a lot of money into the school systems. Maybe because the main industry in VT (farming) is going out and losing a lot of money, so the people feel that we need to give out kids a good education so they can go ff and be working professions who might not have to rely on whether or not it is a good season. So therefore, since the school has more money, more of the basic supplies (such as scissors, rulers, tape, glue, what have you) can be bought and stocked by them, and students merely have to get some pens and pencils, some paper, and that would actually most often enough, be enough. Hell, I even remember some kids who never even had these, and always borrows them from other students (yes, that’s right, the same set of three or so per classroom never ever had a pen or paper, and they all maanged to graduate just fine.)

64

Oh sweet vindication in the morning, thank you Ivylass!
I also refuse to sign the moronic school contract, simply because as a working parent, why no I can’t promise you that my child will always come to school on time, I can only ask the sitter to do her best. Same thing with providing a nutricious breakfast and lunch, sure I can encourage the sitter to feed my kid, but in our case it’s really the school’s responsibility to see to the lunch so how can I pledge that I’ll ensure either occurs? Will I strive to provide the best opportunities for my child? Of course. Will a piece of paper impact that? Not a bit.
I look at those yearly idiocies as an opportunity to teach my child what signing a contract should really mean, personal integrity and giving one’s word, etc. The teachers seem to regard them as nearly as worthless as I do, but generally send 4 or 5 home to be signed even after I’ve sent back a nice letter explaining why I didn’t sign the first.

65

Dude, “required school supply” lists? What the hell? When did these happen? I only graduated high school three years ago, and we never had any of this required list crap! In elementary school, on the first day they gave you a pencil and a gray-ish tablet of paper. And maybe a ruler. Books were provided, there was a label/stamp thing on the inside of the cover where you wrote your name and the year you were using it and the condition of the book. It was fun because you could see all the people who had the book before you, like someone’s big brother. They gave you book covers, brown paper ones, with George Washington printed on the front, and the teacher would pass out rolls of masking tape and the whole class would cover their books. If you wanted, you could buy pencils/pens, etc., but the school provided most of them, paper, scissors, glue, art supplies, etc. You kept all your books and everything else in your desk, and then in 5th and 6th grade, when you had to go to different rooms for classes, you would take the books you needed for that class out of your desk and take them down the hall to science class or whatever.

In Junior and Senior high, you bought your own pencils, pens, notebooks, binders, and such, but nobody gave you a list telling you what to buy. You said “I’m gonna need some pencils, some highlighters, and 3 notebooks for this class, this class, and this class.” And you went out and bought them. They gave you the books, and the same brown paper book covers, same passing rolls of masking tape around the room. You kept your stuff in your little blue locker (If you wanted to lock your locker, you had to buy your own, but most people didn’t care enough). Lunch cost $1.20. Oh, and they provided calculators, too. Even the big fancy graphing ones, for Calc and stuff.

This was all in a tiny small-town north-central Pennsylvania school district, where we don’t even have a middle school, there’s not enough students to merit one, for the record. So what’s all this crap of required school supply lists? I am not that old! When did this stuff start happening? Geez… Stupid schools.

66

Oh, the memories this brings back.

I was in the interesting situation of having a bigger supply list in middle school than high school. I think there were something like 20 required supplies, including 6 differently-colored pocketed dividers that were to be used with a 3-inch 3-ring binder. I learned the hard way that the 3-inch binder was designed more for holding papers that would be spending the greater part of the time sitting on the shelf, not being carried around and opened repeatedly 5 days a week.

Many people made the observation that a 2-inch binder, even a one-and-a-half inch ring binder did a good job at accomodating the required paper and dividers, etc. This was unacceptable; we were made to procure these ungainly beasts that were only available at Office Depot and cost something like 5 dollars—a piss-poor price considering the durability. Only after the holiday break did the teachers relent, since they had to be blind to not see the seriously deteriorated remains of these highly superfluous binders.

I might also mention that the colors they came in were rather dull, offering not the interesting designs and patterns that were commonplace on slightly smaller binders. Such things, as silly as they seem today, really are a morale-booster in an often dull classroom enviroment.

As for the red pen someone mentioned earlier—that’s most probably intended for correcting each other’s work. Boy, the scandalous things that are now all too apparent, but were so unfortunately hidden from my eyes back then.

67

Wow, no one’s mentioned tennis balls?
My son (second grade) has to bring in four tennis balls, each with a 1-inch “X” cut into it.
Sound stupid? Yeah, it does, but it makes sense. They put them on the legs of the chairs for noise reduction. It really works. No more scraping chairs.
His first grade teacher sent home the ones from last year, so I saved them.

The rest of the list was basic stuff; folders, marble composition books, pencils, a ruler, crayons, glue stick (no paste or liquid glue), a box of tissues, and an art smock.

Between him and his sister (10th grade), I think I spent about $50, but I’ll spend more after her first day. The high schoolers don’t get lists till then. Most of her teachers will want separate binders, and she’s taking 2 art classes, so we’ll need to make a trip to the Art Supply store. That gets really expensive.

68

When my daughter was in middle school, they were also not allowed to go to their lockers except in the morning before classes and at the end of the day. And no carrying of backpacks, either. They could carry their books to school in a backpack, but the pack had to stay in the locker. (This was right after Columbine)
It also meant they had to carry their lunch around with them all morning. :rolleyes:

Now she’s in high school, and they can go to their lockers anytime they want, and can use backpack or messenger bags or whatever.

69

eesh, looks like i had it easy. i got through all my years of primary school and high school with a box of 20 2h pencils, 40 pilot v7s a couple rulers and a £10 scientific calculator…
when i hit 6th form i bought another 3 pencils and another 10 pens, and a graphics calculator for £35…
not much so far, right?
well, university was the killer £160 on books in the first year! i’m about to enter the second year, and really not looking forward to what they want me to buy now…

70

Here is our list (2nd grade), as taken from the (public) school’s website (the actual teachers post the actual lists, so it’s accurate):
4 marble notebooks (wide lined)
4 solid colored folders (red, yellow, green, blue)
40 plain yellow #2 pencils
24 count crayons (2 packs)
1 pack classic washable markers
2 glue sticks
1 bottle of glue
1 box of colored pencils
1 package of eraser tips
1 full sized box of tissues
1 box gallon size bags
1 box sandwich bags
1 pencil box

I think the whole shopping trip cost $27 and we bought a few things in addition to school supplies. Not bad.

Community chest: as far as I know, the only things that Dominic will actually keep as “his” are his pencil box and his folders. Oh, and the composition notebooks. Everything else goes “into the pot”. For this reason, I buy all the generic stuff. Wal-Mart is having an awesome sale right now, and I’m getting everything while I’m still in NH–no sales tax! The notebooks were 50cents each, Elmer’s glue was 10cents each, etc. Mmm… sale…

Fundraisers: Last year the fundraiser packet came home the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL. I told Dominic to throw it away. No one I know wants to buy that crap.

When I was in school, we didn’t get a list. You just bought what you figured you would need… and if you ended up needing something else, you went and got it later. In high school we had to buy all of our text books, though we could sell them back at the end of the year (for a pittance, of course).

I lived in Florida for the year of 8th grade and someone had to show me how to make a book cover. I’d never seen nor heard of such a thing prior to that, and never had to use them again after that year. I always thought it was just some weird Florida thing… I guess it is more common than that?

We had lockers, the school passed out combination locks… (and if you didn’t lock your locker you were a fool, and it would be emtpied out before you were out of earshot.) Locker searches were fairly common by both school staff and ocassionally the police.

Stupidest school supply: When I took a color design class in college, we had to buy a package of this special paper, which my Vacation Brain isn’t recalling the name of at the moment… Color-something? anyway it was like nine zillion sheets of paper, each with a different color on the front (white on the back). It was a whole spectral range, then the whole range repeated over and over with increasing levels of white or black added.Each sheet was about 9" x 9" or so. The pack cost about $60. We used very little of it.

What is a sit-upon? I mean I take it it is something you sit on, but is it something specific?

Pardon?

Wow. My son has never been on a free field trip. The cheapest one was $6.

School fees? I don’t think we have those… what are school fees?

71

I don’t actually know if there’s a real word for them in English; this is what we called them back in Brownie Scouts. Back then, we took a pile of newspapers maybe a quarter inch thick, and cut a piece of an old vinyl tablecloth to cover. One of the leaders punched holes in the tablecloth and we blanket stitched it in place. First and last time I’ve ever done blanket stitching, come to think of it…

What flodjunior and his classmates need is a piece of foam big enough to sit comfortably on. Usually it’s made of the same sort of stuff that an insulating pad for under a sleeping bag could be made from, just cut smaller, and you roll it up and keep it in place with a big rubber band or an elastic strap. But there’s another, more clever, kind that accordion folds into a neat little package. Kind of small for an adult, but the right size for an elementary school kid, and easier to put into a kid-sized backpack. Either kind costs essentially nothing in the hunting/camping section of a sporting goods store.

They need it because their field trips are often out in the woods (Montessori school) and they need to sit on the ground to eat lunch.

72

A sit-upon is just that… something you sit upon when out camping meant for comfort (the foam ones at least) and mainly to keep the kids from getting dew/wet on their butts while sitting on the ground.

When I made them (for Girl Guides actually) we just wrapped a paper up in plastic, usually a garbage bag or shopping bag and used either duct tape or masking tape to hold down all the corners and such so the papers would stay dry inside. Our names were markered onto the tape.

You can actually go to camping stores and buy stuff like that now. In fact I had a little pillow that could turn into a sit-upon (one side was soft cloth the other was nylon/polyester which of course was the side you put to the ground). You can also buy chairs that the seat is on the ground but they give back support! Very much like a sit-upon as well only a slightly different design!

73

Public School. Back in the day we only had to buy stuff like pencils, pens, rulers, erasers, glue, paste, paper, notebooks, and that sort of thing. Never did we have to buy anything outrageous. We only spent about 40-50 dollars per year which isn’t that bad even for 15 years ago. Only one item, one year, did I never use. It was a plastic protractor. Never used. Well, it did get used by my cousin about 10 years later when he was in middle school.

I happen to work at that same school district now and they are still required to buy the same stuff, nothing has changed.

Now, the one screwup that I remember one of our elementary schools making about 8 years ago was this: whenever an elementary child didn’t get their school fees (15-25 dollars) paid for by mid school year, they would be punished. They would have to stand against a fence during recess and not play with the other kids. Thankfully, the principal at said elementary school was later “talked” into changing this. I thought it was very stupid to punish a 6 year old because their folks can’t afford to pay for the school fees. I’ll never understand why they thought it would be a good idea.

74

Eh, humans are lazy the same way fish are swimmers. It’s a built-in survival perogative, and it’s the only way we make technical advances. Got any other obvious observations?

To expand upon my premise, consider this: Does it really benefit a child to walk to school in the pouring rain, just to show that he’s not so lazy he needs a bus? Only a fool would say that it does. Doing that teaches the child nothing, and is merely one more meaningless burden in his life.

So is graphing by hand. Even with good paper and a sharp pencil, graphing is by nature a tedious and repetitive process that adds nothing to the educational value of the end result, which is the graph. Hand-drawing a line gives you no extra feel for the curve, no comprehension for the equation behind it beyond what you’d get from good instruction and a graphing calculator. Instead, it’s mindless tedium that makes a child spend time for no profit.

And that is the dividing line: Does doing it by hand add something to the educational value? In some things, the answer is yes (reading, arithmetic at the early grade school level, sports). In this instance, the answer is no.

75

I was educated in British Military schools where absolutely everything was provided - all we had to do was turn up. The supplies were rather basic though. All the toilet paper was the crispy tracing paper stuff with “Government Issue” stamped on every sheet. And the notebooks all had On Her Majesty’s Service or something like that across the front, and a crown under which we all attached a face.

Now Brit Jnr is attending a Japanese public school and I had to pay about 150 dollars for a standard pack of stuff. That was fine, at least I didn’t have to go and hunt down the stuff. And of course uniformity is THE THING here, so woe on me if I had got any of it wrong… The pack included a kenban harmonica (a keyboard with a pipe that you blow into to make the noise) and a rather nice maths set with about a zillion pieces which ALL had to be named. Eek. We were asked to customise and cover a cardboard box to fit inside the cubbyholes at the back of the classroom. The instructions were simple but I am glad I asked to see someone’s completed one - the mothers all went to town on them and some really professional jobs came out. If I had just sent a cut down cardboard box, boy would there have been egg on my face. We also had to make a “sit upon” for their sports day, and again the other mothers really made lovely ones. My kid will only be there for one year as we move a lot, so we did only do a cardboard one but his Dad wrote silly messages of encouragement on one side, and I did on the other, so it didn’t look too much like we don’t care.

You should have seen the kindergarten stuff required - HANDMADE bags for everything, aprons, cushions for the chairs, and a naptime set all to be made BY THE MOTHER (That bit was specifically written.) I posted the entire list to my tailor mother in law and got a box of seriously high quality goodies by return. Thank heaven for her…

76

A friend of mine in West Virginia mentioned how her kids’s school supplies go into a “comunity pot.” Maybe I’m just stingy, but I don’t like that idea. If I buy stuff for my kid, I want **my **kid using it. Do they make sure every child chips in?

I teach Nursery School, and we make Sit-Upons the very first week for the kids to use in Circle Time. We stuff a section of newspaper into a brown paper grocery store bag and staple it shut. Then the kids sponge paint designs on it, and we write their name on it in block letters. Then we cover it with clear contact paper. It helps them find their spot (by finding their name and remembering which design is theirs) at Circle Time. They’re very colorful and look really neat. Much prettier than boring old carpet squares.

77

Oh, I plan on it! My backpack also has spaces designed for a cell phone, PDA, and laptop computer, so as I add these, I have room for them without having to carry separate cases.

Oh, yes, the PDA. Since I expect to have a life while in school, I’ve found that a PDA is essential to keep me organized. I can put in class times, due dates, club meetings, and the like and can set alarms (so I don’t take a nap in the library and miss class).

Robin

78

Not to be political, but I think community pots are a bad idea.

They’re teaching children that they own nothing, that everything they have belongs to the “group.” Individual ownership, bad. Group sharing, good.

And as OpalCat pointed out, she buys the cheapest stuff possible. If she were just buying for her son, I have a feeling she’d buy better quality stuff.

I have no problem with my daughter sharing her supplies with her friends because they need to borrow a pencil or a sheet of paper. I have a big problem with the school telling my daughter she MUST share her supplies.

Fortunately, there is no community pot at her school.

79

I also think the community pot is a dumb idea. If Aaron has to have certain supplies like paper, I’d rather teach him responsibility by having him tell me when he needs it, as opposed to having that provided for him. Also, students have individual preferences. For example, I prefer wide-rule paper, because I have large handwriting. Susie may prefer narrow-rule paper, and Johnny may want unruled paper. Forcing them to use what’s available forces them to abandon what works for them in favor of what’s in the supply cabinet. Ditto for ink colors, markers, etc.

All that said, I think that schools could be doing a better job with study skills than they are. Making a child conform to a particular note-taking style isn’t really helping them learn in the way that is best for them. YMMV, JMHO, and the other usual disclaimers.

Robin

80

Grrrrrrr! One f***king word:

UNIFORMS!!!

The offspring goes to a public charter middle school for math & science and they are requiring uniforms this year. Not just any uniform, no, no! Uniform parts purchased at one specific store <<whether it needs a school logo on it or not!!!>> as I just found out.

The offspring just called and is in In School Suspension until I show up with a checkbook to buy a pair of shorts ($25). I think this is blackmail. It seems the Walmart khaki shorts with no pockets ($5) are Not Acceptable. Personally, I smell kick-back.