Re: The old days - And Today, In the Ivy Halls
Thanks for the post FoTi. I was surprised by the paragraphs which I highlighted above in blue. For me, my Grammar School (Grades K to Grade 6) was a wonderful experience. Junior high (Grades 7, 8 and 9) was also pretty good. High School had a little of what you described but still gave a pretty good education.
GRAMMER SCHOOL - My Grammar School was Marvin Avenue in Los Angeles. I went there from Sept, 1944 (kindergarten) through June. 1951 (end of 6th grade).
While there, I mastered the following subjects to a degree which served me well throughout an entire lifetime:
ARITHMETIC - Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Long Division, Decimals and Fractions.
READING - Quickly learned to read at a good level with good comprehension. Became aquainted with the works of Mark Twain, Edgar Alan Poe, Zane Gray and a few other authors and books such as "The 3 Musketeers".
WRITING - We had no creative writing to speak of but just learned how to write and print using both cursive letters and block letters.
PENMANSHIP - We did the old fashioned drills in penmanship and developed excellent penmanship skills in both cursive and block letters.
HISTORY - We learned the history of our state, California, very throroughly, then took up the history South America and then went into U.S. History and studied the founding of the USA quite thoroughly.
MUSIC - We had a music period once a week, and sang patriotic songs. There was also an emphasis on the songs of Stephen Foster and some songs of the old West such as "Darling Clementine". In the holiday season, we always spent a long time singing the Christmas Carols. In 3rd and 4th grade we had one boy well advanced in piano and one well advanced in violing and they played duets from time to time in the classroom.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION - At recess we played kick ball, sock ball, dodge ball, "foursquare" and tether ball. Boys and girls were kept separate.
GEOGRAPHY - We learned where each country was located on the map. We also learned all the state Capitols by heart and also the Capitol city of each country. This and the multiplication tables were the only things which required memorization. THIS STEP SEEMS TO BE MISSING COMPLETELY FROM "MODERN" EDUCATION!
RAINY DAYS - There were several games reserved for recess time on rainy days, I remember one called "Seven Up". Also, on rainy days we had Spelling Bees.
CLASS REPORTS - We also had about 1 hour a week devoted to individual students standing up and telling a story about a news or science article which they read, a movie which they saw or a book they had read.
It was a lot of fun, I learned a lot, made a lot of friends. There was never any forced memorization required except when we learned our Multiplication Tables and the Capitols of States and Countries. Individualism was encouraged. Political correctness did not yet exist and there was no attempt to make everyone completely equal.
In Junior High, the major topics studied were Algebra, the histories of ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The beginnings of Creative Reading were also taught as was Grammar. We also had Band and Orchestra. There was more memorization required than in grammar school but still, understanding was emphasized and there was no effort to take away one's individuality.
Lakey
Well....I'm glad you had a good time. I didn't.
When I was 4 my mother put me in a private school in Hollywood in the 1st Grade. I don't remember learning anything there. The desks were too big and all the other kids were bigger than me. They had a ballet class in the classroom.....everyone participated......I didn't know what the hell they were doing. I tried to follow but was lost. I didn't know it was ballet until several years later. In the afternoon they made us take naps on cots....I hated it. I got sick and told my mother I didn't want to go back there. I didn't go to school there for very long. She didn't make me go back. I was relieved.
Then she put me in kindergarten at the local public school. We played store and played music with the tamborine and sand blocks and a triangle. I thought it was pretty boring. In the afternoon we had to put our head down on the desk and take a rest or a nap. It was uncomfortable for me with my head on the table. I didn't learn anything there.
Then she took me and enrolled me in another private school. I have no idea what grade I was in there. I was in whatever the lowest grade was there. They gave us little books that they made up with little pictures of birds and stuff with the word under the picture and we colored in the picture .... I guess we were learning to read the words. It was very simple, but I enjoyed coloring the picture. I didn't go to school there for very long either.
Then we moved from the Hollywood Hills to Sherman Oaks and my mother enrolled me in Sherman Oaks Grammar school. I started there in the first grade. That was okay. We learned to print the alphabet and we painted pictures. I got very sick one day and threw up all over the crayon box while the other kids were eating their snack. I felt horribly guilty for making a mess. They made me sit outside on the step until they could get my mother to come and get me. She took me home and put me to bed. I never was so sick in my whole life. I ended up in the hospital with viral pneumonia. My mother told me I almost died. There was a rule at school that the girls had to wear skirts or dresses....no pants. My mother got mad and went to school and told them that I was going to wear pants to school to keep me warm whether they liked it or not. I guess it was winter time. I was out of school for several weeks before I could go back.
In the second grade, I must have learned to read better....I was the top in my reading group. I learned to make a clay dish for Mother's day for my mother, which got fired and then we put glaze on it. That was kind of fun. On Valentine's Day we had cookies or cup cakes and everyone exchanged Valentine's Day cards.....back then they were really pretty. We also had '49er days. We were taught to square dance out on the playground and everyone came to school in costume. My mother made me a long dress with a bonnet and I looked like I belonged on a covered wagon....we all did. That was fun....I loved to dress up and I loved my outfit. We danced for the parents. I also learned this year that school was manditory. Before this I was quite happy to go to school, but then somebody told me about a truant officer and I learned that I was being forced to go to school by "the government". This didn't set well with me. It was like school went from being self determined to being other determined and it became less pleasant for me to be there.....I didn't like the government controling me to go to school. Before I was aware of this, I felt fine about going to school. I hate government control.
In the third grade I was teacher's pet. I was top of the class and was allowed to wander around in class and I could leave the class whenever I wanted to. I was room monitor. Nobody else had this privilege. I liked being special. I think we were into learning some basic math then. I enjoyed math then....it was easy. We took a field trip to a dairy and when we got back to class we had to draw a picture of what we had seen at the dairy. That was fun. I had one of the best pictures in the class. It was fun to see it hanging on the wall. But then something bad happened in the third grade. We had always been allowed to leave the class if we had to go to the bathroom. All of a sudden one day the teacher said that we would no longer be excused from class to go to the bathroom...we had to go during recess only. Well...between recess and lunch I had to pee. I tried to hold it and squirmed around in my seat until I couldn't sit there any longer. Since I was allowed to roam the class room, I got up and went to the teacher's desk while she was lecturing at the side blackboard, and pretended to be straightening up her desk. I was trying to keep from wetting my pants. I was in front of the class and my back was to the rest of the class. All of a sudden I couldn't control it any longer and my body betrayed me. I felt this warm liquid running down my legs and into my shoes and socks. I looked down and I was standing in a puddle. I froze. Then I slowly turned around to see if anyone noticed. One by one the kids began to notice and then the teacher saw them looking at me and she turned around to see what they were looking at. I felt so humiliated and embarassed. I had always been the perfect kid and now my perfection was ruined. The teacher came and whisked me off to the girls bathroom and made me stay there. I felt so yucky and I felt guilty because I knew some poor janitor would have to come and clean it up. They called my mother to come and get me. She did and she got mad at me and I had to ride home in the car without sitting down or touching anything so that I wouldn't mess up the car. I got so caved in with this that I didn't want to go back to school and when I did go back I was no longer comfortable in school. I couldn't face the other kids...I just kind of withdrew. My confidence went to practically zero. That stayed with me for a very long time. After this happened they change the rule back so that kids could go to the bathroom if they needed to. The trouble is, it was at my expense and I was devistated by it. I felt like I had done the worst, most shameful thing in the whole world and I suddenly went from being the best in the class to being the worst in the class.....went from the top to the bottom in a few seconds.....and there was no way I could undo it. Did I learn anything in the third grade? Maybe a little math and what a dairy and a cow looked like in person and where our milk came from.
When it came time for my mother to enroll me in the 4th grade, it was kind of crowded on enrollment day. My mother got pissed at so many people and grabbed me and took me and enrolled me in a private school for the 4th grade. It was a nice school on Riverside Drive - Eunice Knight Saunders was the name of it....Lucille Ball's kids went there.....they had horses to ride (but I was allergic to horses, so I couldn't ride or be around them), an olympic sized swimming pool where I learned the basics of swimming, but the teacher pushed me too hard to swim the length of the pool, before I was ready,and when I got into the middle of the deep part I looked down and paniced and quit swimming - started dog paddling trying to keep from drowning and the teacher just stood on the diving board and watched me until she saw my father come running toward me to rescue me - then she dove in and pulled me to the side. I didn't take any more swimming lessons from her. They also had a music building - I think I took a few piano lessons there, but mainly took piano lessons at home. They also had a gymnasium where I took ballet lessons....by then I knew what it was but I never felt like I was good enough at it because there was another girl there who had been taking ballet since she was 3 and she was very good and I couldn't keep up with her.....I felt inferior to her - she was good - she was Jack Slattery's daughter (the guy who used to be on the Art Linkletter show) - I wanted to be like her.....but I did like taking ballet. That school was a year ahead of the public school which made it difficult for me because I had to catch up with the rest of the kids. We had workbooks that we did our lessons in. This year we learned about the pilgrims....that's all I remember about that. I got very sick again this year and was out of school for a couple of weeks and got behind. My mother brought the workbooks home so that I could keep up but instead of having me do the work, she did it for me, so I got nothing out of it. I made it through that year and at the end of the year, the kids had a kind of presentation for the parents. There were bleachers set up on one side of the pool and a stage built on the other side of the swimming pool. I did a couple of ballet dances with some of the other girls and then I was in the musical "HMS Pinnafore" after the ballet. It was quite an evening....a lot of fun for both the kids and the parents. The next year I told my mom I didn't want to go back to private school. I wanted to go back to Sherman Oaks Grammar school.
So I started the 5th grade in public school. Because the school I just came from was a year ahead of the public school, I sort of slid through the 5th grade with the greatest of ease....again I was room monitor and could come and go as I pleased, which pleased me. I remember we had to paint a picture of a lily for art.....that was fun. I also remember doing a couple of book reports....one of them I made a view box out of a shoe box that the kids could pass around and look into while I was giving them my book report. Another one was a book about a whale. I got a long piece of paper....like a roll of paper and drew the pictures from the book on the roll and while I told the story I had someone hold one end while I held the other and I would unroll the pictures while the other person followed me and rolled the other end up. That was a fun project to do. I liked anything having to do with art in class. I don't recall learning much of anything academic in the 5th grade.
In the 6th grade I was having major troubles with my mother at home and got very keyed in. I didn't care about being good in school anymore. I remember the teacher called me up and asked me what was going on because I had always been a very good student and was not doing so good this year. I didn't have an answer for her. We did some history this year - I remember drawing a picture of a banana plantation because we were studying that - maybe South America or Mexico? I loved that picture. I think I drew it with another student....kind of a community effort. There was a girl in the class who broke her arm and came to school with her arm in a sling. She didn't have to do the school work because her arm was broken. I then went around hitting my wrist on tables trying to break it so that I wouldn't have to do school work either. I didn't break anything, but I made my arm sore and complained to my parents that my arm was sore, but didn't tell them why. They took me to a chiropractor (friend of my dad's) who x-rayed it and said nothing was broken, but said maybe I sprained it (I think he was humoring me) and gave me a sling to wear so I got to go to school for a little bit and didn't have to do the work either. That sort of satisfied me. LOL This was the year that all of the girls got taken to the auditorium for something secret. We watched a movie on what was going to happen to our bodies and how babies grow,since we were becoming young ladies. We were sworn to secrecy and not allowed to tell the boys what we had just seen.....kind of an enforced withhold. We were given a little book to take home with us explaining what was in the movie. I took it home and when my mother saw it she forbade me to talk to the little girl next door who I played with about this secretive subject.....more enforced withholds. I was left feeling like this was something bad to be ashamed about since no one was allowed to talk about it and it all had to be hidden. My mother always made me really nice lunches to take to school, but most of the time I wasn't hungry....I would eat the cookies or corn chips, but many times I gave the sandwich away. I never gave away the fried chicken or the steak though. LOL Halloween was always fun at school because I always had such nice costumes and I loved to wear costumes when I was a kid. Dress me up and I was happy as a clam. I even turned into Bongo Bear when I was about 9. We also had a carnival every year in grammar school....that was always fun. I had no interest in learning in school by the 6th grade. I was interested in how the other girls were wearing their hair and what was the best way to wear my hair, and I was interested in 3 of the boys in the class. I invited all 3 of them over to my house to go swimming one day. I had a great time. When I told one of the girls at school that they had all come swimming she dressed me down and told me that wasn't okay....that I should only ask one at a time....not 3. I felt guilty about what I had done....hogging the 3 best boys in school all to myself.....I had a crush on all 3 of them. LOL When I graduated from grammar school, after the 6th grade, I sat next to one of these guys at graduation. His name was Gary...sigh! Hearth throb. LOL I was sitting next to him when my mother came walking into the auditorium.....he said ... Wow...your mother's really pretty...he was drooling.....I was 11 years old and it was the first time I was jealous. I wanted him to be paying attention to me, not her. My mother was a beautiful dish. LOL Also at my graduation I somehow got roped into playing the piano.....I was so scared that I spaced out while playing ... it was a nightmare experience. I haven't a clue how I got through that in one piece, but it seemed as though it turned out okay. That was my first case of real stage fright. This was not a good year for me....I was experiencing new things that I didn't understand.....moods, emotions and doing stupid things that I couldn't understand why I did them....sometimes dangerous to my well being that scared me. I lost trust in myself. All of this stuff was outweighing anything that went on in school. I haven't a clue what I might have learned that year.
Next came Van Nuys Junior High....7th - 9th grade. Did I care? No. I had no interest in school or whatever they were teaching. All I was interested in was hair, lipstick, clothes ... those things that teenage girls are interested in..., my body, my appearance, sex and boys.....forbidden, of course, but that's where my attention went. Hormones were ruling my life. I had no common sense for getting a decent education at that age. LOL
During junior high and high school...between the changes my body was going through, PMS, cramps, not feeling attractive enough, not feeling very accepted, school being bloody boring, having to memorize a lot of stuff to spit back out on a test for no good reason that I could see except to get a passing grade, having to do homework, the clicks in school, snooty kids, popularity contests, the stinky locker room in gym class (I did not like gym class) and the smelly kids in school.....I did not find it a very pleasant or enlightening experience. I don't feel like I learned very much that I could use in life other than reading, writing, some english, math to use in everyday living, typing, how to make an apron and a gym bag, and how to make chip beef on toast. Whoo hoo. When I graduated from Van Nuys High, which I was very glad to get out of, the only thing I could do to make money was secretarial work because I knew how to type. Big deal. I hated school so much that I did not want to go to college. But my father pushed me on that issue and insisted that I go, so I went and ended up flunking out and having to go back years later and make up all the bad grades.
Lakey, it sounds like you went to a better school than I did.....and you had a whole lot more fun than I did.
It seems to me if kids go to school for 12 years, just to get out of high school, they ought to be taught something they can use when they graduate to make a decent living.
Now kids go to college and accumulate huge student loans that will take them half their life to pay off and when they graduate they get to go to work at McDonald's or be a waitress because they make more from tips or become a telemarketer. A chiropractor I go to makes good money, but he has a wife and a family and is buried in student loans. My dentist is a young guy....been practicing for about 7 years and he told me the other day that some of the people come into the office and need several thousand dollars worth of work done and he couldn't even afford to pay anything like that if he had to have that kind of work done on himself. Kids today are screwed unless they can get a full scholarship and even then, when they graduate, can they get work in their field? I know one guy where I live who is a college graduate, but can't find a job in his field, has given up on telemarketing and had enough of working at the dollar store as a stock guy and so has just given up and doesn't work at all now. It's really depressing to spend 16 years in school and when one is all done, one finds out that it's all useless to them and they are deep in debt with student loans on top of it all. The system is bad.
Anyway, somehow, I guess through osmosis, I learned to read and write and do some math.....those are the basics anyway....and I learned what a boring, monotonous place school is....at least the schools that I went to. I don't think it has to be this way, but for me it was.
Lakey, I'm glad you had a better experience than I did.
