Happy New Year!
Remember when starting school in September was the start of the new year? It was our new beginning of a school grade that was hopefully a digit higher than that of last June. And it was going to be great!
Remember how you made new year resolutions to change all the bad habits you'd collected over the past school years? And remember how you promised yourself that this year would be different? This was the year you would apply yourself and play well with others.
You started the new year with new clothes for a new look. New books, pencils, erasers, coloured markers and pencil crayons all together in a new pencil case. Why even a new pot of glue was required even though you can never remember ever needing or using glue in your entire school history. A new ruler marked out in inches. All 12 in a row like disciples, the way God wanted it. Not metric! If God wanted metric he would of only had 10 disciples.
And then there was the smell of new plastic binders filled with lined paper, Pink Pearl erasers, freshly sharpened HB pencils and for the low achievers,.. the smell of glue. The smells and sounds of thick denim and corduroy as they swished and wooshed down the hallowed halls of education. New lunch boxes with a glass lined thermos that only lasted a week. New desks with old graffiti. New teachers giving you a chance of a new start. It was certainly was a time to celebrate a whole new year of school.
You were going to be smart that year. You were going to apply yourself to your studies. Do your homework and watch less TV you promised yourself as you got off the couch and turned off the old black and white Motorola for the first time since June. This was going to be your year!
Yes expectations were high of your new teacher who would spend the next 9 months leading you to the next grade. A teacher that wouldn't know anything about you. There were no such things as school records on kids. You hoped. To her you were a blank canvas ( which after about the second week of school that canvas matched your stare).
And all these school years were just over 9 months long. It's like we were on a separate planet that went around the sun at a different speed.
I remember our sleeps being longer and week days that would drag on forever and weekends that went by in a swoosh. Then for a period of about 10 weeks during our parents summer nothing happened. Nothing! Oh sure you rode your bike to nowhere, dug holes, built forts, looked at clouds (from one side Judy Collins), worried bugs and pretty much did all the 'I don't know, what do you want to do?' with your best friend.. But 'nothing' best describes the summer of our youth.
And it's here where we find ourselves now. Our summer is just about over and the kids are going to begin their new year. Their Scholastic New Year. A time for celebration for parents, grandparents and all other family daycare specialists for your summer watch has ended successfully. Excitement is building, bigger than even if it were the calendar new year. Stay home parents are now again pouring bubbly libations and toasting one another to a quiet house full nothing. All the kids are getting dressed up and going out. Out! Away! Gone. Special foods and snacks mark the celebration, placed in metal boxes and bags taken to school and hopefully consumed. Moms and dads are dancing everywhere. If bands aren't playing they should be for this is a New Years celebration.
Then, just as with all resolutions you sank back into 'the same old same old' around the second week. What happened!? It was going so good I had new books! New teacher! Glue? How did it go wrong so fast? Was it the compound fractions and me wondering where it would ever apply in my life? My need for visual stimulation from a large fat wooden box that was now presented it in living colour? Dam you coloured peacock! Was I angry because I couldn't get a cool drink at school because my thermos was now broken and the water fountains for some reason always ran warm. Was it because teachers in the smoke filled staff room shared stories about problem students and how they dealt with that same child last year? And, then they would note that the office had quite an extensive file on his behaviour. "Thank you very much school records!" I scream through clenched teeth, with fist to the sky doing my best Basil Fawlty impersonation.
I thought God was going to help me that year because of my ruler with its 12 disciples. Was it too much to ask for divine intervention when it came to my edumacation? I had to get not dumb, because I was going to be an astronaut. And as it worked out in my 12 years of public schooling I did do a lot of dreaming of being an astronaut. Why I even had some teachers say that all I did was take up space.
Twelve times I celebrated the coming of a new scholastic year with the same great hopes and dreams. I believed I was going to do well that year, I was going to be better than a 'C' something average. I went at the start of each school year believing I'm better than I am.
For myself, the hope for a new me was short lived. But to many, this summer long hope of a new beginning is exactly why we shouldn't adopt year round schooling. Having all the nothing time in the summer to forget, and reevaluate the past and then the hype of the coming new year can be a driving factor to do better. Just as we adults do come January 1st every year. 'I'm going to be different this year!' Kids need to go into a new school year triumphantly! Using the whole summer to think about ridding old bad habits and to start fresh come September. And with new clothing, books, pencils, papers, rulers and for some reason pots of glue, a whole new attitude might be achieved. Just because it didn't work for me doesn't mean it didn't work for my doctor.
Editors note:
In the words of Popeye, 'I am what I am what I am' sums up who we become no matter how hard we try not to sometimes. Sitting still and learning wasn't for me, I had to learn things by using my hands. So I became a plumber, and that glue pot and I became well acquainted.
The fact that I quote Popeye instead of Socrates, Einstein or Twain says a lot about the space I took up in school.
Bob Niles
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