August Gran'ma Gertie

Howdy Ya’ll,

It’s me again. I been sittin’ here on my porch lookin’ at all the sale papers that came in the mail. It’s time fer the young’uns to git back in school, so they got all the school stuff on sale. I never will understand what differnce a certain kind of notebook is gonna make in the way a young’un learns.

I seen wired notebooks, zippered notebooks, colorful notebooks, plain notebooks, ones with movie stars pictures on ‘em, ones with cartoons on’em, and ones with ever color of the rainbow on ‘em! They got regler pencils and fancy pencils, regler pens and colered pens and pens with special grips. Crayons now come in big boxes of 96 differnt colors, and paper is in ever color you could want to write on. They even got special stores that sell nothin’ but school stuff!

They got them backpack things fer the young’uns to lug all this mess back and to in. The TV said the other day that doctors is worried about the young’uns back messin’ up before they even get out of school to get a job! They just ain’t no sense in any young’un totin’ that much on their back! We didn’t have to tote that much when we worked in the fields ‘till we got older and big enough to handle it.

Can anybody out there prove to me that all this new fangled stuff is teachin’ the young’uns any better? Most young’uns now ain’t got sense enough to get out of the rain unless some game tells ‘em to! The young’uns that make it to college are taking so long to graduate that they done got gray hair before they know what a job is! And when they do git a job, guess where they go first? To the store that sells all the school stuff so they can git fancy stuff fer their new jobs! ‘Cept now, they’re called “office” supplies! Don’t make no sense to me, neither.

Since we done got all the supplies, are the teachers any better? I wonder. I see on them school calendars that they schedule teacher work days. These are days that the young’uns could be in school, but today’s teachers need the time to fix up report cards. I figered it shouldn’t take ‘em as long today ‘cause they got them computers to do all the work. In my day, the teachers had to do the figurin’ themselves, and the writin’ themselves, and there weren’t no such thing as settin’ up an appointment to see your young’uns teacher. If you needed to see her, you just stopped by the school when you had a minute. Boy, if you try that now, they’d have you hauled off! Yet all the time you hear the teachers whinin’ about they cain’t get the mamas and daddies involved in their young’uns schoolin’! They need to learn that you cain’t have it both ways. Either you want me there, or you don’t. They need to learn that time is important to mama’s and daddies, too. Some mama’s got jobs, and those that don’t got meals to cook, homes to clean, and probably got clothes to fold! Most daddies got jobs, too. They have to take off to go see the teacher. The least they can do is work with the man!

They need to learn that supplies don’t teach the young’uns, good teachers do. What is wrong with the good, old fashioned ways of readin’, writin’, and arithmetic, as long as you throw in some of that computer stuff so the young’uns don’t fall behind the rest of the world? Now a days, they’re teachin’ girls how to be welders and boys how to cook. They got health and safety classes, babysittin’ classes, and picture takin’ classes. If the mama’s would teach the cookin’, and daddies would teach the weldin’, and we all raised our young’uns with a little common sense, and left the picture takin’ as a hobby, they might find they could teach something that mattered.

Today’s young’uns ain’t as dumb as most of ya’ll think. They got plenty of brains to learn with. It’s just that what are we teachin’ ‘em? I was told one time to keep an open mind by some of the young’uns that I run up with. The only problem is that if your mind is always open, there ain’t no tellin’ who is goin’ to dump what in there!

‘Till next time,
Gran’ma Gertie