This reader shares memories of a different time. I can vouch for what he or she writes. I remember those days too. The time after school was spent riding bikes or playing pick-up games of baseball or playing in someone’s backyard. Homework was for after dinner. There was always time for play with friends. The family ate dinner together. I went to a high school with about 1,200 students. None of the girls got pregnant. There were no drugs (but some alcohol and lots of fast driving). All teachers were Mr. or Mrs. or Miss. Were they the good old days? In some ways, yes, in some ways, no. But there was not the same degree of pressure on students to perform that there is today. No one committed suicide; the only deaths among youth were the result of reckless driving. We had childhoods.

What is sad is kids are no longer kids but little carbon copies of adults. When I grew up after dinner everyone went outdoors to play all kinds of games. It was all, clean good fun. We’d come home exhausted, sweaty and sleep like logs.
Drive down any residential street and no kids playing outdoors. Each having computers, texting, little islands unto themselves, and families not eating together. So sad.
I cannot remember anything I learned in first or second grade. Cursive writing in third only. Some Viking history in 4th. Frankly, what I would have liked to learn throughout school was about finances, saving money, investing, balancing a check book, raising kids, and more about communicating my needs to my mate.
I am 77 and I have a young friend who has been a second grade teacher for 23 years. I was absolutely APPALLED at the strict learning program for her second graders this year.
I am appalled also at these programs teaching babies to read at some ridiculous age, 13 months is it?
the whole world is upside down and so is the purpose of kids going to school. To learn social graces, share, abide by rules, respect self and others. All of life is about rules and that what we learn in school, but kids are meant to have fun, create, play,and not be stressed to the max and suffer anxiety.
When I was in high school, NO ONE became pregnant. NO drugs. Girls wore skirts, boys pants. If you were sick you were sent home. teachers were called Mr.or Mrs. etc. You wrote 5,000 essays if you talked back, or marred your desk. Later homework was neat
and thrown away to do over if messy.
No one freaked out. We loved our years at highschool.
Gee, Ben Franklin left school at second grade. Many great writers, people left early.
No one had died in my high school.
When my sons were in high school they were pall bearers 6x by the time they graduated.
And, even when younger, I told my sons, as you get older you will see more and more
suicides amongst your peers. This came to pass.
We must begin to see that something is radically wrong in education for so many deaths, suicides, pills, meds, etc. Something is TERRIBLY wrong.