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In my Bedford elementary school, the Stevens Buswell, there were only two classrooms, four grades to a room. I entered the first grade in 1938. For my grades one through seven, I usually had only two classmates.
Mummy and Daddy decided I that should skip the eighth year and go directly to ninth grade at Central High School in Manchester. I was supposed to be tutored in eighth grade knowledge during that summer of 1946. However, due to the escalating fear of the horrible disease, polio, my parents kept me home. That summer I didn’t do any school work at all. I just went to Central High that September.
Now, let me go back to the early years at the Stevens Buswell School. On the first day of school, the teacher handed out to each student a box of eight crayons and two yellow pencils with erasers. Paper was provided for our lessons.
Starting in the fourth grade, the teacher additionally gave us two pens with quills and would fill our glass ink wells, inserted in the right hand corner of our desks. That was it. We had to be careful of these limited supplies. How upsetting it was to have a crayon break and then have to continue to use it! During the year we were sometimes reluctantly given replacements. I was in the sixth grade when my parents gave me my first fountain pen that I had to fill myself from my inkwell. I was at Saint Mary’s prep school before I used a ball point pen.
A few parents bought additional school supplies. This was optional. I was one of the privileged few. Mummy and Daddy gave me a pencil box. It was made of flimsy, blue cardboard. When I opened it, I would see two small drawers and a divided tray on the top. Inside were two pencils, an eraser, crayons (not Crayola), a pen and several different sized pen-tips separately stored. For some strange reason, always a protractor and a compass were included, even though they would not be used in this rural grade school. Yet, it was fun to make designs with them. I was so proud to have a new pencil box even though it fell apart soon thereafter.
Some children brought their lunches in paper bags. A quirky memory I have is that my closest friend, Bobby Ramig, every single day, all those years, always brought a ketchup sandwich in a paper bag. I was lucky that I had a metal lunch box that could hold different types of sandwiches, an apple and a fragile vacuum thermos that had a very breakable inside. No child had a back pack because we had no need for them. No homework was ever assigned from the first through the eighth grades, nor were gym clothes needed because physical education was nonexistent.
My limited school supplies are in stark contrast to the large number of items expected of students today. Here in Florida, most office and school supply stores have the list of the officially required items…just look at what had to be bought for my granddaughter, Ali, who is now in the first grade!
First Grade Supply List
- 1 (16) colored pencils
- 2 packs of #2 pencils
- 1 small box of crayons
- 3 glue sticks
- Pencil-top erasers
- Zipper pencil pouch
- 1 gal (100) zip lock baggies
- 2 reams of copy paper 20lb
- 2 boxes Kleenex
- 1 Fiscar blunt scissors
- book bag or backpack (no wheels)
- pencil box container
- highlighter multicolor pack of 5
- 4 plastic 3 prong pocket folders
- Lunch box with ice pack
- 2 composition notebooks (standard)
I am blown away that you can remember you had a pencil box, let alone what was in it! You must remember your teacher’s names also. I remember only one in elementary school and one, because she was so awful, in high school. As to Ali’s books, that bag is way too much for her. Not good for developing bodies!
Cute picture of Alie with that enormous backpack. My grandchildren have the same kinds of lists. Combined with that is the complication of cold, wet weather. They have to wear boots and bring shoes, have an extra sweater, have mittens that look like all the other mittens and inevitably get lost, so they need extra mittens for any outdoor recess. It was much simpler in our day.