Old school is defined in the urban dictionary as: Anything that is from an earlier era and looked upon with high regard or respect. Can be used to refer to music, clothing, language, or anything really. So, old school is cool, right? I graduated in '92, definitely old school era. My teenage son and I had a discussion on his school days in comparison to mine and found some startling differences.
image sourceThe discussion started with him telling me how his friend with a new iphone is constantly being texted in class. He said it was really funny that they banned cell phones in class and how everyone was constantly texting each other. I personally have never sent a text message in my life. I don't really get it. Wasn't the phone invented so that we could talk to each other without writing? Back in the day, we'd pass notes to one another in class. I guess that is no longer "done". My son doesn't have a cell phone. I don't think he needs one yet. I guess he'll have to resort to the old pen and paper message of the old. It's hard to believe no one does this anymore!
I was so startled about this lack of note passing that I jokingly asked "Well, they still use chalk, right?". Um, apparently they don't. He said they have white boards instead of chalk boards now. And they use dry erase markers instead of chalk. I remember having to clean off the chalk erasers as a punishment in class, probably for passing notes. I asked him if anyone had to do this. He looked at me like I was an alien and said when the erasers got really dirty, they just got new ones! No chalk, what is the world coming too?
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He then went on to tell me that they also commonly use something called a "Smart Board" that's connected to the computer and you can write on and stuff. Sounds really cool although I've never seen one. What's next, robot teachers?
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Well, sort of. Back in the day, students spent a lot of time in libraries looking things up. Now, of course, students have the internet. They don't even have to get up to research papers for school. Encyclopedia sets are a disappearing art form. I remember when my mom bought the Encyclopedia Britannica set so that we could read them at home. It was really, really cool. Now it just comes on a disc. You don't have to keep bookmarks in all of the books which are neatly arranged alphabetically on the bookshelf. You just turn on the computer. That is if you ever even bother to turn the darn thing off!
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So then I asked him, you guys still use pencils right? He laughed at me, saying yes. I told him that my teacher used to use sharpening all her pencils as another punishment or exercise in futility. I asked him if his teachers did this too. He laughed and said "the sharpeners are all electric mom". No manual pencil sharpeners? Apparently not. There's none in his school. They must have had a heck of a garage sale getting rid of all the chalk, manual sharpeners and black boards. What is this world coming to? No wonder teenagers are so weird.
