Yesterday at the dinner table, my wife was talking to Cookie about pencils. Cookie, my 10 year old daughter, commented that they don’t have their own pencils at school.
This made me perk my ears up a bit to listen closer.
She then proceeded to explain that in her class they have a box where they all put their pencils at the beginning of the year and when you need a pencil, you can just go up and get one from the box.
I distinctly remember pencils being on the school supply list which we, as parents, were asked to supply our children with at the beginning of the year. Now I am all for the school offering up a solution which has every student put ONE pencil into a community box which they can “borrow” from for a day when they forget their own. But for the whole class to lump ALL of their pencils into one community pile which the children draw from is not sharing. It’s communism.
Am I being paranoid? A few years ago, I remember that the kids had “1 Box of Facial Tissues” on their school supply list and the teacher took them all on the first day and kept one box on her desk the whole year for kids who needed them. What happened to parents who either kept their sick kids home or sent them to school with a pocketfull of tissues when they were sick?
I distinctly remember things like pencils and tissues and art supplies being paid for by the school when I was a child. Now we are not only forced to send supplies with our kids, but the school is forcing the children to share. Cookie knows well enough to let a friend borrow a pencil if they forgot one, but this classroom communism is pushing my limits a bit.
Someone tell me I am wrong (with a valid argument please!!)
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You are correct. Actually this concept came from the original anarchists, and rounded out in Thomas More’s Utopia – everyone places everything they do not need in barns or silos across Europe… everyone who has need, takes from the barns or silos exactly what they need.
Teachers are particularly susceptible to the Communist dream or order out of chaos. Surprisingly most intellectuals, and/or university professors dream of this central organized marvellously wonderful system..in fact a local Rogers weatherman recently opined that with the advent of computers, Communism would work better today than in previous experiences and is in fact “inevitable”! Wow.
What always and forever escapes the dreamers, is the filthy side of the human – the venal, greed, desire for material and power, the corrupt aside of man, all of which the ten commandments attempted (with some moderate success) to address! Someone said absolute power corrupts absolutely – and such is the way of the central comintern one-party state style of “government” it is dictatorship. EVen the proletariet can be corrupt…oh wait , even more corrupt than the learned people ! Wow. That is why they killed all the brains in Cambodia remember ? It is significant therefore that religion is the first thing to go over the side of the boat when the Communist sweeps in ! That is why to a huge extent in Canada, the NDP do not hold with religion – esp. in areas of abortion and gay marriage! (socialists remember ARE JUST SLOW COMMUNISTS) See the correlation now ?
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Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
Pencil sharing is your child’s teachers solution to disappearing pencils (my 9 yr old daughter assures me that some kids lose their pencils everyday! heh…no surprise there)and disappearing funding for our childrens education.
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The teacher is corrupting her students with communist ideology. Obviously, the students with parents who can afford pencils deserve to get more out of their education. It’s just common sense: students who can afford pencils (and books and computers and tutors) will learn more and teachers should respect this natural advantage. In fairness to the teacher, she is probably a product of left leaning educational institutions and is just trying to implement some corrupt communist ideology. It’s hard for teachers educated in this manor to overcome instincts of student equality. Have you considered private schooling?
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Teachers are trade union members, no? What would you expect from them? Don’t unions create an adversarial relationship in the workplace? Don’t they operate from an ‘us and them’ ideology and believe in a class system where none actually exists? Of course they would take from the competent to give to the incompetent, they seem to believe in saving the weak at the expense of the strong.
The obvious outcome is that everyone will wind up weak and incompetent because the strong will move on, so a niche is created for those who crave power and who are worse than the subjectively labelled ‘rich people’ the socialists envy.
I disagree with forced sharing and have never encouraged it. It backfires, ie, it has the exact opposite effect to that intended.
When I went to school, we bought nothing unless we were involved in special extracurricular activities which required equipment or supplies, such as drama group or the photography club for example.
It occurs to me that all these selfless readers from the answer book, er, I mean teachers, who claim to be dedicted to education could take a tiny perfect pay cut, say 3%, and bail out the educational budgets across the country.
Betcha they wouldn’t go for it though. It takes guts to walk the walk.
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Andrew, I will make the assumption you are being sarcastic. Would it not be better if the school got it’s “pencil fund” from the same place it gets money to purchase computers in the computer lab instead of forcing the parents of the children in the specific class to supply children who don’t have pencils?
If this “commun”ity pencil box was extended to computers then what happens to the class that only has half of the kids owning computers? Am I to expect the computer I buy my daughter to be shared with another student? Or how about the ride I give her to school? Shall I go pick up a child who can’t make his way to school?
Where would it stop?
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Yer bummin’ me out, man… now if I could just remember where I put my stash.
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Caveat: So poor students are imcompetent? I take offense to that as I was a poor student and if it was not for the generosity of my teachers, peers and outside family, I probbalby would have never graduated high school. But I turned into a socialist, so it does have some negative side effects. You make me sick.
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Tyler, sorry if you’re sick.
I actually was speaking a little more generally, ie, not about the financial status of students.
No, poor students aren’t incompetent, parents who have kids they can’t support are incompetent, an expensive educational system that doesn’t provide the basics is incompetent and unfortunately, in my experience, most teachers are incompetent.
Most of the people I know who were poor as kids actually are NOT socialists because they made it on their own and figure everybody has the same chance.
Socialism does not equate with generosity. It equates with homogeneity, the belief that everyone is identical and entitled to the exact same things in life. It does not celebrate individualism, it is the antithesis of it. It’s a dreary viewpoint.
Thanks for disagreeing, unlike you I enjoy hearing a different take on a subject.
As this is not my blog I wouldn’t usually reply, just wanted to clarify.
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Pencil communism - Kinch Blog
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I was schooled initially in Quebec — forgive me, won’t you. Parents supplied all the items you mention and then they were shared at will. No community box. Perhaps the teacher had efficiency and general tidiness in mind when collecting kleenex supplies so used kleenex wouldn’t be strewn all over desks and floors. And maybe students taking from the teacher’s desk provides a ‘stretch of the legs’ and even a little rapport-time with teacher.
I remember a first assembly in a new auditorium and an address by a ‘stiff upper-lip’ type English immigrant principle. It was hilarious and yet down-to-earth practical at same time. He made announcement that toilet-paper supplies were to be used “economically” — he said, “remember, students, one-up, one-down and a polisher.”
A lesson in benefits of frugality? I guess. Still makes me smile. His own smile was particularly pronounced during the relation of this instruction — for our mutual benefit. 🙂
Happy Thanksgiving Day, all. The comedy is always remembered and so it should be.
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My father was not incompetent. He could have just left us three when my mother did, but he choose not to. The world isn’t perfect, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Same thing with goog things happening to bad people.
How about the parent aborts the child if they will have troubles fincancially?
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Or when a poor student needs a pencil, how about he/she breaks into you house to take one? The teacher in this situation is helping out others with what she has and teaching about sharing, and she is being criticized.
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Stating that every child/person has the same chance is completely absurd. Not even those families representing the same level of economic stability are given the same chances depending upon where they live. If the government would place more emphasis on the education system, and less (in excess of 300B now?) on unjust international affairs, maybe the schools wouldn’t have to adopt these horrible “communist” rules. Dont blame the teacher for giving each one of his or her students the chances they have every right to.
As for the complaint from Caveat
“…occurs to me that all these selfless readers from the answer book, er, I mean teachers, who claim to be dedicted to education could take a tiny perfect pay cut, say 3%, and bail out the educational budgets across the country. Betcha they wouldn’t go for it though. It takes guts to walk the walk.”
this 3% cut in salary to buy pencils and pens, oh, and then the pay cut they take to properly furnish the classroom with additional texts, posters, etc, adds up. The teacher’s themselves should not be responsible for supplying anything to the classrooms. Instead of ranting about walking the walk, why dont you take a measly 3% cut from your pay and give it to a local classroom? Doesnt sound like too much fun now, does it?
Finally, the current generation of parents are no less than psychotic when it comes to the judgement of the education systems which their children take advantage of. It is turning into nothing more than a daycare center. Parents want no responsibility for aiding in out of class work, and when the child slips, it isnt their fault, it sure as hell isnt their child’s fault, so who else to blame than the teacher whose class the child is failing?
My final thought, if you are annoyed at the fact that pencil sharing is going on in class, take your student and place them into a private institution with other “rich, top-notch, worthy kids”. Then it wont be the ideals of communism youll be worrying about, it will be their coke habits.
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Let’s put it this way:
There are roughly 36,000 teachers in the Ontario Catholic system alone, elementary and secondary at about a 2/3 : 1/3 ratio respectively. (each teacher has an average of 18 students). I’d guess that the public system probably has twice as many teachers but I don’t have the number available right now.
Averaging Catholic board salaries at $50K a year, that’s a payout by taxpayers of $1.8 billion dollars annually. Ignore benefits for now, whch would probably run at 20 – 25% overhead.
A 3% saving equals $54 million dollars.
A pay reduction of 3% is unnoticeable, as it reduces the tax, union fees, etc, so the take-home pay is likely the same.
I dislike being subjective but I have in fact taken a pay cut to help a company where I worked get through a rough period – 10% to be precise. Needless to say, it was not a unionized company.
The point of my comment was:
1. We pay a lot of taxes to support universal, free education which I strongly endorse because an educated population benefits everyone.
2. The schools should be able to buy texts, pencils, notebooks, whatever every child needs to be on an equal footing in school to maintain their dignity; otherwise, it is not free or universal.
3. If there is a shortfall you have to look for areas where you can cut to keep your ‘company’ running. The students should be top priority which they no longer seem to be.
By having the same chance I don’t mean that everyone is the same. I mean that everyone of average intelligence can get ahead through hard work and self-discipline.
I learned to read a couple of years before I started school. So did my daughter. It makes a world of difference to your education if you can read because it means you can learn. Libraries are free.
The quality of elementary and secondary education is poor. People come out of the system without a good liberal arts foundation, which is really not fair. Many people believe that school is for learning about subjects. I’ve always believed it is for learning good corporate behaviour – if you want to learn about subjects, you go to the library or find somebody who has knowledge in the area of interest and pick their brains.
I don’t judge people by the amount of money they have. It is a matter of complete indifference to me.
Oh, and I agree with Mulder. Taking property and redistributing it without consent is communism.
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Classroom communism, indeed. The canard about poor families not being able to afford pencils is nonsense designed to support the classroom commies. Some teachers like the power & control of seizing supplies. Cookie’s teacher appears to be one of those.
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Thanks Caveat, you are doing a better job of defending my argument than I am.
I recently read a story where a British Columbia school system was sued for making kids pay for things which were part of the curriculum. Art supplies, school trips, pencils, etc. And they lost meaning schools need to start supplying all kids with everything they need as part of the curriculum. I agree that this is best.
It too can be considered a form of communism as all tax payers will end up subsidizing the education of all.
My main point was that the “all pencils in the box” idea is not teaching our kids to share as much as it us supporting the regular left leaning principals of our unionized education system.
And I am still waiting for someone to tell me that this pencil box idea is not communism.
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I agree. This is communism. Where will the madness stop? I mean the liberal-nazis-fascists want us to carpool to work. I paid for that gas. My taxes paid for the road. Get real people. If I can pay for something I should be able to use it in whatever way I want no matter how many other people cannot.
The word “sharing” comes from the same root word as “communism” and “dictatorship.” Pencils are the tip of the ice-berg and we are standing on their slippery slopes. What else are they going to want us to do. Recycle paper? Or try to make friends with the new kids? If I wanted reduce consumption then I would quite simply never complete assignments. If I wanted to live in harmony with others then I would have pointed the new kid in the direction of the audio-video gang. Isn’t the definition of harmony that things are best “out of sight, out of mind” ?
Pencils is where communism starts. Marx and Engels could not have written without pencils.
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It’s getting tough to see the sarcasm in some of the posts… but really easy in others 😛
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OfficiallyScrewed.com » I Think I Hit A Nerve With The Pencil Commentary
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While the school boards, teachers, administrators decide on the distribution of in-school supplies — pencils, kleenex, toiletpaper, I question poster, Caveat’s suggestion regarding teachers’ taking a 3% paycut to supplement school budgets. You cite how reducing their wages would translate into negligible loss at tax time. That may be true, however, how does that speak to the issue of teachers’ inherent value and how does it reflect their investment in educating themselves to apply themselves to one of society’s greatest, critical endeavours — the education of a country’s youth in preparation for the corporate/industrial/banking/medical/public service et.al. complex.
The banking industry alone could supply the pencils anyway and probably the toilet paper as a drop in the bucket given their current profit margins (no pun intended). But, you may want to note the point — the endgame destinations of education may want to support their future employee base and display a little social conscience — if only as a diversion from downsizing the same employee base.
It seems to me a letter suggesting this initiative to be sent to Assoc. of Canadian CEOs and Executives, etc. from our Dept. of Education on behalf of Canadian voters to get this instituted with all expediency.
Harried, hurried, harrassed teachers increasingly facing sporadic in-class terrorist incidents while they try to educate our young are not the wages to target here. As a matter of principle.
As well, dealing with the Harry Potter phenomenon all the way up to Margaret Atwood’s Oryk and Crake (sp?) which I consider just a notch above Harry Potter material, is surely enough to deal with.
Which reminds me — for some time I’ve been thinking about getting a hold of current elementary, secondary curriculums to review contents that are influencing, educating our youth toward stable future citizenship.
Go to Proud to be Canadian blog and ask Joel to call up an old post of mine regarding a Canadian youth initiative I outlined regarding establishing youth centres (legitimate business initiative) which would address the increasing numbers of lost youth roaming particularly our city streets.
It’s an idea I’m fired up about and would like it circulated, submitted to government for implementation. Correction; submitted to gov’t/business for implementation.
Thanks for the forum. Appreciate it.
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Stageleft:. Life on the left side » Blog Archive » ConuCopia XII: The Midnight of Reason
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The Star Article
check out todays post in the Star….
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OfficiallyScrewed.com » The Pencil Commies Get Bitchslapped In BC - Is Ontario Next?