It's the most wonderful time of the year for parents nationwide: back to school for the kiddos. With that usually comes an extensive, not to mention expensive, list of school supplies that students are required to bring on the first day of school. Many schools issue absurdly long lists that have crazed parents elbowing each other out of the way to grab handfuls of cheap glue sticks at Walmart.
Gone are the days of needing a few Bic pens (black or blue, maybe a red one), a pack of No. 2 pencils, and some Elmer's glue. These days, parents face the daunting task of outfitting their kids with very specific items, such as a certain-sized backpack or erasable markers. The older kids will need a graphing calculator (cha-ching) and their own laptop (serious cha-ching!). It's brutal.
What's even more brutal is that, once parents have fulfilled the school's demands, many teachers, especially in the lower grades, will pool the school supplies into a leftist utopia called communal sharing. Those pastel Crayola crayons you bought for your child? Ha! She may never see them and will instead have to thrust her hand into the communal crayon bucket and get what she gets (which could mean having to draw with the lesser, much-dreaded RoseArt crayons). That Bluey folder your kindergartener begged you for? The kid one seat over is really enjoying storing his papers in it.
What in the world is going on here? It's not so much a lesson in sharing as it is pushing the commie idea that your stuff isn't actually your stuff. And don't complain about having your kid's handpicked supplies thrown into the germy class pool because that would be seen as selfish. It's for the greater good of the class, apparently.
This nonsense has been on my mind recently after a conversation with my sister, whose oldest grandchild is headed to kindergarten in a few weeks. He was so excited to pick out folders in his favorite colors and his first pair of scissors, only to learn that they would disappear into the shared supply cabinet in the classroom, and his teacher would decide who gets what.
Maybe not a big deal to the littles, but I can tell you I would have been livid if my red Trapper Keeper, bought after much debate with my mother, was poached by my fourth-grade teacher and given to another student. The shared supplies racket was just starting when my now-big kids were little. Back then, it was just things like crayons and pencils being shared; these days, it's accelerated to the point where kids are lucky if the school lets them keep their new Nikes and Owala water bottles.
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This isn't a knock on lower-income kids. There is a vibrant, nationwide network of churches, private companies, and non-profit organizations that band together to make sure every child has what he or she needs for the upcoming school year. Here in my town, a local non-profit holds a "Back to School Village," where needy children from the area can "shop" for their supplies at no cost to their families. Each child gets to select their own supplies, reflecting their individual likes and needs. And individuality is a good thing, indeed. It's what schools should be fostering in kids, but that doesn't happen when things like shared school supplies are pushed on them.
It's also not a knock on teachers. Teachers shouldn't have to cough up their own money to buy essentials for their classrooms; cut a few layers of administrators over at the school system headquarters, and the whole thing sorts itself out.
This all dies out, thankfully, when kids get to the age where they have to change classes and their school supplies have to travel with them from room to room. But, there are important reasons that schools should do away with the idea of pooling supplies, with the most important being that it teaches responsibility. Kids learn to take care of their things; they learn to keep track of their things. They learn when they need to restock their dwindling supplies, and they learn it's okay to be an individual with preferences for certain colors or patterns.
Shared school supplies obviously isn't the most important issue of the day, but the practice is a reminder that, when it comes to public schools, parental choice is constantly being eroded and student responsibility is deemphasized. Students learn early to be a cog in the wheel, and families aren't trusted to make choices for their students.
Just let kids be kids; childhood is short, so teachers, don't swipe the crayons.
