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from somewhere beneath a few layers came to mind my sister and i having used mother's drafting, three-sided, rulers as swords. with the results that we chipped bits off them.

boy! did we ever get told off!

I remember those three cornered rulers from elementary school. The nuns who taught us used them to whack our knuckles if we didn't tow the line correctly.

those suckers would hurt!

Those were the days when corporal punishment would not earn you a prison sentence. Then again, those rulers are one more reason I abandoned the faith. LOL

a bit unruly, were you?

Actually I was quite introverted. You know, the strong silent type.

me... not so much. ADD and all that.

They probably didn't now what ADD is back in your school days. Now they have special education classes for such kids.

no, they'd no idea...

i just needed to pay attention, concentrate, stop staring out the window.

right. didn't cross anyone's mind i really, really wanted to do all that!

That brings to mind a little story of my days in 4th grade grammar school; the school taught by those nuns who carried three cornered rulers to wave at any unruly kids. Back in those days the teachings revolved around rote. A section of the catechism book was to be memorized each night. Proof of actually doing that was the nun calling on random students the next day to repeat what was memorized. She would call about half the class, which was a sizeable number give there were 52 kids all told. Anyway, I had problems memorizing stuff. The good sister figured that out after calling upon me in the first four or five recitals and I could not repeat anything. If she called me last, I did a fair job of repeating it all because I just sat through two dozen oral repetitions. Once in a while I'd actually memorize the passage before class, and stared out the window while everyone was reciting it over and over and over again.

Then there was reading proficiency. We would be required to stand up and read aloud a paragraph from the catechism book, or from some other literary work. All 52 of us had our 3 minutes of fame every time that happened. Now, if I were down in the, say, #42 slot, I'd get pretty damned bored and ... look out the window. The nun took that as a sign of me being disinterested as opposed to being bored of what she was doing. So, when she called on me and I didn't know the place to continue the reading, she had a field day reprimanding me in front of the whole class. After a few humiliating incidents like that, I decided to pay attention while I was looking out the window. I deliberately listened to the readings and paid particular attention to the last sentence being read so that I'd always know where the readings stopped. Thus, when the nun called on me because she noted I was gaping out at the birds in the trees, I just scanned the page and continued on from the correct spot. I was able to scam her several times and chuckled inside each time. At the following parent/teacher meeting the nun remarked to my mom how I keep wandering away from the class activity and looking out the window. She also mentioned that she could not figure out how I managed to know where to pick up the activity. I looked innocent as I could at that meeting.

Sister Mary Goodwoman stopped trying to catch me off guard after that. She never did figure out that her teaching methods were boring the class half to death. I think it's due to that method of teaching that I learned to hate reading. I didn't read a book cover to cover until well after I was married. Even then it was a book of short stories. LOL

i was reader. finnish being phonetic, i was reading at 3½, "accidentally" learned from newspapers left around. parents being avid readers, all but my sister were usually with our noses in some.

just after i'd started to read, my parents, some friends and i were heading south on a lengthy train trip. one of the friends saw that i was getting bored of just sitting there so he took by the hand "let's go for a walk!" what he did was to have me read to the passengers in exchange for a couple of coins. he then went and bought some candy with it and gave to me when we were done.

as we reentered our car i announced loudly and happily "LOOK WHAT THE CANDYMAN GAVE ME!" candyman in finlanf being a pedo...



my teachers weren't allowed any type of corporal punishment but some still managed to terrorize, being sadistic old biddies and left overs from the time they could.

the max kids we had in one class was 42. that's still a handful and i had trouble staying with it at reading time as well. but mine was from not having the patience to wait around, but reading half the book while the class was going "...and then ...he ...saw........"

It was not the age of high tech when I was in elementary school, but the fact that the parochial school I attended did not teach science was notable. When it came time to transition to the higher grades, I chose a public high school that took nearly an hour to get to over the Catholic one that I could walk to. The public school offered a 'college preparatory' curriculum which included math and science. It didn't do me a lot of good given that I never completed two years of college. LOL

The large class size in grammar school was a reflection of the dwindling interest in a Catholic education - even way back then. There were not enough nuns and priests to go around, and lay teachers were prohibited from indoctrinating us street urchins. That allowed for a free education, literally. Of course we were all expected to donate to the church, which included support for the school. The last year at that school saw it's first lay teacher. That's when tuition had to be imposed. Last time I checked, about twenty years ago, all the nuns were gone and only two priests remained. The convent and rectory had to be sold off, and the church itself was in need of maintenance. The neighborhood changed from all Polish to all Spanish, and it's hard to believe the new residents would not, or could not, support the parish. I have no idea if it still exists today.

by the time i hit highschool, i was in sweden and had religion, as well as physics, chemistry, biology etc. so they covered all the vases, lol!

the religion lessons.... well, we played cards at the back of the classroom...