Sometimes the Old Ways Are Better

Don’t get me wrong – I love modern conveniences, and I couldn’t live without many. Where would be without our cars, or washers, or computers? I embrace all the technology that surrounds us, even if I don’t own all the items or understand them. Cell phones have become a necessary part of our lives (and for teachers sometimes the bane of their profession.) Think back to the early to mid nineties (c’mon, you can do it!) Hardly anyone owned a “mobile” phone for personal use. Remember when they were a part of the car? I was so goofy and envious of anyone who had one. I used to “pretend” and at stop lights, hold up my wallet so strangers would think I was one of the elite! Then in the latter part of the decade, cell phones began to catch on, and soon they became a part of our lives. As a teacher (and in our school), we had to make rules, and as the technology increased, the rules had to become stricter. When I was principal, all student cell phones had to be turned off and kept in book bags. When this rule wasn’t observed, the phone was confiscated, and a parent had to come in and retrieve it. If the parent complained, I told them their children were more than welcome to ask the secretary to contact a parent in an emergency (forgotten lunch & homework were not emergencies!) It took a little patience, but I got my message across. Just say NO. This new-fangled parenting drives me nuts. Does a toddler understand timeout? I don’t think so! Can a very young child listen long enough to a parent explaining why a child should act in a particular manner? I don’t think so. Was a child ever scarred for life if the parent said, “No!” when a child was doing something wrong or dangerous? I don’t think so. Now I’m totally against corporal punishment – hitting, slapping, pushing really can harm a child – but if parents want to give the child a slight spank on the covered bottom, I wouldn’t condemn. I just believe that a firm No, said with a stern face and in a serious voice (no yelling) can accomplish the desired result. Of course a child doesn’t like to hear it – they have no sense of prudent judgment. But they’ll hear that No echoed if they try to pull something off a shelf, go near a hot stove, or misbehave. Let’s have some ‘time in’ not ‘out’ as we train kids today. My final longing for the old comes with penmanship. With the advent of computers, many people (young ones, especially) no longer write. Now I definitely cannot write with my fancy flowing script, and I miss that use of my hand. But kids nowadays either print or do their writing on a computer. I know Catholic schools still emphasize handwriting and some still use the old ‘Palmer method,’ but even there, it’s a lost skill. We were taught how to hold a pen properly, how to relax our hand as we wrote, and how to angle the writing a certain way. Have you seen how kids hold a pen now? No resting the object on the middle finger as the index and thumb move it along. Now the fingers form a death grip! The paper is positioned helter-skelter, and the writing/printing/gobbledegook goes every which way. Legibility? Gone! Beautiful script? Gone! It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen good, let alone beautiful, penmanship. So, I do long for some of the old fashioned ways of life. In some ways, they really were better. Excuse me now as I go fire up the wood stove to make dinner. Peace, Muff