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My fourth grade teacher was... unusual. She was obsessed with Milton Friedman (the economist) and made us copy one hundred of his principles from the board into our notebooks. She also had a thing for JFK and taught us random facts about him (this was 1980ish) and we could be called upon at any time to remember them.
She made us memorize the preamble to the Constitution to recite in class for a grade. Fortunately, I was a fan of Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings and already knew it by heart (still do to this day). So I asked if I could go ahead and do the assignment on the day she gave it to us. She didn't like that very much. But I got up and said it, well half-sang it.
What I remember most clearly is being required to do an assignment about antebellum plantation life (this was in the Carolinas). We had to draw a picture of what we thought a working plantation looked like. I still imagine that she took them home and hung them up in her hallway.
Why would a 40-something woman be obsessed with Friedman, Kennedy, the constitution AND plantations? It seemed weird then. Bewildering now.
I think in between teaching us patriot songs like My Land Tis of Thee they taught us MoTown songs from the 1960s. This would've been in the 1990s by the way.
When I think back on all the ***p I learned in high school," oops, Grade School.
I had a pronounced lisp and in 1st grade I was put in speech therapy. To this day I remember "Sally sells sea shells down by the seashore" and "slithering snakes shake sneaky seals" - and having to repeat those sentences over and over and over.
Algebra !!! I did not want to become a engineer nor did I want to be anything that would use this stuff BUT I had to take it for 5 plus years and then again in college. Thats the crap part !!
And History was the random part - like learning all these dates and what was done by whom - kinda like a big huge soap opera. I realize some of history is important as it relates to our life today but a lot of it was not - it was more like gossip.
If by "random crap" you mean something they pushed on you and you subsequently never used one time after learning it.........cursive handwriting.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mitsguy2001
Don't you ever have to sign your name?
I do, but my initials are DS, so it's basically a capital D and a line followed by a capital S and a line.
I actually timed myself (stopwatch on my phone) signing my name in cursive trying to remember/use actual letters and it took me 8.9 seconds and it looked terrible.
She made us memorize the preamble to the Constitution to recite in class for a grade. Fortunately, I was a fan of Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday mornings and already knew it by heart (still do to this day). So I asked if I could go ahead and do the assignment on the day she gave it to us. She didn't like that very much. But I got up and said it, well half-sang it.
Teachers do not like students who are more advanced than the rest of the class. I remember in 3rd grade (1987-88 school year), we had a bonus question in math asking what day of the week will 4th of July fall on this year (asking about July 4, 1988). Most students just took completely random guesses. Some students knew that the day of the week that a date falls on advances one day every year, and, assuming they correctly remembered that 4th of July was a Saturday in 1987, they guessed Sunday for 1988. Initially, the teacher said that Sunday was correct.
I then pointed out to the teacher that in a leap year (which 1988 was) that dates advance 2 days of the week, not just 1, so 4th of July in 1988 would be a Monday, not a Sunday. She checked her calendar and realized that I was right,. However, she refused to give me credit for that question, since she argued that there was absolutely no way that I could have known that a leap year causes a date to advance 2 days instead of 1. She argued that Monday was just a lucky guess. I explained that I knew about leap year, but she didn't believe me.
I had a pronounced lisp and in 1st grade I was put in speech therapy. To this day I remember "Sally sells sea shells down by the seashore" and "slithering snakes shake sneaky seals" - and having to repeat those sentences over and over and over.
When I was in first grade, I was unable to pronounce any words that started with "Th". For example, if I tried to pronounce the number "three", it would come out as either "tree" or "free". I have no problem at all pronouncing such words now, so I am guessing that the muscles needed to pronounce the "th" sound hadn't developed.
I remember one day, in 1st grade, when I kept pronouncing the word "three" wrongly, my teacher took a mirror from her pocketbook and kept yelling at me and insisting that I say the word "three". I tried many times and could not pronounce it, and she kept yelling at me louder and louder. Eventually, in frustration, I gave up and spit into her mirror. She then kicked me out of class. lol
Sounds like Nancy Strong truly excelled in her chosen field!
I think that she was a spy, since I remember learning about Nathan Hale in the same assignment. Given the feminized education that we received during that era, I'm guessing that Nancy Strong was probably an otherwise unremarkable spy who just happened to be female, which is why they taught us about her, even though she wouldn't have warranted being taught about if she had been male. Perhaps they chose someone with the last name Strong as a subliminal message to teach us that women are strong?
I had a fifth grade teacher who was obsessed with the Titanic. We watched a couple movies about it and he spent endless hours talking about it and how the sinking happened. Note that this was years before the Leonardo Dicaprio movie came out.
I remember learning about the Titanic in 3rd grade (in 1987-88, also long before the Dicaprio movie). I remember our teacher said that they always evacuate ships "women and children first" because "men are nicer". That was a departure from the usual feminized education that we got.
I remember learning that spies had code numbers, but that Nancy Strong had no code number, so for the purposes of that assignment, to use her initials. I have no recollection of who Nancy Strong was. And a search online shows nothing. I remember after completing the assignment and showing it to my parents so they could check it, my parents both saying that they had no idea who Nancy Strong was.
It was normal for people to ignore women who did things like this.
I think you mean Anna "Nancy" Strong who was a member of the Culper Spy Ring in Setauket, NY, during the American Revolution. She was responsible for sending signals out to other members of the ring when a certain gentleman informant was crossing Long Island Sound.
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