Stupid (but sincere) Questions about the USA

[MeekMe]

Do you have to buy all your books yourself or does the school supply some/all of them?

We have similar portable classrooms here, too. Supposed to be temporary, but there are kids who have passed elementary school and never studied in a "real" school. Here they're used when the school building is renovated or rebuilt, but often those projects tend to last much longer than planned. Some of the portable classroosm are really nice, but some are very problematic, like too cold in the winter.

School children sell various things and organize bake sales at PTA meetings or on voting days (most schools have a polling station here when there's an election) to raise money for trips, yes. I remember selling special May Day pins, magazines, candy etc. We also had to go to local stores to ask for donations for a ruffle. I was in a music-oriented class so we also organized concerts. The money was used on field trips that mostly weren't educational. We did day trips to an amusement park and took a lake cruise, went skiing for 4 days and took a longer trip to Denmark. On the 6th grade we spent a week in "school camp" where we had some basic biology lessons and such, but mostly it was just for entertainment and socializing.

The school pays for trips to museums and other purely educational outings.

The school supplied the books, there’s no way families could afford to purchase books. Honestly, a large portion of families where I came from relied on charities for basic supplies.

I can’t imagine a portable in snow. Those things are seriously not meant for anything but fair weather. Ours weren’t for renovations, they were just a permanent part of the school. So much so they eventually put in sidewalks to some of them.

I think maybe I grew up in a particularly poor school district. We never took more than a day trip and it was always required that the student pay at least half of their ticket (there were bake sales and candy selling to help). Sometime in those years they actually passed rules that made all school trips educational only so no going to a theme park (or anything “fun”) unless it was an educational one or one they could justify as educational like Disney Epcot (which is the least fun of all the parks for children). There weren’t many trips beyond the local museum/science center. I have heard of others going on school sponsored trips to other countries but definitely not from my district, and I imagine the cost is quite steep. If my school had such trips I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

I used to think it was like a “TV magic” kind of thing when they showed students going on what seemed like extravagant trips for school.

 

[seela]

The school supplied the books, there’s no way families could afford to purchase books. Honestly, a large portion of families where I came from relied on charities for basic supplies.

I can’t imagine a portable in snow. Those things are seriously not meant for anything but fair weather. Ours weren’t for renovations, they were just a permanent part of the school. So much so they eventually put in sidewalks to some of them.

I think maybe I grew up in a particularly poor school district. We never took more than a day trip and it was always required that the student pay at least half of their ticket (there were bake sales and candy selling to help). Sometime in those years they actually passed rules that made all school trips educational only so no going to a theme park (or anything “fun”) unless it was an educational one or one they could justify as educational like Disney Epcot (which is the least fun of all the parks for children). There weren’t many trips beyond the local museum/science center. I have heard of others going on school sponsored trips to other countries but definitely not from my district, and I imagine the cost is quite steep. If my school had such trips I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.

I used to think it was like a “TV magic” kind of thing when they showed students going on what seemed like extravagant trips for school.

I think our portable classrooms might be sturdier than yours to work in winter, but they’re still not the same as a real school. At least not all of them.

I lived in a pretty poor area most of my life and many of my school years were made even scarcer because of the big, big recession of the early 90s. It was poor in the sense that we didn’t get books because there was not enough money to get one for each student. So instead they bought one to be shared by two people and we couldn’t take them home and once we were finished with the books, they were handed to the next class to use. The teachers made a ton of illegal copies and we had to copy long chunks of text by hand in our notebooks.

But still we went to those non-educational (mostly one day) trips once a year and got a free school lunch every day - everyone gets a free school lunch, it’s not a rich/poor thing. If someone’s family couldn’t pitch in for the trips, they got a full ride from the funds we had collected with the bake sales and such and other families paid a little more, those who could. But we often didn’t have to pay anything at all, because we were somehow really good at collecting money.

The Denmark trip was only possible because we got EU funding - it was a trip to visit our partner school.

 

[MeekMe]

I think our portable classrooms might be sturdier than yours to work in winter, but they’re still not the same as a real school. At least not all of them.

I lived in a pretty poor area most of my life and many of my school years were made even scarcer because of the big, big recession of the early 90s. It was poor in the sense that we didn’t get books because there was not enough money to get one for each student. So instead they bought one to be shared by two people and we couldn’t take them home and once we were finished with the books, they were handed to the next class to use. The teachers made a ton of illegal copies and we had to copy long chunks of text by hand in our notebooks.

But still we went to those non-educational (mostly one day) trips once a year and got a free school lunch every day - everyone gets a free school lunch, it’s not a rich/poor thing. If someone’s family couldn’t pitch in for the trips, they got a full ride from the funds we had collected with the bake sales and such and other families paid a little more, those who could. But we often didn’t have to pay anything at all, because we were somehow really good at collecting money.

The Denmark trip was only possible because we got EU funding - it was a trip to visit our partner school.

That’s rough, I hope it’s better now.

 

[seela]

That’s rough, I hope it’s better now.

I don't think it was especially rough. It was what it was, and everyone was in the same boat and didn't know any better, so it didn't feel like we were missing out. But I do remember that one year we finally got a whole eraser from school instead of getting only half an eraser, wow.

Schools are still very underfunded, I think they always are and always will be. But at least as far as I know, the kids get full erasers now and don't have to go splitsies with their desk mate.

In hindsight it's interesting where the priorities were. Even if there was no money for the books, we still got our yearly trip. For me it was definitely the right choice, not sure if it was for all kids. Maybe some would have done better in school with better access to the books? Don't know.