It’s September, which for me always meant the beginning of another exciting school year! Then I retired, moved back home and watched the orange school bus pick up kids in early August.
Hawaii’s Department of Education calls students and teachers back to class a month earlier, replacing the long summer vacation with shorter breaks over the year.
Aloha oe to those lazy days of doing nothing.
But this isn’t the first time Hawaii’s children sat in classrooms during the hot summer. When I was growing up, students in Kona were on a different calendar. Back then, the dry side was mostly small villages and family-run coffee farms and like farms everywhere, kids had to help out. It meant that my coffee-picking cousins were diagramming sentences and memorizing multiplication tables June and July, then picking coffee during their vacation in August, September, October.
No fun-filled summers to act lolo and pupule! How can?
The Kona coffee schedule began in 1932 and ended in 1969 when DOE decided that accommodating child labor was probably not a good look, so Kona schools now follow the same time line.
Mandatory education is something for which I am eternally grateful, but ideas about what to teach and how best to learn evolve over time, and not just with the instructional calendar.
I recently became aware that most schools no longer teach cursive — longhand script. Why bother when everyone is tapping on a QWERTY keyboard? But what about distinctive renderings for handwriting specialists to decode? (As a sign of those errant times, they pored over my chicken scratch and determined not that I should apply to medical school but that I kept a messy house). So when I lovingly etch out — with fountain pen, blue ink — a heartfelt birthday note to grandchildren, they grab the money then hand over the card for their dad to decipher.
As for the fountain pen, it’s going the way of the feather plume. I’ll be donating mine to the Smithsonian.
But a more serious change to befall my cherished mo ‘opuna and others, is the analog clock. You know, the circle with 12 numbers evenly spaced around the perimeter. That large fixture hanging above the front blackboard in every classroom so we could count the minutes until the final bell rang. The miniature version we used to wear on our wrist in various sizes and styles.
Since everything is going digital, many schools don’t teach kids to read an analog clock.
What is this world coming to?
The clock with a face is not only functional but enhances our lives with design and color, offering more than just the time of day. Not only does its various shapes, fonts and embellishments tantalize the senses, it’s also a visual tool for teaching mathematics.
When I told our Ohio grandkids to meet us in the car at a quarter to four, they looked at me quizzically, figuring I had launched yet again into my beloved Pidgin. It’s when I realized that there are no fractions let alone geometry in their clock. A quarter after, a half past … these concepts no longer apply to telling time and instead of clock hands forming acute, right and obtuse angles, our children are left with virtual, flat, boring screens.
Auwe no ho‘i e.
The decline of cursive isn’t tragic (is it?) but dismissing the analog clock means a lost opportunity to educate. Of course we must always update curriculum to reflect the changing times, but no need throw everything out.
Some of the old ways still work, maybe even better than the new.
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column is published the first Monday of each month.
