• the217
• Life
• The cost of education

I’m more than happy not to be going back to school this time of year, but I have to say, I sort of miss it. I don’t miss the school or anything, but it was nice starting over again with somewhat of a clean slate and imagining that I was actually going to apply myself this time around. I can’t remember such a thing ever happening, but it was still nice to pretend for a couple of weeks. If nothing else, I sort of enjoyed the preparation for such a mediocre endeavor.

I especially remember it being fun when I was a little kid. My mom would take me new clothes shopping. I would still look like a dork, but if nothing else I was a dork that appeared a little less worn than the previous year. I would insist I needed a protractor, several multicolored markers, and a cool-assed folder with Spiderman on the front. In reality, I would mostly use the protractor to make circles and flowers on my new Spiderman folder. I would then color them in with the markers. It sure as hell beat paying any sort of attention to what was going on in class.

I’m sure when it was all said and done my total bill for going back to school was a little over a hundred dollars. I would imagine nowadays it’s much different, even for little kids. Now when a child says they need a notebook, they probably aren’t talking about fifty sheets of paper held together by a spiral wire. They mean some sort of computer notebook that costs significantly more. The thing is, they probably do need a computer notebook, but geez louise, I gotta say, I ‘d have trouble shelling out a couple of grand for something that will likely be thrown around like a Nerf football and be obsolete by the time next year rolls around.

The clothes shopping has to be just as bad. I don’t have any kids, so I’m just guessing here based on the media, but I assume every young man has to dress like his favorite Jonas brother and every girl has to dress up like whichever teenage whore who happens to have the current hit single on the Billboard charts. I can understand such a thing. I remember in second grade I was convinced that I wanted to wear an outfit that made me appear to be in the Partridge Family. One school bus ride and twenty ass-whippings later convinced me that I would slip back into the jeans and t-shirts that made me a little less of an identifiable target.

Anyway, you put the computers and the clothes together and I would imagine it’s a hefty little amount just to get your kid to class in some functioning form. Once the children are at school, I’m sure the price of lunch has gone up at least a little bit from last year; maybe more than a little bit. Added to this is the disappointment for the child that it’s probably one of those ass tasting healthy lunches everyone is insisting on these days. If I were a kid now, I’d be begging for some home schooling, not because I’m a mama’s boy, just because it seems far better than the alternative for everyone involved.

I’m sure the school would probably welcome having a few less kids to transport back and forth every damned day. Running a school bus now has got to be a fortune, even compared to this time last year. I’m no automotive engineer, but I would hazard a guess that most of those behemoth yellow monsters rolling down the road aren’t all that user friendly when it comes to fuel usage. It might be cheaper in the long run if they just used the fuel budget and bought all of the kids a nice bicycle to ride to school and wished them the best. It would suck for the ones who live way out in the country, but speaking from experience, an hour and a half bike ride is still preferable to a half hour ass-beating, no matter what the weather.

It’s gotta be tough either way. When I was a kid, a wedgie or a black eye was about as rough as it got. Yeah, those sucked, but I still don’t remember anyone bringing weapons to school, which I would imagine would suck far more. Back then, general molestation was left to family members, but now it could be your teacher. It’s nice to get a good grade and all, but there’s gotta be a limit. Where I came from, everyone was pretty much in the same socioeconomic group so we all fit in, or out, roughly the same. Really rich and really poor in the same room has to make someone feel pretty inadequate. I’m assuming that would be the poor kids.

All in all, it’s a lot of stuff to worry about when it comes to going back to school. I’m sure there are plenty of kids and parents who are worried about all kinds of things. Are the clothes right, is the classroom actually safe, is the computer good enough, will they make the right friends, will there even be enough money to get them to school in the first place. There’s also that pesky problem of actually learning some stuff once the classes actually begin. It might be easier to just be stupid.