Do students still need to make paper book covers for their books at school?* It was always a September ritual. The rich kids got to have those ones that were glossy on one side, with designs on them. The rest of us - nearly everyone at my elementary school for grades 1-6 - had to make them out of paper bags. When my mother remarried we became rich enough to afford the glossy ones! Which was good, because now I was at a rich school - just east and slightly north of the border streets for our district - where everyone had glossy covers with designs. And probably, would notice if you didn't and comment on it.
I had poor fine-motor coordination (a sometimes Asperger's trait, I have learned), so something as simple as book covers still didn't come out right and looked terrible. This extended to the bad decorations as well and it was predictable that the girls had much more attractive covers and the (always female) teachers would praise them for how nice they looked. It was one more subtle message that you were starting one down again this year because you were male. Penmanship and coloring in Argentina and its export products would show up in the daily work schedule as well. I likely felt it too strongly, as they very probably did value reading and arithmetic more, and I was fine at those.
I was not conscious of it as a general prejudice, but only see it in retrospect. At the time, book covers were just one more thing the teacher thought I did poorly - and she was right - and signaled that she felt was important (like penmanship and coloring Argentina). I'm not sure it was entirely a bad thing that I developed an attitude of always having to catch up and find something to excel at as compensation. Perhaps children who are given credit for less-important skills that come easy to them don't have quite the edge that the rest of us, the poor kids trying to make good, the clumsy, the children of divorce or bad parents who were seen as unlikely to amount to much, the shy or unfashionable, had to develop. Maybe it is better to learn young that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
* I am told they do not.
3 comments:
I remember covers but recall they were supplied, at least for some of my years in secondary school, by the school, though maybe our parents paid but didn't get a choice. Glossy paper in school colors (red and black) with a big Indian in a full feather headdress since that was our mascot. It was fashionable in the upper grades to fold them white side out for personalization. Interestingly your description of brown paper covers resonates as well but I'm not sure if the school switched to the economy versions or if I'm confusing that with people reversing the shiny covers.
The kids don’t have books anymore. I don’t think my son ever had a textbook, not in the full cycle of primary-secondary school.
I recall those too. The teachers insisted, but beyond that didn't seem to care about how they looked. Mom showed us how to make them from paper bags--and helped when I didn't get the dimensions cut quite right. A few years later, the school supplied template paper (it may have been glossy here and there), and after that they didn't bother any more.
I suppose it had to do with trying to preserve the books as long as they could. After a while the schools seemed to have newer books--not so many names in the sign-out stamp in the back of the book. If you have to buy new every few years, I suppose you don't have to encourage students to protect them/feel ownership in them quite so much.
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