It seems that it was a century, or several years ago, when I sat in those metal and wood desks full of marks that many others like me had left over the years. I remember very few names of that time, both teachers and students, then do not say that discriminate. But what I do remember is a whole set of rules that had to be followed strictly, without questioning, regardless of the good or evil they brought to that society at that time, it was something for the social good they said and you obeyed or at least You did most of the time.
Today I come to talk about everything what they taught me at school that I didn't need and my son won't need, I hope so at least.
Wear the shirt inside the pants
For someone who went to school in the 70's and lived the movement of the 80's from the provinces, it was a disappointment to see that effort of the priests because one dressed according to the designs written in a book worthy of the shelves of a gentlemen's club Londoners, at least, all went to the badge and suddenly we began to dress with shirts three sizes larger with the skirts on the outside, jackets with shoulder pads, half a liter of foam in the hair and a total disrespect for those rules in the how much effort they put.
It is today that I am still very funny about all these social norms of how one should dress and especially what is no longer worn or will be worn, that you know as fashion. And above all, I keep wondering What is the point of wearing the shirt tucked inside the pants?
Do not leave the line when drawing
According to some, it helps fine motor skills and self control, according to others, is the best way to end future masters of painting. In the end, you not only had to color without leaving but you also should not notice the strokes.
Memorize, memorize, memorize
I recognize that what is called general culture is something that is not left over, it never hurts to know that the river that passes through Zaragoza is the Ebro and that Lithuania is not a Galician region. But everything has a limit and knowing the memory data without knowing the relationship between them or what we can use them for in the future does not help us to be interested in certain signatures. In the end, life consists in knowing how to use data at a given time, in applying an optimal solution to a problem that is often not written in books. This is not an ode to ignorance, but quite the opposite, a need to know the reason for things and that "because I say so" is no dogma.
Chewing gum or eating candy in class is prohibited
Let's see, I do not say that it is not acceptable to eat a sausage sandwich in class, although I once did, but the gum and candy. I recognize that there are those who eat chewing gum in the face of the world and it seems that it is imperative that their grandmother find out what she has in her mouth, but that is simply lack of table manners and can be learned. A chewing gum relaxes and helps to cope with certain school situations.
The haircut on boys "as a boy"
If there is something I have never liked are hairdressers, it is a hobby of mine. I feel sorry for the hairdressers but I don't like being touched by my hair, much less pulling me, and of course, having curly hair like me (when I had it) the day I had to cut my hair was hell. That's why it always seemed absurd for me that children had to wear short hair. Why? That a girl can not wear pants seems sexist, but that a boy has to wear short hair and we do not care. Well, ladies and gentlemen, it is one more macho rule, apart from a useless expense.
Use a rule to underline
Here also the fight was united between those who considered that drawing in a book was little more than sacrilege to those who even told you what it was that you had to color. I have to say that most of my nursery teachers belonged to the first group and just let us underline in the notebooks. And yes, the notes were very cute, very symmetrical but was it useful for something other than that your little brother could not use them? Before leaving someone to mark a text it would be better to teach him to keep the most important and that should be marked, because I ended up with the yellow page (much faster than walking thinking about what was important or not).
White paint
Can anyone tell me what the white paint on the box is for? Because even in liquid paints it makes some sense, but in stick ones, there it is to fill a hole or for bookstores to sell black cardstock. It wasn't until a few years later that I didn't see the utility and it was called "tipex". Today, when one of my children asks me what white carioca is for, I become Swedish.
Mustaches
That's what we called that kind of compass whose legs ended in a point and that always came with the play of bars. You went to class all happy with your new game and you spent the year waiting to be able to get that fat and short compass from the case, something that was never going to happen, a disappointment. Years later, we would use them and notice how shocking it was that I don't even remember what it was used for.
