Electives? Specials? Whatever

It’s always fun to compare my daughter Emma’s experience in high school today with  mine fifty years ago.  She is a sophomore at Parkland and fifty years ago I was a junior at Slatington.  Here is a huge difference. Today they call them specials and I think we called them electives. I am talking about the classes you take more for fun or in the school’s eyes to make you a more well rounded individual. These are the classes that if you don’t get a good grade, you can still get into college.

At Parkland, today, you get a literal catalogue of classes you can take. They may range from Parenting to Female Writers or from Web Design to Conversational Greek! There are literally well over a hundred choices. We pretty much had shop, home economics, art, and music. I would have mentioned physical education, but everyone had to take gym.  I was in College Prep, in high school, so I can’t remember having any electives. But, that was a long time ago.

In elementary school, we all had to take art and music. In junior high, they added shop for the boys and home ec for the girls. Yes, we were not very enlightened back then.  In junior high we still had to take art and music.   For those readers from Slatington, remember these four junior high specials teachers? Mr. Kester, Mr. Jones. Mrs. Evans. Uh oh. I am blanking on home ec in junior high.  Help me, classmates!

By the time we made it to high school, I guess the school figured that we had our lives all planned out. They divided us up by career focus. That was crazy! I’m 66 and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!

Some teacher names from high school. Mr. Trettel, Mrs. Rossi, Miss Dixie (yes, Dixie) Driscoll. Mr. Lesh. Mr. Scarseletti, and Mr. Jones again.

I think it is interesting, though, that these so-called electives truly were important. They taught us our strengths and weaknesses. I still draw stick figures for people. But I remember some students who excelled at drawing. Ruthann Klase comes to mind. If these classes didn’t exist, a student might miss out on a potential career, or at least a good avocation.  The students with excellent music skills (again, not me) were identified in these classes and hopefully encouraged to explore it further.

I am all for a well rounded education and I think I got one in my years of attending Slatington schools. But, I must admit, seeing that Parkland catalogue of specials makes me very envious.  On the plus side, how often are you going to use Conversational Greek anyway!?