About General Knowledge

When I was working with students, I often tended to hear their questions or incorrect answer to various questions. That was no surprise – the kids were learning, gaining their knowledge and had a lot to process.

These days , meeting with various people (who are mature, often with college degrees, who have traveled to many places in the world, and, in many cases, held important position at their work places), I am repeatedly stunned with “thunders” our interlocutors throw from time to time. 

Here are some examples: 

- The word "Colombian" relates to a coffee brand (no clue that Colombia is a country?).
- There is no such city in Mississippi as Greenville – from a person who originates in that state and lived in Mississippi for many decades (well, I checked, Greenville is the county seat of Washington County, MS) .
- Yuma? – from a person who has lived in Arizona for some years and still lives there – they did not know what we were talking about – they had never heard of Yuma, AZ.
- A song in English which lyrics mention “Zulu” and “Africa” is a Polish song and relates to Polish traditions – according to a native American-English speaker.
- Chianti? Is it a dance? (no, it is a type of wine)
- “I did not know you have corn in Poland.” (???)

I am aware that no human is all-knowing and I am no different in that matter. No judgment here – I do not write about it to criticize anybody, simply do not know what to think about such peculiarities considering those persons experiences and education.

Talking about general knowledge - I am aware I have forgotten a lot of information we were expected to memorize when I was going to school. In the school system I have experienced, all the school subjects were mandatory – there were no optional ones. Most of them were purely theoretical. Even at Chemistry classes it was all about learning by heart, no practical experiments at all. Although I did not complain about that then, the level of knowledge expected to be digested by us, students, was often beyond general. Since I was not going to become a chemist, I did not have the heart to fill my mind with all the atomic numbers of each end every chemical element  (which was required by our Chemistry teacher). I remembered only a few, the most useful ones regarding solving chemical equations. 

I must admit that my approach brought me some difficulties during written tests - when we were to solve given chemical problems and were not allowed to use any reference resources beside our brains. Anyhow, nowadays, of all the atomic numbers, I can only recall 1 - the atomic number of Hydrogen.

Another example - in Physics, we needed to memorize not only the SI units terminology. The older system of units was preferred by our teacher. Why? Nobody knew. The lady just liked it better.

Within the years, a lot of what I was taught/learned has faded away. Not everything, though. Occasionally, I exercise my gray cells trying to remind myself this and that. An example here are the names of the countries and their capital cities which we also had to memorize when we studied a particular continent. Then, we were expected to recite the names and show those countries and cities on the map. I did not like that part - any hesitation was disapproved by the teacher. Besides that, during tests, we were given a diagram of the continent we currently studied and was told to complete it with the names – countries and capital cities again. 

As I said before, the knowledge that has not been used fades away. However, it does not disappear completely. When I look up the names of capitals cities I cannot recall, they seem obvious and come back again.

Every day, no matter how old we are, learning opportunities come to us. Whether we are or we are not open to them is a totally different matter.

About Sports

When I once mentioned I used to play handball, people who I talked to had no clue what game I was talking about. They tended to associate the game with throwing a ball against a wall.

Well, the handball I used to play in high school was a team sport/game. We also played volleyball, but I preferred handball.

 

Elementary school level - we played basketball and sometimes rugby. The latter was awful, though. No, that game was not our choice. Our teacher must have liked rugby, so he made us play the game a few times.

What games/sports did you do at school?

In the Hill Country, TX

P for Primary School

The end of school and graduation season makes me think about the state school system I have gone through.

In Poland, at least at my school time, the end of the school year/ graduation was not a big deal. Adults worked, kids studied and everybody was expected to do their part well. No end-of-school parties, or big graduation ceremonies. You just brought your school certificate/diploma home, and your parents were pleased if the final results were good, but nobody made a fuss about that. The school year simply ended and kids were happy. That was all.

My kindergarten graduation day

The exception was the high school prom, I will write about that another time, though. This time I am going to focus on the primary school level.

I need to explain the difference in the meaning of the word "class" regarding the school system. Here in the US, a class = all the students of the same year. In Poland, a class is a formally assigned group of students of the same age/born in the same year. In my school time, it was about 30/33 kids in class. Later, the number was lowered to about 23. Anyhow, the students of the same class/group do the mandatory curriculum subjects together throughout all the years at a particular school. There are many classes/groups of students at each level/year. They are labeled with a number (=school year) and a letter (=group name), eg. class 1A = group A/grade 1.

In the US, each town/city has its independent school district. In Poland, there is one Department of Education (the equivalent of a school district) in each voivodeship (region/the equivalent of a US state). The departments in the country follow the regulations set by the Ministry of Education.

The law defines that for students aged 7 to 18, studying at school is mandatory. They cannot leave school/drop out before the age of 18. If they do quit their schooling, parents are fined then.

The school year starts on 1 September. Two months of summer holidays time finish then. School gala dress worn by kids on the first/last day of school and on school holidays is/was a white shirt and dark (black or navy blue) skirts/ trousers.

The annual photo day - grade 6. At that time, each class in our school had an emblem (a badge sewn on the white shirt). In our case, the emblem (a boat) was sea related. On a regular school day, as all the school kids at that time, we wore blue school uniforms that parents bought at clothes stores. The lady in the photo was our "home teacher" (sea below), she also taught us Arts.

Grade O (preschool) - kids at the age of 6 - organized at schools and kindergartens. This grade is optional, most children attend it, though.

Grade 1-3
The same teacher teaches one group of children for three years. When I worked at the early primary education level, I taught kids all the subjects including Maths, Polish (reading and writing), Environment (elements of Botany, Biology, and Geography), Music (singing, musical notation, and playing percussion instruments), Crafts, Arts, and PE.
These days, from the first year at school, the little ones are also taught a foreign language, usually English.

Grade 4
Transitional year. Subject teachers take over. The norm is that the same teacher works with a group of students till grade 8 - the end of the school.
Maths (including Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry) are taught by the same Math teacher,
Polish (all language areas, reading, writing, grammar, and literature) is taught by one teacher also. Other subjects we had were Biology, Geography, History, Arts, Crafts, and PE. One of the teachers who works with a particular class/group is also their "home teacher" who controls attendance and stays in touch with kids' parents.

Grade 5
More subjects were added: Physics, Chemistry, and Russian. Nowadays, Russian is not part of the mandatory curriculum. Instead of that another Western European language is added.

Grade 8
We had one more subject - Citizenship Education (something like Civics). Among others, we learned a lot about the history of our city.

The modern curriculum is a bit different, there is also IT, of course. As I mentioned before, all the curriculum subjects are mandatory. When I was a student, we had to get positive grades in all of them to pass. It is different now. Whoever failed, repeated a year. However, there is/was no summer school. Nowadays, the ones who fail, in order to pass/get to the next grade, do an extra exam at the beginning of the next school year.

Another difference - there is no recess of the type it is in American schools. Instead of that, there are 5, 10, minute breaks between the classes/lessons. Usually, there is also one 20-minute break during which lunch is served in the school canteen. Kids whose parents decided to pay for the meal, have it in the canteen. The weekly menu is prepared by a school dietitian. The meal is usually the same for all kids and consists of a bowl of soup, a main course, a fruit drink (based on cooked fruits) + a dessert (yogurt or fresh fruit). Other kids bring their lunch from home and have them in the school halls.
When I was a student, there were no vending machines at schools and no cafeteria. I did not like the school meal so I always had my sandwiches/lunch prepared by my mom We had no lunch boxes, though.

School photo day - grade 8

Music classes include singing, learning about the history of music (listening to various music pieces), and basics regarding musical notation. No bands and no instruments playing in regular schools. If one wants to play the violin, for example, they go to a local state music school and have to pass an entry exam to study there. Schools of that type have classes in the afternoons two or three times a week.

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When I was a primary school student, all the learning was theoretical. In Chemistry and Physics classes we only observed science-related experiments done by the subject teacher. We had no labs, and no frogs cutting in Biology classes either.

There have always been Clubs (such as Sports or Choir) = optional classes that take place after school hours.

Oh, and one more thing. In Poland, there was/is no such thing as school detention time.
No school buses at least in city schools, either. Going on a field trip - a school rents a coach/paid by parents, using public transportation is also common.
No showers in older schools - you washed yourself at home.
No school mascots and no school sports gear that you get at school. The dark shorts and white T-shirts which we wore in PE classes were bought by parents in regular stores. Sometimes there was a problem with the white shirts, I do not know why they were not always available.

Instead of the yearbooks, there was an annual photo day. Class/group photos were taken then.
We had no school auditorium either. All gatherings were held at the gym.

Well, we did not have some things, but we did have fun and the quality of the school education was really good.

Any questions regarding the primary school level?

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This post is part of "My Polish Alphabet" which is about people, places, and things that come to my mind when I think about Poland.

Cherry Spring Country School

Not long ago, on 11 September, we visited the old Cherry Spring School, which was built in 1885. The school pavilion was constructed much later, in 1935. The latter was used for school performances/gatherings and classes were run there as well.

 

Visiting an old classroom makes us think about all those students and teachers who learned and worked there. Unfortunately, most often the teachers are not remembered and their names are gone with the wind. I have tried to find the names of the educators who worked at Cherry Spring. Well, at some point Miss Cora Petmecky taught there.

Once a teacher, always a teacher - a blessing or a curse?

 

 

The curtain (made of canvas) was purchased in the 1950s.

 

Best student in class

I know, teachers should like all the students equally. I did try to follow that rule in the past. These days, that best student is my favorite one. Rules do not apply here. 😊

Mom's WW2 Stories: School

When the war started and Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany, the ability of speaking and understanding German became vital. My grandma was a fluent German speaker and she decided to teach the language to her little daughters. Her teaching method was simple - she spoke to the girls in German only. Every day, day by day. At the beginning, mom (a few year old baby girl then) and her two years older sister cried because they did not know what their mother was saying. Therefore, they often asked grandma, with tears in their little eyes, to tell them in Polish what she meant. Although the method may seem a bit drastic, it appeared to be very effective - after three months of such active learning, both girls could easily communicate in German. Then, grandma Irena started talking to her daughters in their native language again.

When mom "became of age" and the very first day of her school education came, she was more than ready considering the German language. It was important as Polish was forbidden - the classes were run by German teachers in German only. Since she could also read and count (the early primary school mathematics level of course), after a short time of her career in the first grade, mom was moved the third one and attended classes together with her older sister.

Frau K., their teacher, seemed not to be keen on the Polish kids and she made them see and feel (literally) it. An example? One morning mom was walking along the corridor toward the classroom, at the same time, a German boy of the same third-year group passed her by. He was running. The teacher saw him ran but when he ran into the classroom, she said nothing even though running in the school building was forbidden. When mom reached the room, Miss K. yelled at her: "Running is not allowed!" and hit her with a stick. It did not help that mom cried and tried to explain: "I did not run Miss. It was Georg.*", she got her beating anyway.

Despite all the years which have passed (mom is eighty-two now), she can still remember what she learned during her first year at school. One of the songs which she very much enjoyed was  Jetzt fahrn wir übern See, übern See. I have found a modern video version of it on YouTube (the teacher and the kids in the video are not related to mom's story in any way).


The song is about sailing across the see without paddles, birds which sang and hunters who blew their horns. The trick during singing is that you are not supposed to sing a certain word. Mom recalls that when they sang the song at the class, whoever happened to make a mistake, forgotten to be silent at the right time, had to stand up.

Another song which she learned at school was Es regnet, es regnet, die Erde wird nass!


This one is obviously about the rain but the children are pleased because they are sitting in a dry place and they will not get wet.

Except singing, there was also reading and Das Büblein auf dem Eise. The poem, written by 19th-century German poet Friedrich Wilhelm Güll, tells a story about a little boy who is eager to check whether the fresh ice on a pond is thick enough to play on it. The poem is quite long and mom can still recite the beginning of it.

All in all, mother's wartime school education adventure did not last long. One day, when mom and her sister came to school, Miss K. greeted the pupils with a "Heil Hitler!", as usual. Then, the Polish children were given homework and told to go back home. It all repeated on the next day. The teacher did not check whether the previous homework had been done, just set another one and, again, "go home" for the Polish pupils. Soon, when they came to school they were not allowed to enter the building at all. The classes were for German kids only.

In the picture mom - ready to go to school on her very first school day (September 1942). The flowers were for her teacher. Mom was wearing a green velvet skirt made by grandma. The white (colored striped) shirt had green buttons with pictures of little colored toadstools on them.

Can you remember anything from your first year in primary school, what you learned then? Well, I cannot. Maybe there was nothing unusual about it or I did not really enjoy it. Who knows.

* The name has been changed 

More Mom's WW2 Stories

• Red Box
• Gustloff and Narrow Escape
• Wilie 
• Air Rides, Bicycle and Dugouts
• Hilda, Song and Gestapo Man 
• Grandma Arrested
• Cemetery & Clogs