It’s that time of year again where people get angry about having to buy five boxes of tissues and six glue sticks and twenty pencils for their kids for back to school supplies, especially for the younger kids in elementary school.
I want to say this for those of you who clearly didn’t learn about sharing in kindergarden, and didn’t pay attention to the tax section in economics and government in high school:
Your child will not use all of their glue. Your child will not use every tissue. These supplies go into a classroom to be used by ALL students when they are needed. And when a family cannot afford to buy school supplies, your contribution to a communal pool of resources go to help provide for their child. Buying a 20 pack of pencils is why a teacher can give a student a pencil when theirs breaks or they lose it on the playground.
“But Garrett, why should I pay for someone else’s kid?”
Because they’re kids? Are you seriously going to tell me that you don’t think every kid deserves to have the best chance at succeeding in school just because their parents are poor, or hell, even cheap and lazy? Because if that’s your opinion, I have news for you: you’re a bad person.
“But Garrett, the school should buy those supplies for the students anyway, I shouldn’t have to subsidize schools like that”
I absolutely agree. But you know what that means? It means you’d have to get involved in politics and lobby for changes in your school district. It means you have to petition that a certain amount of money goes to classroom supplies every year. And it might even mean that you need to have your taxes raised.
gasp! “But I already pay taxes for the school?!”
Yeah. So do I. But if the money is not being managed well, or if there isn’t enough money, and you refuse to get involved to do the work to petition, then the next best option is communal school supplies that parents provide out of the kindness of their hearts and out of a shared interest in the education of a future generation.
I spent more time in classrooms than most (because my mother was a teacher) and every year there would be kids who needed supplies that she was able to offer because of a surplus from other kids or from previous years. Or because she went out of her way and bought the extra supplies herself out of her own pocket because that’s what a good teacher does.
If you really cannot stand the idea of your child sharing school supplies because you’re stingy, or you feel that parents should do more, or you believe they’re lazy, then I suggest you move your kid to a private school where the expectations are radically different from public schools.
If you have the money to buy a costco sized box of Kleenex, then do it. Not because you have to, but because you recognize that kids get runny noses and lose their pencils and break their notebooks. Do it because you recognize that no student should miss out on participating in school simply because their parents didn’t or couldn’t step up the way you did.
It takes a village, people. This is part of it.