A couple weeks ago, I was driving in my truck listening to the radio when a rather gleeful announcer came on with what almost sounded a little like a public service message. I am going to paraphrase it a bit.
“Well hello there boys and girls, moms and dads. Just in case you hadn’t noticed, summer is almost over. This means that it's back-to-school time and you can feel the excitement in the air. So, come on down to Wally’s World, the biggest box store north of sixty. We have a complete line of all your back to school supplies. So bring that list that your school provided, come on in and Buy Buy Buy! Also, don’t forget that we have a complete line of the newest, latest and greatest back-to-school clothes and treats for your lunch box. You can enter to win our back-to-school sweepstakes and win a cool prize; a free snow shovel. We got it, you want it, so let’s party and Buy Buy Buy!”
Personally, I think the announcer should be sued for cruel and unusual punishment. Two things that I hated hearing as a kid were that summer was almost over and that back-to-school time was nigh. Deepest sigh. The third thing was all the hype some people brought to an occasion, which I considered a tragedy. I literally had a flashback to my youth and I almost shouted at the radio, “But I don’t want to go back to school.”
Now, it's been a long long time since I was in school, but I can’t ever remember getting a list of supplies that my parents were required to buy. In grade school, all one needed were a couple of pencils and some paper, which the school provided. In high school, one had to have a few extra things like a three-ring binder and paper for it, but that was about it.
New clothes were optional. We got them at Christmas or on our birthdays and at other times, if you wanted something different you rooted around in the old hand-me-down box that most families had to see if you could find anything that sort of fit. To this day I don’t particularly like new clothes because they don’t feel or fit properly until they've been worn in. It’s not that my parents were poor or destitute, but they had gone through the depression and their motto was “waste not, want not.”
In the NWT, elementary and high school tuition is free but if a parent or a student has to buy a whole bunch of stuff in order to go to school, then that is not free. The school boards could get better prices on these things by buying in bulk. Somehow the politicians, bureaucrats, schools and school boards are hoodwinking people with this and personally I think it should stop.
Remember these are the same folks that gerrymander your water, power, fuel, food and garbage bills, and your hotel costs and airline tickets with all sorts of surcharges, taxes and hidden fees. Free is free and the price for something, should be the price, all inclusive. So, let’s bring back a free education for kids and let’s do away with all these extra costs, which personally I think should be illegal.
I know some people will think I am joking about this, but I am not. We are supposed to have a universal education system where every child gets a free education until they turn 16. That means that parents shouldn’t have to fork out a penny for their child to get that education. We shouldn’t allow this to be happening. We will be having a city election this fall, a territorial and a federal election in a year or so and people should ask all those running, “What the heck happened to our education system? It is supposed to be universal and it is supposed to be free.”
Also, I think that every child in the NWT should get out to do a little berry picking as part of their fall curriculum. Then they can learn how to make berry sauce, jelly, chutney, jam, preserves and pie in mandatory cooking classes. Now that would be an education.