School Days: Important Grades?
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| Cranston School Department, Cranston, RI. Report Card Collection of the author, privately held. 2018 |
Primary school curriculum certainly has changed over the years. I'm not going to show you anymore report cards as they became less standardized as the grade level got higher. I remember my third grade teacher best because she was horrified at my sub-standard handwriting despite the final grade of A for second grade. In third grade cursive writing was begun and we actually used pens that dipped in the inkwells for several months until the school bought BIC stick pens.
My husband, a lifetime "leftie" and older than I am says he didn't use a pen and an inkwell at all.
Apparently we learned reading, language and writing ONLY in the first two grades. I know we had to write the numerals 0-9 but arithmetic and spelling were only taught at second grade and not starting with the beginning of the school year. The real work started at third grade.
Sputnik was launched and changed the elementary school curriculum. Teachers, untrained in science, had to start teaching it. That was not popular with lower grade teachers.
Not only did we use pen and inkwells, I even had to take a turn filling the inkwell. It involved a long necked watering can for pouring the ink into the wells, but I also had to wear a rubber apron that covered m down to the floor and rubber gloves so the ink wouldn't staain my clothes if I dropped the can!
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