Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for August 20, 2018

Back to school! The day (most) kids dread and most parents celebrate like Christmas morning (or whatever holidays one celebrates).

I always considered the Wednesday after Labor Day to be an obscenity. 12 years in the totally rotten Chicago Public Prison System!

Back to another 9.5 months of students being told to focus more on lessons and less on Fortnite and Snapchat.

I’ll bet the teachers dread it more.

Here in Central Florida, school started last week. Perfect time; height of hurricane season, unseasonably strong rain, and some of the hottest days of the year. Kids are either frying at the bus stops or drowning…

August is more than halfway through, so I’d expect it by now. Heck, I saw B-T-S stuff put out at my local Walmart the day after the 4th of July!

A gentle reminder to Danae to start plotting.

My favorite big-box store on tv was “King of the Hill’s” Mega-Lo Mart.

Danae should reach out to Ms. DeVos

Here in Kerala, India, we follow the British-established school year and classes (putatively) started in June! If you look at the news from our part of the world nowadays, you’ll see how that’s working out this year!

Danae is not alone in that. Plenty of professionals are asking themselves: Am I ready for this?

Hated school so much. Prefer work to school and that is no great shakes either.

I was in Big Lots yesterday – Happy Halloween. I can’t wait until Labor Day and the start of the Christmas season.

My nine-year-old grandson would agree with Danae. His first day of school is this coming Wednesday.

Summer is coming to a close, ending not with a bang but with a whimper (adapted from T.S Elliot).

Offended by what’s on T.V.? Turn it off!

I’ve seen back to school ads/commercial start up around 4th of July. Christmas ads/commercials start around Labor Day. If followed to the illogical extreme, I see the ad creep going back earlier and earlier until ads appear around Christmas again but for NEXT Christmas – a whole year in advance.

What we really need is year-round school with 4 2-week breaks mixed in. Same amount of time off total, but you don’t forget as much while you’re away.

The happiest summer of my life occurred when I took a year’s worth of high school chemistry in eight weeks of summer school. Reasons: 1. Smart girls go to summer school. 2. Reason 1 eliminates the need for any other reasons.

I’m always amused by the school timing in the Yankee strips. School’s already underway in SC and my kid starts back next week in NC. I haven’t seen a school that started after Labor Day since 1983.

My grandkids’ school year started in May and goes through Feb.

I do feel sorry for the little ones who live with us. Their school day starts at 7am ! Of course that means that Mom & Dad have to get up around 5:30am to get them up, fed, and launched. Their Abuela and me surface about the time they’re heading out the door with Dad.

The good thing ( from the kid’s point of view ) is that they finished at 1pm, and are home for lunch.

The oldest of my grandkids here, is in junior high school and goes to school from 1pm in the afternoon until 7pm at night !

I loved school until high school, when kids started to really believe what they wore and had made them better than others. I found it often made them jerks and less likeable. Sadly, from what I see, this happens at increasingly younger ages with the advent of social media.

Over all, though I still liked learning and most classes. Am glad that back then, aside from research papers and such, the teachers believed that the teaching belonged far more in the classroom than at home. In that, I didn’t have to carry as many heavy books and stuff home as kids do today. :)

When I was in school we lived in a prune orchard. The rural community we lived in was all prunes and walnuts. They got harvested in early September and October respectively. Our school year did not start until the end of September as a help to farmer’s who needed schoolkids to pick prunes, and those of us who also picked walnuts did so after school and on the weekends. Our school year ended in early June. Seemed to work out pretty well back then. It changed in the late 60s when more and more immigrant labor started being used for these tasks.

I am not looking forward to schools going back as it means far more traffic on the roads

School should start the first FULL week after Labor Day and end on June 6th every year. Keep the same hours required by law, and adjust the minutes of the school day to accommodate them….Students and teachers should be separated for a while. It helps in the long run…..

I agree with everything (God help us!) that Danae says. I’m nearly 72 and the dreaded “Back to School” mantra still sends shivers down my spine. It seems that no sooner do the holidays start than the stores are screaming ‘back to school’ bargains. It happened then, and it’s still happening.

That’s why after the 4th of July winter clothing is in stores

Schools are good things. Public schools are a hit and miss because we have no Federal School System. I may not have liked math, but I didn’t dread school. About the only time to be among my peers.

“Philosophy” literally means ‘love of learning’. Learning is something that should be loved. Why doesn’t this Hegelian system encourage learning?