Back in the day, when school started after Labor Day, began at 8:30 a.m. and let out at 2:45 p.m., there was a buzz word that is seldom heard nowadays. I wonder whatever happened to the word "PRIDE" in one's school?
I remember soon after stepping foot on the campus of Woodlawn High School (back in the day), the upper-classmen telling us to develop some pride in our school. They drove and drove those words into our sophomore heads, and one day they became part of our lifestyles and our own vocabulary. Within a year, we even got to tell the new sophomores to develop some pride in our school.
I guess we can blame it on starting schools the first week of August, or that extra hour they added to the school day, but the lack of school pride is so evident today. Students today would just as soon walk by a piece of trash than to bend over and pick it up. Whatever happened to school pride?
Locker bays are littered with empty water and soda bottles, empty bags of chips, wads of paper, and an occasional PB&J with one bite taken out of it. To where did school pride disappear?
Styrofoam plates with food still in them are left on tables in the dining hall, ketchup packets are stomped upon and left to be trampled by unsuspecting others, and litter from the restaurant bags mamas bring to little spoiled children who don't want to eat what the cafeteria workers serve lie ripped open and deserted 15 minutes past the noon hour every Monday through Friday. All this left there for someone else to pick up. Is there no pride?
Broken chairs are stacked against the walls by teachers who spent their time collecting them after students rocked back and leaned in the long enough for them to snap and bend beyond use. "Broken, please fix" the labels read on the damaged furniture leaning against the hallway walls. Where's the pride?
Somewhere along the way, pride has all but vanished from schools today, and that's so sad. Pride in one's school used to be the spark that initiated a positive reputation which would later develop into the very character of a school. What's really wrong with schools today? The lack of pride may just be the answer to that question.
