school supplies!

Yes I understand that there are differences. That doesn't excuse not
asking the necessary questions so that you understand what all the
numbers mean. It is a big purchase and involves a lot of money. It
isn't at all similar to not knowing that you need 24 Crayola crayons.

You're assuming far too much, it's not a case of not being able to ask
questions and failing to ask them when you should have, but either
thinking you understand and it turning out later that you didn't (which
must happen to anyone, it just happens more often for me right now), or
knowing you don't understand, but not even knowing what you don't
understand, not being able to formulate questions, or asking them,
thinking you understand the answer, but it turning out you don't, or
sometimes not even being able to make the person you are understanding
what it is that you are asking. Which makes the whole situation a lot
more complicated than saying you just need to ask and make sure you
understand.

You also have the pressure of being expected to understand, it isn't
always acceptable for adults to ask "silly" questions - and it can be
very trivial things, like asking for water in a fast food restaurant, we
kept being given empty cups and didn't know what to do with them, as
we'd never seen the water button on the drink dispenser, I think we
spotted that one pretty quickly, but equally, you wouldn't ask in a busy
restaurant at lunch time when there are other people anxious to get served.

And with crayons, of course if I know that I will have to buy school
supplies and I am given a list, then I can read it and know I need to
buy crayons - but if it says crayola then it's reasonable to not
interpret that as crayola, do you interpret "scotch tape" as it having
to be scotch brand? probably not. But if you don't know you need to buy
school supplies so you don't know to look out for a list, or ask if you
don't get it, then you are rather at a disdvantage. Depending on how a
list is written there might be no distinction between having at least a
certain amount of something, or exactly a certain amount - easy to
express, but might not be culturally necessary.

This isn't even a case of two cultures being divided by a common
language. The math(s) are the same regardless.

Really? High level maths is almost the same, but there are somethings
that are a matter of convention that can make something look very
different and not be trivial to determine. But just as there are
differences between "new math" and "old math", there are difference
between maths as it has been taught in other countries over the years
and maths in the US. The fundamental truths are the same, two plus two
is always four, but there are a lot of ways of writing that, I think
most people are taught it as 2+2=4, but + 2 2 is another way, called
Polish notation, but in this instance it's because it was invented by a
pole, not because it's been used in polish schools - but there are many
real examples on slightly more complex things and that's just talking
about notation, not method.

I had to do a test with DS, there was one question that I read as
involving translating roman numerals to decimal - though obviously it
wasn't and the fact the question was for a kindergartner excluded that,
but had you put it in front of me at not that much older than DS is now,
I'd have read it completely differently. I don't know whether you learn
roman numerals in the US, so I have no idea if it was a badly phrased
question or coincidence that the letters used happened to be ones used
in Roman numerals.

Cheers
Anne

Anne Rogers wrote:

You also have the pressure of being expected to understand, it isn't
always acceptable for adults to ask "silly" questions - and it can be

I am too old to be bothered by people thinking that I am asking silly
questions. And have been for a long time. I am every teacher's
nightmare.

A different type of mortgage? Or do you mean that if you put down at
least 20% you don't have to pay private mortgage insurance (PMI)? If
nobody told you about the PMI, that's truly astounding.

exactly! and it's not because we didn't ask the questions, we asked all
sorts of things like "is there a minimum amount you can put down?" (in
the UK at the time you could get 100% mortgage, you might have been able
to here, but I doubt we'd have qualified), we got no answer, as the
answer was so vague and was always rephrased as a question "how much can
you put down". We asked "can you pay extra to put less down", which I
guess is where the private mortgage insurance answer might have come up,
I do have a recollection that something like this was mentioned, but not
with a distinct threshold and again being from overseas, with no US
credit history it might not have been available to us (which is in part
what turned out to be the problem I think). An we asked a question about
what the threshold was phrased so many different ways to multiple
people, we explained the 10% threshold in the UK and were told, oh know,
we have nothing like that here - when fundamentally the 20% is the same
as the 10% in the UK, you have to get extra insurance, but it's called
something different (indemnety insurance I think). We were basically led
to believe that we could put down anything we wanted to and the amount
we could borrow might change slightly but not significantly and when we
were given a number for the amount we were preapproved for it didn't
come with any statement that you can borrow x amount, as long as you
contribute y.

Thankfully we chose a house that was cheaper than the max amount as it
turned out we couldn't get any loan where we provided less than 20%,
other than by getting an FHA loan, so it really was fundamental
information, so it was very frustrating to have asked multiple people
several times and have been so badly misled as we might have made very
different decisions. The cost of homes is high in this area and we had
quite specific needs - I think we would still have moved here, but we'd
have either sold our house in the UK, or rented initially as it was we
spent time house hunting, found something, paid a significant upfront
amount that would have been lost had the whole thing fell apart and
ending up having to empty our UK bank accounts to the overdraft amount
to make up the difference - ironically we were allowed to do this,
despite it being a much greater financial risk than them letting us
borrow just 10,000 or even 5000 dollars more.

Even after all that kerfuffle, suddenly the day before closing they said
I couldn't be named as owning the house as I don't have a social
security number - something they'd known all along, they knew full well
that I would never have one and the date that DH would get one. It was
silly too as if we were going to split hairs over where the cash came
from it was me, so I was putting up a large amount of cash and DH was
getting a very large loan, yet he got to own the house, not me. They did
agree that we could transfer ownership and they wouldn't call in the
loan, so we wrote and got witnessed a will on the spot and the legal
people went to court to do the transfer of ownership the same day as the
sale went through.

I suppose you could say we should have noticed sooner that we weren't
being handled well, but it comes back to the not knowing you don't know
and everything was going fine until about 2 weeks before completion was
due and as soon as things went wrong then we knew that there was at the
minimum incompetence and at worst deliberate misleading. It's not as if
we didn't talk to multiple realtors and mortgage brokers either. All in
all a very stressful experience and if they managed to much up on all
that it's hardly surprising other things weren't communicated.

Cheers
Anne

In article , Anne Rogers says...


A different type of mortgage? Or do you mean that if you put down at
least 20% you don't have to pay private mortgage insurance (PMI)? If
nobody told you about the PMI, that's truly astounding.

exactly! and it's not because we didn't ask the questions, we asked all
sorts of things like "is there a minimum amount you can put down?" (in
the UK at the time you could get 100% mortgage, you might have been able
to here, but I doubt we'd have qualified), we got no answer, as the
answer was so vague and was always rephrased as a question "how much can
you put down". We asked "can you pay extra to put less down", which I
guess is where the private mortgage insurance answer might have come up,
I do have a recollection that something like this was mentioned, but not
with a distinct threshold and again being from overseas, with no US
credit history it might not have been available to us (which is in part
what turned out to be the problem I think). An we asked a question about
what the threshold was phrased so many different ways to multiple
people, we explained the 10% threshold in the UK and were told, oh know,
we have nothing like that here - when fundamentally the 20% is the same
as the 10% in the UK, you have to get extra insurance, but it's called
something different (indemnety insurance I think). We were basically led
to believe that we could put down anything we wanted to and the amount
we could borrow might change slightly but not significantly and when we
were given a number for the amount we were preapproved for it didn't
come with any statement that you can borrow x amount, as long as you
contribute y.


You know the interest rate, if it's fixed or not, the term, and whether or not
you can prepay, I hope. Do you?

Banty

I do think it's possible that when something is widely known, everyone
assumes that everyone else knows it. So when Anne asks about a
different mortgage when she means saving on PMI, no one knows what type
of different mortgage she's talking about. No one would even think
she's asking about something so widely known, they must think she's
asking about something very obscure, especially if she's specifically
asking about a *different* mortgage. She's not even aware of what to
call this thing doesn't know exist. It's easy for me to see her
difficulty. I'm not sure why everyone is giving her a hard time.

You're spot on there - and I did know people were using different words,
which is why I tried explaining it in many different ways and asking
many different people. What is most frustrating though is that both the
people we used were recommended to us by DH's employer which is a large
company that brings a large amount of people into the country on H1B and
other visas, they employ a specialist relocation company to provide you
with help and we asked them as well and didn't get an answer.

When we arrived the relocation person basically abandoned us, she was
supposed to do things like take DH to get a social security number but
wouldn't say when she'd do this, it's not a difficult thing to do, but
it required DH to find out where the office was and work out how to get
there on public transport, so it took a lot more time as it was two
buses there and two buses back - all when he was trying to settle into a
new job and really needed to not waste that time. We eventually said to
someone that we'd not got any of the help we'd been told we'd get and
they gave us someone else, who happened to be Irish and had her husband
had relocated with another local company, so she knew exactly what we
needed to know, even though things aren't the same in Ireland as the UK,
but she came on board far too late to help with some things.

Obviously some people relocate with no help whatsoever and in someways
this might have been better, but I don't think we'd have had time to
find everything else out for ourselves and do everything ourselves, it
was bad enough doing everything we did have to do!

Cheers
Anne

I'm sorry, but this is absolutely absurd overkill. This isn't me
supplying my child with school supplies, this is me supplies at least
2-3 children with school supplies, under some socialist "not all
children can supply themselves, so the other parents must do it"
mentality. Also, I can...sort of...live with her confiscating glue
sticks and crayons and sharing those out as needed. But scissors? and
folders? We labeled her scissors and folders anyway, and her teacher
reportedly said "Oh, you're not allowed to share your scissors?" because
I sent a note saying I labeled on -durable- supplies, but disposable
ones she was free to share. Even my in-law's, who teach school, and my
friend who teaches preschool and her husband who is a teacher was
totally blown away by the absurdity of that school supply list.


Yes, but at least that socialist idea attempts to take things aware in a
fair manner and allocate them in a fair manner. So money for school is
taken via taxes, based on income, rather than a black and white provide
this huge list or not - if you can afford your own kids school supplies
but none extra what are you supposed to do? and of course everyone has
different ideas about what they can afford, so you get some who really
can't afford it sacrificing to provide everything on the list because
they really support education and others who could easily provide it
griping about how much it costs. But then you get people who pay taxes
moaning if they don't have children, they still have to pay, it's all so
very complex!

I heard a program recently about this kind of reasoning, some guy at
Harvard (I think) had done all this research and found that the average
reasoning ability on moral issues was lower than expected, with
surprisingly few adults able to thing a few steps ahead in terms of the
effect on society as a whole. It was enlightening to me as sometimes I
can be so frustrated by simplistic statements and inability to see
indirect effects of actions, not understanding the difference between
the effect on an individual and on a community. I'm not sure if the
research concluded that it was a natural thing, or a consequence of life
experience.

Cheers
Anne

toypup wrote:


"Clisby" wrote in message
m...
A different type of mortgage? Or do you mean that if you put down at
least 20% you don't have to pay private mortgage insurance (PMI)?
If nobody told you about the PMI, that's truly astounding.

I do think it's possible that when something is widely known, everyone
assumes that everyone else knows it. So when Anne asks about a
different mortgage when she means saving on PMI, no one knows what type
of different mortgage she's talking about. No one would even think
she's asking about something so widely known, they must think she's
asking about something very obscure, especially if she's specifically
asking about a *different* mortgage. She's not even aware of what to
call this thing doesn't know exist. It's easy for me to see her
difficulty. I'm not sure why everyone is giving her a hard time.

I don't either - and I'm not giving her a hard time. I'm also not
talking about asking a work colleague or neighbor. But if a person
(especially someone from another country) asks an American realtor or
mortgage company rep something to the effect of, "Does it matter how
much we put down?" I find it astounding that none of those people would
mention PMI. I don't know what else Anne could reasonably have done to
drag the information out of them if she didn't know the information was
there to be dragged.

Clisby

A lot of the overkill may be because there are people who do not or
can not supply their own stuff. We always had to build into field
trips a certain amount of extra so that the very poorest kids could
still go.

That kind of "taxation" has a knock on effect on how many kids you need
to find a way to pay for. I mean, if the cost is 10 dollars and you
think half the kids can't pay and you charge 20 dollars, you could then
find that half of the kids who could pay originally now can't.

If a field trip is essential to education, then it should be paid for by
whatever system is paying for education, with the only costs passed on
to parents being things like food - which could still create a problem
if students are having subsidised canteen food and now need to provide a
packed lunch or purchase something at true cost - but it's still a
smaller problem to deal with.

A trip that is essentially pleasure but with something educational
tagged on (common in the UK), then it's non unreasonable to play the
card that sadly life isn't fair, by taking the trip you are opening a
door that many students wouldn't have, group tickets are often cheaper,
a coach is cheaper per person than a car etc. and a minority may not be
able to go. Sometimes if other parents become aware of this, either
directly or indirectly money may well be found, but it will be freely
given not demanded from those that can more than afford the trip.

If the school is in an area where the majority of students couldn't
afford such a trip, then that's when you have to start appealing to
local companies etc. not expecting the few that can pay to pay for everyone.

I went to a fee paying school, but as far as I recall if a trip was
essential to education it was included in the fees, I don't know whether
this was clear to people from the start, but it was based on the
understanding that many parents were making a choice for their child
that was stretching them financially. There were few essential trip, the
only ones I remember were Geography, where two trips to collect data
were essential for required coursework.

Other trips were usually partially educational and the costs kept low, I
remember going down a coal mine, visiting both the cathedrals in
liverpool and a few other things.

It was accepted that there would be the occasional thing that it was
impossible for everyone to participate in, they wouldn't be on a school
day, such as the annual school ski trip, probably about a tenth of the
school went, but many of the people that went, that would be their only
opportunity to ski as they travelled by coach (usually) and stayed in
hostel type accomodation, it was a lot less than a quarter of the amount
a family of four could pay as a minimum and it's the same kind of thing
that allowed my mum to ski as a teenager - but there shouldn't be any
expectation that such a thing should be available to all or none. There
are companies in the UK that organise cheaper holidays in this way, but
they usually aren't open to younger teenagers.

My dad teaches 16-18, he used to regularly take a trip to a theme park,
rules meant that if it were on a school day not a weekend, it had to be
educational, and being a maths teacher, that meant that the students
either collected statistics of various sorts, or did various things
relating to the physics of the various rides, like drawing force
diagrams. Everyone admitted it really was just a fun day, though they
did spend some time afterwards using the data and covering the concepts
which could be done with someone elses data or photos if absolutely
necessary. Usually most people happily paid, the price was much cheaper
than going independently and it was at the time the most popular theme
park in the UK. He did have to play it carefully as most years there
would be people who either moaned or just quietly didn't return the form
- but it was usually easy to sort out those that moaned would be asked
if they smoked and how many a week did they smoke, or did they go out on
a Friday night etc and it pointed out that these things are also for
pleasure and it was their choice how they spent their money on
activities for entertainment. The persons tutor was usually discreetly
approached to determine if there were any special circumstances and even
in a relatively poor area there was rarely more than one person who
genuinely couldn't pay, being aged 16 and over they almost all had part
time jobs. I'm not sure exactly how the ones who genuinely couldn't pay
were dealt with, I'm pretty sure they did usually get to go and it quite
possibly was from the teachers pocket, though it was never because they
felt they had to.

With younger kids that wouldn't have worked because the same kids a few
years earlier wouldn't have had part time jobs and what not, but then
when it comes to the crunch, that's when you don't run a field trip -
again, life isn't fair, there are always going to be inner city schools
that have a hard time, but people often don't vote for policies that
allow governments to throw significantly more money at them, but should
that prevent other schools from taking a trip than it's students can pay
for?

Cheers
Anne

Anne Rogers wrote:

A lot of the overkill may be because there are people who do not or
can not supply their own stuff. We always had to build into field
trips a certain amount of extra so that the very poorest kids could
still go.

That kind of "taxation" has a knock on effect on how many kids you need
to find a way to pay for. I mean, if the cost is 10 dollars and you
think half the kids can't pay and you charge 20 dollars, you could then
find that half of the kids who could pay originally now can't.

It wasn't that clear-cut. The field trips in those days were about
$5.00, and often they WERE educational trips. We went each year to
the swamp and did ecological things, like collect minnows and do bird
counts, and look into the mud to see what was in there. Sometimes we
went to the Smithsonian museums. The places that we went were
generally free, we just had to pay for the buses and driver. It
wasn't a huge amount of money. We would take the cost of the bus and
driver and divide it by the number of students and add a little bit to
it so that in case all the students didn't go that we'd still have
enough to pay the driver. (We used the Board of Education school
buses)

One of the big things with the Smithsonian was that they had
escalators and many of our kids had never seen one. We also had a
problem on band trips if there were elevators as there was maybe one
of them in the whole county at that time, and the kids would spend
their time riding the elevator up and down.

If a field trip is essential to education, then it should be paid for by
whatever system is paying for education, with the only costs passed on
to parents being things like food - which could still create a problem
if students are having subsidised canteen food and now need to provide a
packed lunch or purchase something at true cost - but it's still a
smaller problem to deal with.

We were strongly encouraged to do at least two trips per school year.
For middle school we had four teachers involved with about 120 kids.
Had we not done this, it wouldn't necessarily have resulted in a
reprimand, but it might.

A trip that is essentially pleasure but with something educational
tagged on (common in the UK), then it's non unreasonable to play the
card that sadly life isn't fair, by taking the trip you are opening a
door that many students wouldn't have, group tickets are often cheaper,
a coach is cheaper per person than a car etc. and a minority may not be
able to go. Sometimes if other parents become aware of this, either
directly or indirectly money may well be found, but it will be freely
given not demanded from those that can more than afford the trip.

If the school is in an area where the majority of students couldn't
afford such a trip, then that's when you have to start appealing to
local companies etc. not expecting the few that can pay to pay for everyone.

I doubt VERY much if we would have been allowed to do that at a public
school.

I went to a fee paying school, but as far as I recall if a trip was
essential to education it was included in the fees, I don't know whether
this was clear to people from the start, but it was based on the
understanding that many parents were making a choice for their child
that was stretching them financially. There were few essential trip, the
only ones I remember were Geography, where two trips to collect data
were essential for required coursework.

Other trips were usually partially educational and the costs kept low, I
remember going down a coal mine, visiting both the cathedrals in
liverpool and a few other things.

We did go to things like the Baltimore Aquarium (now the National
Aquarium) where there was a fee, and also sometimes the National Zoo.
We never would have visited any kind of church. My dh's classes would
go to the FBI building and the Treasury sometimes (8th grade)

It was accepted that there would be the occasional thing that it was
impossible for everyone to participate in, they wouldn't be on a school
day, such as the annual school ski trip, probably about a tenth of the
school went, but many of the people that went, that would be their only
opportunity to ski as they travelled by coach (usually) and stayed in
hostel type accomodation, it was a lot less than a quarter of the amount
a family of four could pay as a minimum and it's the same kind of thing
that allowed my mum to ski as a teenager - but there shouldn't be any
expectation that such a thing should be available to all or none. There
are companies in the UK that organise cheaper holidays in this way, but
they usually aren't open to younger teenagers.

When I was a teen (junior in hs), we took a trip to Williamsburg - I
don't remember how we paid for it. My sister's Girl Scout troop went
to Europe, and I do know that they all raised money for it, but that
wasn't a school trip.

Most places that I know of that have admissions charges also have
reduced fees for school groups.

My dad teaches 16-18, he used to regularly take a trip to a theme park,
rules meant that if it were on a school day not a weekend, it had to be
educational, and being a maths teacher, that meant that the students
either collected statistics of various sorts, or did various things
relating to the physics of the various rides, like drawing force
diagrams. Everyone admitted it really was just a fun day, though they
did spend some time afterwards using the data and covering the concepts
which could be done with someone elses data or photos if absolutely
necessary. Usually most people happily paid, the price was much cheaper
than going independently and it was at the time the most popular theme
park in the UK. He did have to play it carefully as most years there
would be people who either moaned or just quietly didn't return the form
- but it was usually easy to sort out those that moaned would be asked
if they smoked and how many a week did they smoke, or did they go out on
a Friday night etc and it pointed out that these things are also for
pleasure and it was their choice how they spent their money on
activities for entertainment. The persons tutor was usually discreetly
approached to determine if there were any special circumstances and even
in a relatively poor area there was rarely more than one person who
genuinely couldn't pay, being aged 16 and over they almost all had part
time jobs. I'm not sure exactly how the ones who genuinely couldn't pay
were dealt with, I'm pretty sure they did usually get to go and it quite
possibly was from the teachers pocket, though it was never because they
felt they had to.

With younger kids that wouldn't have worked because the same kids a few
years earlier wouldn't have had part time jobs and what not, but then
when it comes to the crunch, that's when you don't run a field trip -
again, life isn't fair, there are always going to be inner city schools
that have a hard time, but people often don't vote for policies that
allow governments to throw significantly more money at them, but should
that prevent other schools from taking a trip than it's students can pay
for?

Cheers
Anne

Usually they pool the things like wipes and tissues and
hand sanitizer and such. I've heard a gazillion people say they
wish the school would just buy the supplies and bill the parents
if necessary, but I think that must not be the prevailing
attitude.

But in this instance it's a school switching between the two methods for
one class, with at no point us having been told that this class is run
differently. In general I would still rather it was done that way, but I
can understand that if it's always been the other way and it's a case of
increase attention to cleanliness and increased need for supplies and
that changing how things always have been is likely to be met with
resistance. But then this isn't a public school, it's primarily a
preschool, one where we pay fees, where previously, wipes, when used
have been provided, they don't generally use hand sanitizer, they all
wash at the sink when they arrive and then wipes are used before and
after snack.

Both ways are valid, I happen to prefer one over the other and in this
instance there really isn't an organisational reason to prefer one over
the other as both systems are running in the same school, so it's the
change that bothers me more than what is actually being done and none of
the reasons suggested for doing it this way explain the reasoning for
changing it to be this way, other than Banty's idea that private schools
are just fitting into the mould created by public schools.

Cheers
Anne