Grandparents Day is a beloved Herriman Elementary School tradition in which grandparents enjoy a special lunch date with each of their grandchildren.

“Any chance to spend time with them, especially one on one,” Donna Angel, grandmother of three students, said. “We get to spoil them and hear about all their battle wounds.”

Angel said being at the elementary school sort of made her feel old.

“It's hard to believe we were ever this age, when life was simpler and a lot more fun,” Angel said. “I was just saying, ‘I can't remember the last time I put my feet in the grass,’ and my granddaughter is like, ‘I put my feet in the grass every day.’”

Many of the grandparents who attended the picnic reminisced about their elementary school experiences, noting some major differences between then and now.

Those who were kids in the ‘70s and ‘80s have fond memories of playing kickball, tetherball, red rover and imaginative games at recess. They also have vivid memories of playgrounds of peril—flying off merry-go-rounds and teeter totters, slipping off metal monkey bars and landing on hard cement or sharp gravel.

“You got the burns on the metal slides and there was cat poop in the sandbox,” Leland Bresock remembers.

Another aspect of early childhood that came to mind for many of the visiting grandparents was school discipline practices.

“I'm old enough to where they used to have a ruler. Rulers were not uncommonly used as punishments,” Joe, who began school in the ‘70s, said.

Angel and Bresock, who attended elementary school out of state during the ‘80s, were spanked with a paddle and had their wrists slapped by a ruler—usually in front of the whole class.

“I got caught with gum one time and I had to put it on my nose and leave it there for the rest of the day,” Angel said. “There was a lot more shame. We know a little bit more about child psychology and development now.”

Chris Rogers said her granddaughter’s school has “more of that calmer, gentler and understanding” discipline style than her school had in the ‘80s.

Many grandparents remember a stricter school dress code which required girls wear dresses and boys wear long pants.

“We had to wear dresses, and shorts were never allowed, not ever—only in summertime,” Rose Sweet Holladay said of her ‘60s and ‘70s school experience.

While dress standards were more strict when they were young, grandparents recognize they had more freedom and independence than their grandchildren currently do.

Ann said, in the ‘70s, parents never walked their kids to school as many do today.

“It was embarrassing if the parent came with the kid,” she said. “Nobody had a parent walk with them.” Even as a kindergartener, Ann walked almost a mile to school all by herself.

“I walked down to 3900 South, and I crossed it and walked down to 500 East,” she said. “I’d just walk alone and nobody thought anything of it. Then we moved to Sandy and I had to walk to first grade alone and I had to cross 700 East.”

One of the biggest differences several grandparents mentioned when comparing their experiences with that of their grandchildren was the types of technology their schools had.

Holladay said there were no computers or calculators used in her elementary school in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s.

“We had nothing to help us but our own minds,” she said. “There were no computers or games to entertain us and we entertained ourselves.”

Bresock and Angel remember their teachers using reel-to-reel films, slide projectors, overhead projectors and mimeograph machines.

Gonzalo San Miguel said there weren’t any computers in his school in the early ‘80s.

“I think the biggest thing I had like that was maybe like a Speak-N-Spell,” he said.

“The one difference I could tell is a lot more of the teacher talking,” Ann said. “The teachers were up at the front of the class to do a lot of straight teaching—they're talking, they're teaching. Now they do more tablet teaching, or read the books, watch the computer.”

The greatest contrast in educational experiences between students and grandparents was that of Alice Woodcock, great-grandmother of two Herriman Elementary students. She attended elementary school in the early 1940s in rural New York.

Woodcock remembers that in her small town, there was no kindergarten class. There was a “little red school house” for first and second grades and a school for third through eighth grades. High school students were bussed to a school in the city.

In her day, students always brought their own lunch to school, or walked home to eat lunch if they lived nearby. She recalls that sometimes in winter, there was hot soup for students at the rural schools, but usually school-made lunch was only provided at the city high school which was “much bigger and more sophisticated.”

Woodcock said as far as technology, she thinks they might have had mimeograph machines in her high school in the ‘50s, but in her rural elementary school, they only used simple tools.

“We had chalk and blackboards,” she said. “It was a rural school, so pencil and paper—big, fat, lined paper. We practiced our cursive writing and we practiced our letters.”

“If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the almanac or to an encyclopedia, which was more tedious,” she said. “Now you can go to the internet and just find out anything, which is, I think, an excellent tool.”

Despite the differences in the school experiences the various generations of students had, Bresock suggested that they all, no matter when or where they attended school, had a very similar experience of just being a kid.

“Is there really any difference?” Bresock said. “You're young and free.”

Leland Bresock and Donna Angel, following their granddaughter’s lead, stick their toes in the grass to enjoy a carefree lunch date with three of their grandchildren at Herriman Elementary School’s Grandparents Day. (Jet Burnham/City Journals)