An education took place not only in the school when we were just growing up but at home as well. There we learned many of the fundamentals of life, fundamentals that we most likely had to modify, discard, or even treasure, as we grew older.

For example, the importance of learning a foreign language started early in our lives. We realized that when the “old folks” like Mama or Papa or even Bubbie, didn’t want us to know something they said it in Yiddish. So we quickly picked up a few choice expressions in our bilingual repertoire. We learned that what Sadie was cooking was real trayf, not kosher and that Lizzie from across the street never spoke the emmes, so you couldn’t rely on what she said. This soon combined for us to learn spelling. Mama often resorted to spelling out certain words like telling Papa that she put the “treasure” away in the B-O-X in the K-I-T-C-H-E-N.

Arithmetic came next. Some of us who were not so adept at numbers had to remove our shoes when it came to counting to more than ten. But large numbers were another matter. So Mama told us “If I told you once, I told you a hundred times.” And then, “That must be the fiftieth time that you forgot your lunch.” And so we learned about smaller and larger numbers.

As for geography, distances were drummed into our little brains. That might have been an offshoot of mathematics. “She moved to Connecticut, a million miles away.” And New Jersey! Over the bridge! If you want to go far, why not Staten Island? Or even Queens or Brooklyn. That’s enough of a distance.”

The importance of reading was always there. We could never complain that we were bored or that we had nothing to do, that we had finished our homework and could we just listen to the radio. (Television had not yet come upon the horizon or into the living room.) We knew that no sooner had the words exited our mouths, the response came, “Nothing to do! Go read a book. That way you might learn something! And the word “bored” is not in my vocabulary. If you have no book, go to the library. They have plenty and it’s free.”

Schools today promote the value of physical education and participation in sports. And rightly so. But we had that beat by a few decades. If we were sitting in the kitchen and listening to the radio, perhaps to the Lone Ranger (I think we called him the Long Ranger) or to Fibber McGee or Jack Benny or the Shadow, (If you remember even two of these, raise your hand and you will get a prize!) we were jolted out of our euphoria with the admonition, “Enough already! Get some exercise. Take a walk around the block or even bounce a ball against the steps. Move yourself.”

Personal hygiene was always of paramount importance. Each morning we were cautioned:

Did you brush your teeth?

Do you have a clean handkerchief?

Did you change your underwear?

The latter was followed by the caution that if we were hit by a car and rushed to the hospital, our chief concern might be that we were seen to be wearing soiled undergarments.

And that current popular food chain had its roots in our growing up as well. We had to make certain that we ate a piece of fruit, a green vegetable, some lettuce and tomato (no concept of salad dressing) and food was tied in with geography. We soon learned that if we didn’t finish everything that was on our plate, children in China would soon be starving. How’s that for teaching us the value of food and social awareness! I never questioned how my eating had a direct correlation with Chinese youngsters just as I never asked about the comment that was made when someone put an old chair out for the garbage men to take and a few neighbors who had not yet even heard the phrase “recycling” commented that “a good piece of furniture like that could feed a poor family for a week.” Since no one disagreed, I just smiled in assent.

So even though calculus, physics, linguistics and macroeconomics had not yet entered into our home curriculum, there was still plenty that we learned and perhaps this kind of learning established a firm foundation for those other branches of knowledge that one day we had to cope with. Well, it certainly didn’t hurt.