7 Responses to “Possibly a meaningful social statistic (or not)”

1. Josh Parris Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 2:12pm

   3 / 19 publicly disclose their home phone number? Please, expand. So what? What can you read into that, other than people are paranoid nowadays?

2. Daniel Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 2:31pm

   Eh? It’s a class contact list, given to other members of the class. Not quite “public disclosure”.

   19 gave their phone numbers. Of those, 3 had multiple home phone numbers.

   It’s a comment on family structures, not paranoia!

3. Ben Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 8:44pm

   I wonder if this directly correlates with the divorce/separation rate? I imagine it would, but it would be interesting to see anyway. If anything I thought there would have been more than 3 kids who’s parents weren’t living together.

4. Peter Says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 9:39pm

   I’m more curious about the practice of swapping numbers itself; I can’t remember any teacher doing this with us.

   These days wouldn’t kids swap their mobile or home numbers to whoever they wanted - no teacher intervention required.

   Not that if it was done we’d have a number to give; when a call needed to be made (which was very occasional) it was on the public phone outside the general store, sometimes reverse charge if to the grandparents!

5. Daniel Says:
   May 23rd, 2008 at 7:40am

   Peter: No, I don’t remember doing that when I was a kid either. It’s just as much for the parents’ benefit as the kids, and in a time when primary school kids don’t really go visiting friends on their own anymore, I suppose encourages more interaction outside school time.

6. Jeremy Says:
   May 23rd, 2008 at 2:44pm

   Was standard practise when I was in primary school in the 1990s. In fact for a while, a school I went to printed a telephone directory for the entire school (listing was optional of course). Another school I went to, it was done depending on the teacher. Some did, others didn’t.

   These days though, I imagine the kids can just look up their friends contact details on Facebook. Oh wait, maybe primary school kids aren’t quite up to that?

7. Michelle Says:
   May 25th, 2008 at 4:28pm

   One year I had my phone number on the class list, as being the primary caregiver, However, one parent decided to use it to her advantage as a child minding exercise.

   This parent ended up ringing all parents on the list for her daughter to play with kids on the weekend and for stayovers throughout the course of the year.

   Its a good use for ringing other parents for info but other than that I don’t see the point.