Since I have a background in teaching, I’m devastated by yet another thoughtless slam to early childhood educators. Scott Paper Company has just announced it will no longer make toilet paper with the cardboard center roll. Instead, their “eco-friendly” toilet paper does away with the tube by somehow magically “squooshing” together the paper in the center to make it stiff enough to form its own roll.

How in the world are kindergarten teachers supposed to make any sort of craft now? Art tables will contain nothing but construction paper and foam packing peanuts. Rhythm bands will have paper plate tambourines and oatmeal can drums, but there will no longer be the cardboard tube section to, “tooo-toooo-rooo” in the background.

Even though I haven’t taught school for years, my husband is still accustomed to me gathering up the toilet paper tubes to use in art classes and Sunday School projects. I have the cutest lamb pattern, which after attaching legs and a head, we use the toilet paper tube for the body, then cover it with Elmer’s glue and fluffy white cotton balls. I’ve used that pattern at church for Jesus’ little lost lamb, and at school for Mary’s little lamb.

The elimination of the toilet paper tube in the little tyke’s world is akin to the loss of glass baby food jars (snow globes), plastic L’egg eggs (bumble bees) and the ultimate scandal years ago when deodorant companies stopped making the glass roll-on bottles. I remember my Sunbeam teacher filling the bottles with paint and letting us roll big swaths of color across a paper to make rainbows. When deodorant containers changed styles, art supply companies started manufacturing the bottles pre-filled with paint and sold them to school systems for a tidy profit.

Maybe that’s what will happen with toilet paper tubes. We’ll stop using them for toilet paper, but an entrepreneur will sell them by the case to desperate school systems everywhere. It’s no wonder the schools always have to beg for money when the freebie materials are discontinued. Items once seen as “trash” often become expensive necessities.

An example of free materials becoming an expected expense is the case of math “aids.” My grandparents were taught math by memorization. When someone figured out that some children are tactile learners and needed a concrete way to learn math, the teacher scavenged up a (free) box of nuts and bolts from someone’s garage so we could sort and group to our heart’s content. 

But by the time my children were taught math, there were no such thing as cast-off items to sort like Daddy’s bottle caps. Math class suddenly required a two hundred dollar set of plastic “teddy bear counters.” If you don’t know about teddy bear counters, just ask an early childhood professional. Some view them as the best thing ever invented, and others, like me, think they are the cutest rip-off ever for school funds. The pricey sets have to be replaced every year because a few students always feel the need to sneak the bears home in their socks — or worse.

Scott Paper Company claims it’s saving the landfills from millions of cardboard tubes. I say they are shortchanging the youth of America by removing an integral educational tool and setting us up for the new school expense of “Heavy-Duty-All-Purpose Craft Tubes, only $20 for two dozen.”

And who wants to use that last rough piece of scrunched up toilet paper anyway? Support low-cost education and save the rolls!

Leslie Anne Harrison also writes the blog Fairhope Supply Co. which can be found at: www.fairhopesupply.com