Up in the morning and ...

There aren’t many days left. For some, it will end as early as tomorrow. Others still have 10 whole days.

We are talking about the end of summer vacation and the beginning of a new school year for tens of thousands of students in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.

Each fall provides an extraordinary opportunity for students to begin anew. It is almost as if spring were to arrive not in March or April, but in late August and early September.

New classrooms, new teachers, new subjects. New books, new backpacks, new clothes. And for those students who need one and want one, a chance to adopt a new attitude about education.

It has been a long time since schools devoted themselves almost exclusively to the Three Rs. In fact, the song, “School Days, School Days (dear old golden rule days),” that popularized the phrase “readin’ and ’ritin’ and ’rithmetic” is celebrating its centennial It was written by Gus Edward and Will D. Cobb in 1907.

Ring ring goes the bell

While the original school days song is 100 years old, the updated version by Chuck Berry is a nifty 50. By 1957, Berry’s version added these lyrics:

“The teacher is teaching the Golden Rule.

American History and Practical Math:

You're studying hard and hoping to pass,

Working your fingers right down to the bone.”

Although — and today’s college-bound students may find this hard to believe — the students who were rockin’ to Chuck Berry in the late ’50s weren’t inclined to stress out about the SATs and took no classes in how to ace the ACTs. They just got up a little early one Saturday morning, grabbed a couple of No. 2 pencils and headed off to take the test. It was a different age.

What has remained constant for centuries is the role that the Three Rs play as the backbone of education. Without a sound foundation in reading and writing, the student can’t absorb new knowledge or share what he or she knows. Without arithmetic, the marvels of higher mathematics remain a mystery and understanding how things work — from a simple machine to a computer to the universe itself — will remain elusive.

Whether you have to get “up in the morning and out to school” tomorrow or Sept. 5, it will be more than a new day. It’s a new school year. Treat it as if it’s the first day of the rest of your education. It is.