NEW YORK—Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who graduated high school in 1960, said he could not remember his first day of school, but during a visit to New Settlement Community Campus in the Bronx Thursday, he gave a peek into his studious side.
While speaking to a freshman math class Bloomberg jokingly referred to himself as a C student who struggled to get by. He said he enjoyed math, was terrible at spelling, and didn’t have the luxury of today’s technology.
“Today everyone has calculators, but it’s hard to believe when I went to school, they did not have calculators. They did not have cellphones. They did not have the Internet,” Bloomberg said.
He said he got by with a slide rule, which he still keeps at his desk today. None of the students knew what a slide rule was.
According to Merriam Webster online dictionary, a slide rule is “a manual device used for calculation that consists in its simple form of a ruler and a movable middle piece, which are graduated with similar logarithmic scales.”
A reporter asked if Bloomberg had any favorite teachers. Bloomberg replied, “It wasn’t even close. I remember two teachers. Ms. Sharkey, my English teacher, and Mr. Lally, my history teacher in the 12th grade.”
“Mr. Lally brought history alive. History teachers never talked about World War I or World War II because it was much too controversial.”
“Ms. Sharkey taught something for 11 previous years, I didn’t know existed. It was called literature,” Bloomberg said.
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