Earning a Passing Grade in Current Events in the Seventh Grade

Banks did not open in 1932 sending my family into financial disaster and by 1939 when I was in the seventh grade the situation was still bad for the family and most  people;  therefore, our class voted against the Weekly Reader, a newspaper for students.   For current events the teacher assigned a country or area to everyone in selected rows.  My row got China, which though still being ravaged by the Japanese was pushed off the news pages by events in Europe.  We were not taking a paper at this time but had access to one subscribed to by my uncle.  Someone told us of an article on China in the Literary Digest, so I took some precious money and bought the magazine.  That article was the only clipping I had in my scrap book to turn in for grades. Students on rows assigned to Germany, France, England and Italy got A's in current events; I lucked out to get a C, which passed.