It’s prom season in New Canaan and our spring sports teams are in full swing—lighter fare in an otherwise news-heavy period for our schools: The widely discussed SBACs are underway, we have new elementary school principals and a new (interim) superintendent, cafeteria health inspection results are in, the “Regional Uniform Calendar” looms, South is about to undergo a major capital project (new windows) and planning officials are forcing the Board of Education to make a formal decision regarding the YMCA expansion.
To make sure we’re balancing that harder news, NewCanaanite.com took to the streets to find out how much our local school kids know about Cliffs Notes—the once-hugely popular, pre-Internet workaround for students who never got around to reading “Lord of the Flies,” “A Separate Peace” or “The Scarlet Letter.” Cliffs Notes became so engrained that the term is now a byword for a succinct summary of any kind (“Give me the Cliffs Notes version …”)
A sincere “Thank You” to our interviewees here for being such good sports. We asked them whether they knew what Cliffs Notes were—a few did—and in cases where they didn’t know, to guess what it could be based on the name.