Buh, Muh, Suh

Well, it sure looks like the kids won't be going back to public school. I will formally withdraw them tomorrow if things continue to go well today.

Last night while taking a bath Clementine informed me (not in so many words) that she knew more about teaching phonetic principles than her first grade teacher.

"My teacher thinks the letter `s' says `suh'. She puts an `uh' after all the sounds."

This is the very biggest no-no in teaching kids to read. The letter `s' says `ssss'. Those `uh's can be a major impediment for kids who are having trouble getting the concept. They try to sound out "sat" and they get "suh a tuh". Sure, it is hard to say plosives like "t" without any vowel sound after it, and voiced plosives are even harder (b), but you do your best to minimize the after noise. But what is up with `suh'? S is a sibilant. You can hold the `s' sound as long as you like without introducing any vowel sound. She should have to sit on the red dot while the teachers blow their whistles and the kids hiss. Ssssssss. She'd remember after that.

The End

I am angry and annoyed at someone. Or something.
Ok, let's call it what it is.

Impotent rage. Though I am not exactly raging at the moment. Too jet-lagged.

I was listening to Forum on the way home. It was about plagiarism in college. Seems honor codes don't work, not without enforcement. Everyone was moaning about it. Where are the values? But to me you can take a ruler and draw a straight line from the red dot on the blacktop to the period at the end of the plagiarized sentence in a college paper. It's like the Soviet Union when I visited in 1990. No one thought of themselves as behaving immorally when they tricked the system, to the contrary. It is a moral victory to outwit a morally bankrupt system. School is a prison, with capricious rules and demands. Any signing of an honor code within that system has all the moral weight of a confession signed under torture. When kids "get out" and move on to college is it any surprise that they can't shake the effects of 12 years of institutionalization?

Clem is a free spirit, but the effects of institutionalization on Evelyn could be alarming. What happens when they internalize those byzantine rules? In one of the first days at her old school Evelyn reported: "I like one of the girls at my table when we are outside, but inside," voice lowered and with disdain, "inside she has poor feet and chair habits." The kid sticks her feet in the aisle and doesn't sit with her chair pushed in. Hard to like a kid like that.

This experiment may well be over. Evelyn is too bored and Clem is too unhappy. I have the option of asking for a Student Study Team meeting and having Evelyn evaluated to skip a grade. There is no room in the 4th grade in her current school, so she may end up back in Middling Elementary. Also, it will take at least a month to do. At that point she'll have only 1.5 months left till our agreed-upon endpoint. Neither of them are lovin' it so much they'll never want to leave, as some people suggested might happen. Is it worth the trouble and upheaval for her? I don't think so. So there we go, I have barely written a word on my novel, and it is over. I am trying to decide if I can leave them in school one more week to give myself time to collect myself after my Europe trip and prepare, or if I should just pull the plug today and withdraw them.

Project School in Freefall

Evelyn is bored to tears. Yes, actual tears. In the timed reading test the teacher said that
she read 160 words/minute and read "like a grownup". But the class is working on sight word flashcards with words like "though" and "because". Math has included such challenges as filling in the numbers that come before and after a given number. Evelyn is at the new school now. The upside is that there are no discipline problems in the class. The downside is that if we try to move her to the 4th grade that will probably mean a different school.

Clem has red dot duty tomorrow for talking in line. She was squirming on my lap and seeming ashamed when she told me. I said that if we'd had red dots in school I would have spent a lot of time on them for talking. That made her happier. She says that what got her in trouble was telling a boy in her class he was in the wrong line. No talking means no talking. Who cares if you are being helpful? The thumb is in the middle now. Still ticking down.

No Child Left Behind

I can't believe that it is our very own Middling Elementary School that has figured out how to leave no child behind. Their plan is both brilliant and simple. Don't attempt to teach anything.

Mike's terse report on Day 4, the first full day of school, was:

The kids attitude seems about the same--they don't love, they don't hate. The academics continue to be non-existent.

I talked to Daniel and Logan's mom, Barbara, out front after dropping the kids off on Tuesday before hopping on the plane to London. If that sentence seems like a run-on, well, that is how that day felt. Anyway, my goal was to see if there was a nicer teacher I could transfer Clementine to. Barbara had appeared rather chipper about the school when I first showed up, but that facade crumbled the moment I asked about the principal. She said all the principal cares about is covering her own butt and she had left more than one conversation with the principal wanting to "punch her in the face."

I keep marvelling at how the teachers don't seem to understand that kids arrive at school in the fall excited to learn. What is the point of denying them that and boring them until they lose interest and no longer want to? I have always thought that John Taylor Gatto was a kook with a few interesting things to say, or at best an interesting guy with a few kooky things to say, but I am starting to wonder. He says that American schools have long had a secret 4th agenda.

Traditional forms of instruction in America, even before the Revolution, had three specific purposes:
To make good people
To make good citizens
And to make each student find some particular talents to develop to the maximum.

The fourth is to create consumers. Bore them silly is the mandate because bored people are excellent consumers. I thought this was crazy, but now... (It is almost worth following the link to see the baby in the McDonald's frenchfries hat.)

The other theory is that people used to being bored make good assembly line workers.

Architect, The Oldest Profession

Oh, no, sir, I'm sorry, sir. I could never answer to a whistle. Whistles are for dogs and cats and other animals, but not for children, and definitely not for me.

The Sound of Music

Just found out that the teachers all have whistles to blow when the kids are misbehaving. Not just outside. In class, too.

Evelyn chose a book from home to read when she was done with her work, because she was done with Hooway for Wodney Wat. She chose the Cartoon History of the Universe. I opened it to a random page and read the speech bubble.

Priests, disgruntled at being drafted into work on the pyramids, spread rumors that pharoah had sold his own daughter into prostitution.

So I asked Evelyn what disgruntled meant. "Unhappy, mad."
And what about drafted? "Forced."
Then in an aside to Mike I said, "I'm not going to ask about prostitution."
Evelyn piped up, "I already know what that means."
Me, "Tell me."
"I think it means they made her help design the pyramid."

Tick Tick Tick

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.

-H.L. Mencken

Clem didn't seem as happy as usual when I picked her up, but she wouldn't say what had gone wrong.

At our homeschool Park Day (can't stay away) a friend asked her if school was thumbs up, thumbs in the middle or thumbs down. Clem said, "Thumbs up! But," she racheted her thumb down, "ticking down every day. The teachers act nice on the first day and then they just get meaner and meaner." Yesterday she was having trouble with some sticky, gloopy crayons and couldn't color neatly. Ms. A said, "Are you going to color like a kindergartener, or like a first grader?" Then today she said "push your chair in" in a "harsh voice" and snapped at a boy to "get over here." Clem prefers Ms. Park, whose class they visit to hear stories.

I perked up at this.

Wow!
Reading?
At school?

So far, there hadn't been any that I had heard of.

Ms. Park read Clifford's Family to them. Clifford. And then they watched videos The Rainbow Fish and Dazzle the Dinosaur. I started to get a sinking feeling in my heart. This class is aimed at least two years below Clem's level.

Evelyn's day was an enthusiastic "good!" down from "grrrreat!" yesterday. But, she said, "as each day goes by I'm getting more excited to do some reading and math."

It is the third day of school and all she has read is "I am extraordinary." She reports that the crafts are fun, but not all to her taste. She doesn't enjoy self-portraiture, for instance, and finished hers quickly. She had to sit bored for a long time while other kids finished their pictures.

Couldn't you read while waiting?
There aren't any books in the class.
I thought Ms. Q had a little library.
They are all baby books. The best book there is Hooway for Wodney.
Aren't there any chapter books?
I didn't see any.

Mission for next week (it will have to be done by Mike since I won't be here) is to get permission for Evelyn to read books from home after she finishes her work. She was so starved for reading time that she read all evening after we got back from Park Day.

I get that it is hard to accomplish much on these minimum days, and maybe it seems pointless to the teachers because their classes are likely to get shuffled. But just reading a quality book out loud to the class seems a better use of the kids' time than busywork crafts and videos. Or what about doing some hands-on exploration that you don't have time for when you get into the swing of marching through the curriculum?

I'll have to take stock when Greta and I return from the U.K. and France on the 13th. Maybe this is a two-week, rather than a 3-month experiment. On the other hand, while this hasn't necessarily been great for Ev and Clem, it has been good for me.

I get to be hot-cocoa-and-kisses mom in the morning and so-happy-to-see-you-tell-me-all-about-your-day mom in the afternoon. The relief from drudgery has been great, too. The house stays clean during the day. We arrived home and
everything was neat and tidy. Friends were due to arrive, so I set about making beds, and while I was distracted the baby found a bowl of instant oatmeal that never got cooked and proceeded to play Hansel and Greta with it. The trail went into the guest room where I was making beds, out through the addition and around the couch, through the kitchen, past the front door, down the hall, into the bathroom, and then into Evelyn and Clementine's room where the empty bowl was abandoned. That was just one child in five minutes. Multiply by 3 and contemplate results after 7 hours. Day after day after day.

Milk Carton

We were out of milk this morning and I started the day with a cappucino made from milk that had sat in the open steaming carafe all night collecting flavors from the fridge. Ugh.

If I thought that was a bad way to start the day, however, I was wrong.

Moments later, I walked out the front door to discover that I had catalyzed a child abduction panic yesterday.

Abduction, A Play in One Act

Cast of characters:
Elsa, my neighbor
Edward her son (the abductee)
Abuelita: Edward's friend Alejandra's grandmother.
and in the starring roles:
Language Barrier
Incorrect Assumptions

I arrived at the school yesterday to pick up the kids. The only person I see that I know is Abuelita.

Me (admiring Alejandra's baby sister Rebecca): Aren't you getting big! Walking! And teeth!

Abuelita (in Spanish): I don't speak English.
Me: Y yo no hablo espanol. Comprendo poquito.

We stand there for a while.

Abuelita: Is Elsa here?
Me: No.
Abuelita: You are taking Edward?
Me: No.
Abuelita: I'll take him, then.

Enter stars of the play

Language Barrier (rubbing hands together in glee): She won't be able to ask Abuelita any questions.

Incorrect Assumption (waving hypnotizing watch before my eyes): The fact that the grandma asks makes it seem that this the usual plan. If Elsa doesn't come, Edward goes home with Abuelita. Yes... Yes....

The Bell Rings. I am waiting for Evelyn and Clementine. Edward runs up to me.

Edward: Do you see my mom?
Me (under hypnotic spell): No, but you can go with Alejandra's grandma.



Edward (to Abuelita, according to his mom): Susan said my mom said I could go home with you.
Incorrect Assumption: Ha! You assume your mother told her that, but it ain't so!

Forgotten cell phone rings in Elsa's car. And rings. And rings.
Alejandra's mother is trying to tell her where Edward is.
Meanwhile...

Elsa's sister makes it to the school late to pick up Edward and he is gone.
Panic.
The cell phone rings and rings
More panic.

Elsa finishes work and gets to her car. Cell phone is beeping.
Edward is found.

Edward: Susan told me you said I could go with Alejandra's grandma!
Elsa and her sister (screaming): You are lying! You are a liar.

Edward is being spanked as curtain goes down.

Bravissimo!