This is the end of the innocence
As el kiddo gets older, it’s tougher to head in sand about some things. I am intimately familiar with and conversant in the many, many failings of No Child Left Behind; of the impact it’s having on how we teach, what we teach, how we gauge success, and how we mold young minds. Both the Lad and I knew, wading into the great big sea of parenthood, that we were going to be those parents, the ones who read the weird books, and have the giant craft basket with the credo of ‘make whatever you want’, willing to say ‘I don’t know, let’s go look it up’. What I didn’t realize is how out of step we are with expectations.
We had our first parent teacher conference this week. Call me crazy. I thought kindergarten was for stuff like reading, and writing, and arithmetic, and preschool was for learning how not to be a total unholy little shit, play nicely with others, work on the super basics. These kids are doing graphs, and science tables, and writing sentences about what they drew (true to Son of Manwhore status, the pirate lemur’s first self-described, self written drawing in his journal was, and I quote, in all of its spelling glory, ‘A Piktiaure of Faith’, who is a little girl in his class. To judge by his drawing of said young lady, he’s in a Kandinsky phase). As we sat talking, I had this growing sense of unease- even as they were lavishing the kid with praise for his prowess in math and science, his improvement in his letters and handwriting. This is a four year old. Shouldn’t we be working on tying shoes and exploration and not wiping his nose on his sleeve?
The other day I was informed most seriously that he’d broken the stems off of some gourds at the science table. I looked at the teacher and asked, “Was he trying to see what was inside?” and she was wholly nonplused, like the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. More damningly, she then said ‘Why would he do that?’ and I gabbled like a chicken in the barnyard for a moment. WHY? WHY would a four year old boy try to see what’s inside? Because THAT IS WHAT FOUR YEAR OLDS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, LADY. EXPLORE. As I stood there staring, trying to come up with a calm, rational way of saying that rather than flailing my arms about like Kermit, I realized that everything I’d read in the blogosphere- about how hard it is in a world where obedience in children is valued above creativity and exploration, about the increasing pressure in kindergarten, about unreasonable expectation of children to behave like adults, about the relentless onslaught of testing in schools, about the hysteria about intervention if kids aren’t reading by December of kindergarten!- really wasn’t whistling dixie, and in raising our son to be inquisitive, curious, self-confident, and self-expressive, we are about to enter the killer storm.
My hope- my ONLY hope at this point- is a conversation I had with the head of special ed for the district, who in talking with me and discussing with me what the kid does, how he behaves, and such, straight up said without seeing him ‘yes, sounds gifted’ and invited me to come in, start grabbing resource materials, and sure come spring we’ll meet up and start the ball rolling on an IEP though we like to keep gifted kids in regular kindergarten because of socialization. I almost wept with gratitude as she told me their emphasis was on socialization and enough challenge that the kids aren’t turned off of school. But I know it’s a crapshoot tied to which teacher he ultimately gets. And the thing is, everyone here ties it to success. Building a foundation for success. Success for life. But who defines what success is? My goal is not to get him into Harvard, nor is the Lad’s (for one, ffft, Harvard. Go for a school with a real hockey team, like Cornell). We want him to be a happy, healthy adult capable of living a fulfilling life. And frankly, it’s not fucking up to us to make the parameters of what that is: if his bliss is being a high powered lawyer, then our job is to nurture the characteristics that will help him achieve that- the dedication, the moral framework, and so on. And that’s the same if he wants to be an airline mechanic- dedication, determination, diligence, etc etc. If he wants to be a stay at home dad while his partner goes out and earns the big bucks, that is A-ok. But I get the sense, in this breathless drive drive drive push push push for academic achievement amongst the set that thinks ‘poopyhead’ is a hilarious word, that being that fluid in our goals and desires for our child is as weird as standing up in the megachurch in full Maori paint and declaring, “Hey! Ritual tonight! Wanna come?!”
When I was in preschool I learned my right from my left. I learned how to make macaroni art, and fold a hamentaschen. I learned a letter a week. The kid is doing a word a week. They’ve learned about the solar system, about the organs of their body. It makes me wonder what his children will learn when they are 4. Particle physics?