School Daze
The Padre and I made the decision to put Mr. A in the local public school for kindergarten. It looked like a nice little elementary school--plenty of play space, a garden, a good score on the standardized tests. It was a nightmare. The way some people carry on about public schools, you might think that I'm going to follow up that last sentence with a litany of horrors about BDSM demonstrations on the play ground and the bowl full of strawberry flavored condoms on the principal's desk. Actually, no. Perfectly ordinary parents took their children there every day. Our problem wasn't with some kind of moral outrage, but rather with the education itself. Let's start with what was missing from Mr. A's kindergarten class room: blocks, any toys at all, finger paints, those little math manipulatives for patterning. What was there, you ask? A few computers, which frankly, rank second only to television in terms of "kiddie speed" for Mr. A; worksheets; desks; ...