We visited with some fine local women and children yesterday after recovering from the news that we didn’t hit the lottery for any of the urban magnet kindergartens that we were hoping to. We’re waitlisted everywhere, and only certain to get into the one that I’m most lukewarm about and Declan is a little afraid of.
I’m feeling oddly okay about it because I have other hopes in reserve. And I know that my kid is the kind of learner that any good teacher dreams of teaching. I don’t expect that there will be many years ahead of us that won’t require us to find him a number of challenges beyond school walls.
We went to a science-y library program yesterday too, where the kids learned a few things about trees. After getting over a bout of complete and total shyness, Declan told the librarians that “trees are the lungs of the earth.” A fact gleaned— not from school or any eco-moralizing on my part — but from his kids’ yoga video.
When we got in the car, he seemed puzzled.
“How was that science?” he asked me, though he liked it. It was earth science, I told him.
“Huh,” he said, thoughtfully. “I thought that all science had to be really cool or really gross.”
“You don’t think photosynthesis is cool?”
“Oh yeah, I guess it is.”
Seriously, you lousy schools, it’s your loss.
If only there were grants out there that parents could apply for to spend a year taking a kid like mine to the Met, CERN, a bunch of Smithsonian museums, every NASA site that’s open to the public and a few natural wonders.
That would be the education my son deserves.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2010.