The joy of learning is being left behind | Dec 27th 2007
Breaking away from conformity, from the confines of cubicles and rigid rules, was the biggest reason I became self-employed. I like to do things my own way and I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because my 6-year-old daughter is a lot like me.
So I shouldn’t be surprised that she isn’t embracing the rigid structure of the elementary school where she’s sentenced to six hours a day of intense reading and writing exercises in order to comply with state mandates brought into being by Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. Nor should I be surprised by my own response to the relentless pace of her first grade teacher. My reaction is basically to take a good hard look at her education and tackle it like I do any new project – head on.
No Child Left Behind ties school funding to student performance. Performance is gauged by annual testing which begins for students starting in third grade ( age 8 ). Getting students up to speed for these tests is hard work and starts as early as kindergarten. By first grade, play time is over. The vast part of the school day is devoted to reading, writing and math.
A generation of test takers
I’m not opposed to accountability, and I don’t profess to be an expert on the education system or No Child Left Behind. I am, however, an expert on my daughter. The near-obsessive focus on getting her reading and writing skills up to speed by third grade means her days are filled with a lot of desk work and very little play. This translates to a combination of boredom and stress. While she seems to like her teacher and her friends, she’s also well on her way to hating school.
Her first grade class only gets about a half hour of “free play” one day a week. This is a lot to ask from a six-year-old. It’d be a lot to ask of most adults, so how can we expect six-year-olds to sit quietly with no down time for hours on end, day after day?
The same drive that keeps me pushing myself and my business further each year is now on high alert when it comes to my child’s education. I’ve begun researching alternatives – including private and home schooling.
Both options imply an expense and commitment that I can’t really digest right now, because they’re so overwhelming. But leaving my child in a school that’s more focused on test scores than test takers, seems a much larger sacrifice.
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