Clarification

In my last post I said "the American education system completely failed me". In retrospect I see that I have made a very strong statement without clarifying. I know blogging is supposed to be spur of the moment thing, and I try to put more thought, but not enough.

My children have been in the public school system for five years, and we have consistently met excellent teachers, whose commitment to their chosen profession is unparalleled. It is the "system" that has some issues but I have no good answers about what the best option is.

The state of Arizona has certain standards for education listing exactly what a child coming out of each grade should know. My daughter did not meet those standards in math at the end of 3rd grade. However, there was no consequence attached to that. If there was a threat that she would not be allowed to move on to the next grade, we would have smartened up and done something about it sooner. That would have been a good consequence for my family. But what about a child who has a genuine learning disability - I know children who couldn't read in third grade and it wasn't for lack of trying. It would be completely unfair and demoralizing to hold such a child back grade after grade.

In there lies the challenge of the public school system - there is a huge diversity in the learning abilities among all of the children in any grade, and one teacher and one set of standards cannot cover it all. But what is the solution? Establish a meritocracy like Singapore - only the smart kids get a comprehensive education, the ones with lower IQ go to trade school? Of course not. Or do what a home-schooling friend of mine suggests - abolish the public education system completely and let groups of like-minded parents start their own schools to teach their children how and what they want to teach. But what about those children whose parents are not at all involved in their education? Would it be fair to deny them an education? Maybe the current 2-tier system with public schools and specialized charter schools is the solution - all children get a good basic education, but if parents think their child needs something different, they go to a charter school.

Kumon and the ugly monster

If you visit a Kumon math center, you will find it chock-full of children of Indian origin who start at age 4 and are doing algebra by the time they are 10. I cannot decide whether starting children in Kumon at a young age is the best way to build a strong foundation or the surefire way to teach them to hate math early. One thing I am sure of is that many parents have brought their children without any such thought - all they hope for is for their child to get ahead in the academic world because their reference point is the survival-of-the-fittest academic world of India. This saddens me because that world often produces academically brilliant people who haven't a clue about what their passion in life is and never know what to do in their free time besides watching TV. There aren't many other choices in India, but it does seem rather bizarre to be applying the same model in the US where there are so many options available.

I had resolutely decided to never enroll my children in Kumon until the American education system completely failed me. By end of 4th grade my daughter was still doing additions by counting on her fingers. It turns out that the school system does nothing to instill basic math skills that are the building blocks of further learning, unless parents do drills a home. I am well aware that knowing your math facts and times tables is not proof of intelligence or analytical abilities, but it is a skill as necessary in academic life, as being able to read is. The last person my daughter wants to take instruction from is her mother, so I had no choice but to enroll her in Kumon to get the basics right before it was too late. It was amazing what a difference two months of rigorous drills made. She can now whip through one hundred division problems in under three minutes.

And then the other day I discovered another more important reason why most children at a Kumon center are Indian. I ran into a friend at Kumon whose daughter is same age as mine. I noticed that the other girl was at level G whereas my daughter is at mere D and this monster raised its ugly head in me and took hold - a feeling of inadequacy that my child wasn't equally advanced and a desire to push her more to get her higher, and to enroll the younger one right away. My conscious mind had to beat that monster hard and remind me that the other girl has been doing this since kindergarten and mine just started, and get back to thinking about the bigger picture. So now I wonder how many children are at Kumon just because their parents' saw other children doing better than theirs. Oh my! Her 4 year old can recite the 9 times table, I better get in my child in there too!. Sigh. Will the Indian community never leave that ultra competitive world behind us no matter how far we get away from it?

Time to return to the bake sale?

Over the years my children have brought a constant stream of fund-raising materials from school, each with tactics to put emotional pressure on parents, and I have finally had it with this blackmail. I understand times are tough, our schools are losing money and we need to help. However, I do not appreciate our schools’ and PTO’s liaisons with the commercial vendors and their becoming a party to this.

I attended an assembly in my kids’ school once and somebody from a fund-raising company spoke at the assembly. The speaker exhorted kids to sell more and showed them all the goodies they could earn. I was aghast at this exploitation of our children. I would have been much happier giving $20 directly to the PTO instead of putting my kids through this and then buying $50 worth of cookie dough out of which the school got all of $10!

Our school had a picture session this Spring, in addition to the one in Fall. An order form came home which I did not sign and thought this meant that I was expressly declining my kids’ photos being taken. However, not only were their pictures taken but also sent home in their backpacks along with various photo-trinkets. I knew I was under no obligation to buy but I still had to endure constant begging from my kids and then repeatedly say no.

Then we had the Scholastic book fair, selling some books and lot of unnecessary trinkets. First, the kids were paraded through the book fair making a “wish list” to bring home. Then they were taken en-masse with their peers for a shopping trip to the fair. What parent can bear the thought of their child being the only one without any money to buy a ridiculous, large and unnecessary finger-pointer-thingy, when all her friends are buying one? I love books, I and my kids are avid readers and I even volunteer for the book fair but I really dislike the tactics used by Scholastic. Why don’t we just ask families to donate books for a used book sale? We would be teaching our kids to reuse in addition to buying wonderful books.

The last straw is an Art Gallery Event the school will be hosting. I have to Pony up $30 per child to have their artwork framed and displayed at this event. Do I want to once again be the parent who says no, and lets my child down in front of her peers? Our school used to have a similar albeit non-commercial event called the “Art Walk”, where students’ artwork was simply placed on construction paper and displayed in the hallways and parents gathered one evening to eat together and view the art. It was a wonderful event to bring the community together and I am sad to see it go.

Now I am the last person to let my child to succumb to peer pressure. However, I would like to choose to do this on my own terms and am quite offended by being repeatedly put in the position of the “bad person”, by my children’s school no less.

Alas, I do not have enough time to jump in a become the PTO president or even the fund-raising chair. I can share ideas and occasionally volunteer. Still I did write an email to the principal and the PTO today.

Laptops in School

I just read this artcile in NY Times and I would be laughing hard, if it wasn't so sad. Who ever thought that giving students laptops will enhance their academic performance? And why are they now flabbergasted that the laptops are more of a distraction than help? How could they not see that the idea was ridiculous to begin with? Do the decision-makers even realize that the high-tech jobs are going to people educated in developing countries like India, who probably had very limited access to computers even while pursuing degrees in computer science and engineering, and they are doing great, aren't they? Abroad and here. I am sure even a Psychology major in a typical US college things she cannot function without a personal computer.

Education, success and acquisition of knowledge has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to with hunger, motivation, and a passion for learning. No amount of high-tech gadgetry can teach attitude. What is sad is, this is so obvious. It is common sense and yet school administrations had to spend millions to learn this. So the question is what kind of people are running our schools and making crucial decisions such as diverting funding from Art programs to individual laptops? The same people who think that children shouldn't be taught calculus as it is never used in "real life". Yeah, you probably don't need it if your real life is making dumb decisions about running schools! If you have money to burn, raise teacher salaries. As I said, I would laugh if it hadn't been such a humongous waste.

Choosing a school

I have one child entering kindergarten this fall, and I was talking with another mom about the options. Her child is in the same preschool as mine, and will be starting Kindergarten in fall as well so I was really eager to hear her point of view. She told me that she has decided on elementary school 'A'.

Somebody who has already made a decision - Oh, I want to know more on what factors she considered as it will help my wavering mind. Our neighborhood has a school too - school 'B' and I hear it is quite good as well. So I felt compelled to respond "Why did you choose 'B' over 'A'? I hear 'A' is good too, and we can just walk the kids there instead of driving."

"Yes I looked at 'B'. But 'A' is a newer school. It was built just two years ago." She replied.

I patiently waited for her to finish her reasoning, hoping to hear more - something about teachers, principal, PTO. But that was her whole criterion - the newness of the school!

A few days later I was talking to my Realtor about another area that we are considering living in. He tells me there are two good schools in that area, but I should focus on the east of such-and-such road, because then my kids can go to the newer school.

Huh? That is how we are deciding which school is better nowadays? And I though that the quality of a school depended upon the leadership of the principal, the quality of the teachers and the involvement of the parents! Of course, you wouldn't want to be in a school where the roof leaks, or the play-structures are falling apart but this whole area is so new that even the "older" schools are no more than 10-15 years old and the facilities are in excellent condition. I mean, Harvard is pretty ancient by these standards, but I hear it is a pretty good school. No?