End of Grade Tyranny

Today marks the beginning of End of Grade (EOG) tests in Durham County and in other districts across North Carolina. In honor of these colossal wastes of time, and, I would argue, hindrances to the education of our children, I have composed an acrostic poem similar to the ones my children compose in school when they're not forced to prepare for yet another test.

Endless cycle of pointless tests.
No time for real learning.
Death to creative instruction.

Original student work? What's that?
False sense of achievement.

Great minds stifled day after day.
Relentless onslaught of practice worksheets.
All math and reading all the time.
De Soto, Degas, de Gaulle. Social studies? Forget it.
Every child let down.

Teaching to the test is all that counts.
Education under siege by misguided bureaucrats.
Science suffers: it's not on the test, why bother?
Too much time spent on all the wrong stuff.
So many children left behind.

Drip, Drip, Drip Goes the Fundraising

Now that the school year is nearly over, I can say once again that we have received more fundraising appeals from our daughter's school than just about any other correspondence.

I can't remember all of the requests, but here's a partial list: tickets for the fall carnival; sweatshirts, t-shirts, and other clothes with the school's insignia; PTA memberships; Ident-A-Kits (in case my kid is kidnapped); my child's art emblazoned on pillowcases, note cards, and mugs; books purchased in my child's name for the library; a donation to the spring auction; and the book fair.

On top of this, I'm clipping Box Tops for Education from cereal boxes and toilet paper wrapping, and I'm supposed to have my Kroger card scanned to match a bar code for the school.

Wait a minute. Doesn't my kid go to public school? I didn't think I was supposed to foot the bill.

But this is how it goes these days, with schools so strapped for cash. More and more we're asked as parents to empty our pockets and supply such basics as colored pencils, markers, hand sanitizer, and Kleenex. And we're all hit up equally, regardless of our ability to pay. Professional working couples are asked to buy the same $20 sweatshirt as the single parent of four. Extended families of 15 relatives are asked to support the same auction as the family of one.

Moreover, schools in wealthier communities can raise more money from their parents than those schools in poorer communities. This furthers the disparity that already exists throughout our district.

It's not right. There's got to be a better way to provide schools with the funds they need. If we continue to rely on PTAs and parents' checkbooks, and not insist on full government support, we will continue the status quo of under-funded, inequitable schools.

A Nation Off Balance

During the same week that Goldman Sachs announced its record-breaking 2010 first quarter earnings of $3.3 billion, The New York Times reported that school districts across the country were planning to lay off teachers: 22,000 in California; 7,000 in Illinois; and 600 in nearby Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district. Quoting Superintendent Peter C. Gorman, “We are doing things and considering options I never thought I had to consider.”

Interestingly enough, that same week brought the news that a military commission of retired officers concluded that our national security is at risk because we have too many fat people. Yes, you read that right. Twenty-seven percent of all Americans between the ages of 17 and 24 are overweight. “This is the future of our Army we are looking at when we talk about [this age group],” Recruiting Command’s Mark Howell said. “The sad thing is a lot of them want to join but can’t.”

I also heard that same week a radio report about Senator Jim Webb’s commission on the state of our criminal justice system. Intrigued, I read more and learned, among other things, that though the United States comprises 5% of the world’s population, we house 25% of the world’s prisons. Moreover, four times as mentally ill people are in our prisons than in mental health hospitals.

What do these stories have in common? A nation off balance.

A nation where one company earns $3.3 billion in 3 months while schools are closing their doors cannot lead the world in education.

A nation whose citizens are too fat to serve cannot lead the world in national security.

A nation that imprisons 1 in every 31 adults cannot set the standard for criminal justice.

I’m reminded of a boat tilted into the water because too many people are standing on one side. It’s as if we’ve mindlessly accepted a state of affairs that’s now reached a tipping point, or perhaps has already passed it.

It takes more than the captain to correct the problem. We’re all in this together.

#22

Several years ago when a landscaper helped us lay out the large plant groupings in our front yard, she sketched a map of the plants and gave each one a number. It so happened that our daughter, in third grade that year, had the same number of students in her classroom. In her mind, plants #1 - #26 corresponded to each of her classmates. She was #22, a lovely and delicate mountain laurel.

That same year she came home one day from school and told us that her computer teacher, who identified the kids by number rather than by name, called on her in response to her hand raised in the air and said, with a degree of irritation, “What is it, #22?”

(As my uncle used to say, death isn’t the only great leveler. So are the public schools.)

Well, the story continues (as all stories do), and #22 grew up and this month turns 21. Her path, like her corresponding mountain laurel, has taken some unexpected nosedives. Beset with a rare health condition that plagued her on and off during childhood, she nonetheless managed to thrive in sometimes harsh conditions.

Her mountain laurel, though, didn’t make it through a drought one year. We replaced it with the Daphne pictured above, the new #22. Though not botanically related to the mountain laurel, Daphne means “laurel” and, as such, remains connected to the original plant.

The Daphne, it turns out, suits our daughter better. It’s a hardier plant and takes good care of itself. And it blooms in the late winter when not much else is happening in the yard and brings joy at just the right time.

We still joke now and then about that thoughtless computer teacher. When our daughter has a question, we sometimes say, “What is it, #22?” But the truth is, #22 wasn’t brought down; she wasn’t leveled by the public schools, by her health, or by the other trials that come with life.

Like her sturdy Daphne, she’s ready to bloom—even in the winter.

Earth Day Catastrophe

That the oil spill—threatening to become another environmental disaster—began just in time for Earth Day seems like a cruel joke. Earth Day, it would appear, has become unmasked. And it’s high time. Thinking that we can set aside one day each year to love Mother Earth and celebrate the fact that some of us recycle simply doesn’t cut it.

I’ve wondered for some time if we have the collective will to change our ways. When it comes to environmental awareness, we are light years behind Europe. Ireland prohibits plastic bags, I learned when we traveled there three years ago. You had to bring your own bags for shopping, and the only plastic bags I saw were biodegradable. These are impossible to buy locally at a reasonable price.

In Greece, where my daughter is studying this spring, hot water isn’t an open tap. In her apartment she and her roommates need to plan ahead; they turn a switch to heat the water and turn it off when they’re done. Ditto the electric stove. Lights turn off automatically after a certain amount of time.

Germany has windmills everywhere. My mother’s friends who live in a small village have solar panels on their roof, and their energy use data is collected regularly and transmitted to a central monitoring agency. Friends of friends who spent a semester in Germany were charged for the amount of trash they produced. Thanks to a host of incentives, they managed to reduce, recycle, reuse, and compost, and at the end of their stay they collected just one bag of trash.

Imagine accomplishing this in our country—with all the packaging that attends nearly every purchase.

Until Earth Day becomes ingrained in our lives, we are destined to trot out our globes and garlands each April and hope for the best. This isn’t good enough. As long as we consume 21% of the world’s energy and constitute less than 5% of the world’s population, we will continue to wreak the havoc that only gluttons can produce.

And watch an unimaginably large oil slick grease its way through our off-shore waters and fragile coastline.

A Dog's Life: My Shadow

As Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson:

I have a little shadow that goes everywhere with me,
He’s my closest little buddy is mostly what I see.
He really, really likes me from my heels up to my head;
And the only time we sep’rate is when I jump into bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to show—
His devotion and his love for me, which never seem to slow;
For he sometimes gazes at me like a Madonna at her child,
And sometimes when he’s away from me he goes a little wild.

He hasn’t got a notion of how other dogs must play,
And can only make a friend of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he’s a fan as you can see;
I think he’d rather spend his day with no one else but me.

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
And my cheerful little shadow, like an arrant star-struck friend,
Began the summer day with me and stayed until the end.

Ouch

I’ve got an unfortunate photograph stuck in my mind. I look down at my feet, and there it is—its sinewy body with wavy, diamond-like patterns, camouflaged against the gravel walkway—the copperhead snake that bit me.

Random thoughts:

I resent my misfortune.

When asked to rate my pain, after arriving at the Duke emergency room, I answered “10" for the first time in my life.

In conversations with others, I’ve learned that I’ve experienced many people’s worst nightmare.

It’s no accident that the writer of Genesis chose a snake for his nasty mission.

This bite is the straw that broke this Yankee’s back.