This story actually begins with me in kindergarten. pissed and resentful. I'm not allowed to use the skinny crayons because I can't color inside the lines with the fat crayons. I can color just fine at home, where my parents never thought to give me the fucking stupid fat crayons.( note that at this point in my life I didn't actually use the words "fucking stupid" but that gives you some idea of the level of anger). I also read just fine at home where my parents let me read anything I can reach. not like the lame books here(see spot run. run spot run. get some new words spot you bore me to tears). I hate it. I hate being there, except I have a couple friends.
Skip ahead a few grades. Copying out multiplication tables. I can do this in my head why do I have to copy it out? you have to copy it out so you can learn it. but i don't need to learn it I already know it. Well all the other kids have to do it so how would it look if you didn't. then don't make them either. but they have to it's how they learn. it's not how I learn. Too bad copy out the tables. (the beginning of the first serious Fuck You's from me.) I just started not doing it. refusing to participate in their crap. I sure as hell wasn't learning anything new.
from this point until my senior year in high school it was one long waste of my time. Oh, they tried a little. tested me and put me into the gifted program. which only made me further ostracized and made me realize that to be a teacher of gifted children you don't actually have to be smart at all yourself. In jumior high I discovered a clause in the rules in the New york state Regents Exam rules. If you got over a 95 on the exam you got that grade for your year instead of the earned points from your actual schoolwork. You want to really piss off a teacher, spend a whole year ignoring their class, never turn in one piece of homework, then turn in the minimum required labs to get into the Exam on the last week of classes(many of them actually completed on time I just never bothered to turn them in.). yup do all that stuff and probably worse and then go get a 98 on the test and have that be the grade on your permanent record. Oh yeah that pisses them off.
My senior year I actually took some classes that I was interested in. Mostly English classes. I learned Shakespeare in a way that I never had reading on my own. I took an art class for the first time since my third grade art teacher sent me to the office for an entire month when the evil bitch taught the rest of the kids because I had not completed the pinata in my assigned colors of yellow and brown on time. I didn't know she was an evil hateful bitch at the time, in fact I didn't realize she was so vile till that senior art history class and I learned more about the enjoyment and process of art than I imagined possible. My senior year I actually did learn a few things that I didn't already learn on my own. I learned about calculus, and I learned about high fashion in the 1400's.
fast forward to a couple month's ago. I had a bit of a crisis in my life( I hated my job and it forced me to be away from my family) so I kinda quit (I didn't actually leave the company, I just stopped working for a while and they stopped paying me). To make the rent and such I went down to the local IBEW hall and picked up an unidentured cabler card and went to work pulling Fiber and cat5. I loved it. I had a job where I could go home at night after only eight hours and not bring any thought of the job. the job itself was working with my hands and at the end of the day you had something concrete you could point to and say you accomplished. It involved very little brainpower(the odd addition and subtraction problem, and a couple interesting spatial problems(How do I get this from here to there without exceeding 100 meters or penetrating any fire walls or running it too close to AC power or exceding 180 degrees of turn between pull) all in all slightly more difficult that the first ten levels of tetris). Unfortunately I was making just slightly less than I needed each month to cover our budget( and believe me we don't live high on the hog). Near the end of tis period My wife forced me to sit down and watch Good Will Hunting. Some thing I had successfully avoided until now. It was a bad move. I am not quite as smart as they made the character out to be. But I'm not too far off that mark either. So now I'm pissed off at where my life is. And not sure where I want to go with it.
skip to the week before Christmas vacation. My oldest boy is in kindergarten. He is not doing his classwork. His teacher sent home examples. When asked why He tells his teacher "it's boring". I look at the work. It is boring. I look at the books he refuses to read. They make the see spot crap look exciting. They average one word per page and have no polysyllabic words. My five year old can actually use polysyllabic in a sentence correctly. The teacher gets his reading tested because She thinks he is just mouthing the words. He tests at a second grade sixth month vocabulary level. He tests at a third grade third month Comprehension level. Mouthing the words my ass. The teacher presents her solution. "I asked the librarian to let him get out books more appropriate for his reading level."
This just doesn't cut it. I refuse to allow my child to have the complete lack of respect for education that I did. I have figure out some way to explain to the teacher(s) just how unacceptable this is without letting the RAGE I still have pent up from my own experience color the things I tell them. In New York State my child has a right to "an education appropriate to his needs". The law that comes from was actually meant to force local schools to provide or pay for education for mentally handicapped kids, but the language leaves room for interpretation. I don't really have the resources to home school him, and I am very concerned about him getting some social skills. lord know I didn't manage to get any.
anyway this is one part of what I'm going through lately.
