how has an entire week slipped by me? i was either very busy, or i was being very lazy. both lots of activity and lots of laziness in one week.
there were all kinds of things i wanted to write about, but the one that most sticks in my mind is a discussion i had with a woman about kids in grade school. she provides instruction at different schools in the county, and she started talking about what it’s actually like for the children.
for one thing, in many places they only get one recess. and in some schools there is no talking allowed at lunch. if a kid is “bad’ by talking, or i guess if they’re “bad” doing something else, they don’t get any recess at all.
how can this be? if you don’t live in springfield, you wouldn’t know that the paper is filled daily with letters about the smoking ban. i wish people would get over it and move on, but i’m shocked that nobody has ever written about mute lunches/limited recess.
i have no children, i’m not going to have any children, and i feel bad for people who have them or who are going to have them. the woman i talked to said this is a nationwide kind of thing. i talked to another person connected with a school, and she verified the no talking lunches and lack of recess. she said that there were some studies about it being good for kids to be quiet during lunch because it promoted calmness, or some such thing. she seemed to think it was a bad idea, too.
the first woman also told me that they’re expecting kindergarteners to write sentences. i’m sure we didn’t have to do anything such thing when i was in kindergarten. i have vivid memories of circling different things with a fat purple crayon, and i know i was good at it, but i’m sure no sentences were written. the woman told me that many kids don’t have the motor skills to hold a pencil and write, it’s too much for them, they need simpler things in order to develop normally. it seems they’re pushing kids and pushing them, and at the same time not letting them run around and make some noise, just like…CHILDREN.
after the discussion i decided if i did have children, i’d seriously consider home-schooling them, which i always thought was only for religious zealots.
why isn’t anybody protesting? do parents think it’s a good idea for their children to be forced to do work that’s above their level, and then not allowed to vent any child energy?
the woman also talked about the prevalence of childhood obesity, which of course is a serious issue and i don’t see it getting any better. but if kids can’t even run around at school, and they go home and sit around with computer games/tv, aren’t most of them going to get fat? and of course p.e. has been cut dramatically because of lack of funding.
i do have to say that p.e. was a wretched experience for me, personally, but that was mostly in junior high, not grade school. i loved kick ball and dodge ball and any of those sports involving large, squishy, non-life-threatening big red p.e. balls.
i can’t imagine what it would be like to be a kid today. maybe that’s a thing that adults always say, but maybe they mostly say “kids, i don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today.” i have to confess that since i don’t have a lot of contact with actual children, they can seem rather loud and annoying to me. but now i feel they should be LOUDER.
LET THE CHILDREN BE FREE.
i’m busy making vegetable stock now, and i must get back to it.
oh, and i have to continue to wait for the GIANT HUGE SCARY ICE STORM that they kept threatening us with all weekend, but right now it’s just raining.
ok ok ok.
grace.