Have you ever heard of “Hump Day,” Tanna? I expect not. I haven’t even heard that term myself for quite a while. When I was a college student, one of my dear friends cheerfully greeted me every Wednesday saying, “Happy Hump Day!”
The phrase referred to the school week, getting in gear on Monday and slowly rising to a peak of activity by mid-week, Wednesday. After that, the flurry settled down until by Friday afternoon, there was a lull and we prepared to welcome the weekend. Friday became “POETS Day,” the “Pooh On Everything Tomorrow’s Saturday” Day.
But Wednesday was Hump Day. And glancing over the list of assignments my live-in 5th grade grandson faces this Wednesday, it remains so to this day.
One thing we have noticed, as a result of the COVID school shutdown last spring, is the dearth of competence in our grandson. He continues with online schooling, though now under a different teacher at a different grade school—District policy, not necessarily our choice. He is ill-equipped to read and understand instructions for his assigned work. Coupled with unreliable internet connections and this school thing has become an ordeal, frustrating to students, adults in the home, and to teachers as well, I imagine.
In short, his school has failed him to this point.
Our child needs almost constant supervision and he barely keeps up with the assignments that are thrown at him. He’s nurturing the independence he will need in later years, but still needs lots of help with concepts. Help sessions are fraught with resentment and resistance. I would like him to seek help when he needs it. But part of the problem might be he has no clear idea when he needs help. He is that lost.
Other parents of elementary students share similar concerns. What in the world are the schools doing? Why conceal important feedback behind educator-ese? Why keep families in the dark about what their children are doing? Why emphasize the speed student read, when they aren’t gleaning meaning from the words? What difference does it make how fast you read if you don’t understand what you are reading?
I suspect this emphasis on speed is to prepare students for making good marks on some test or other but it baffles me that comprehension has never been stressed. Isn’t that the point of reading?
And math—why complicate simple mathematical processes with cluttered diagrams, tables, and explanations that take the entire live class meeting to demonstrate? Just do the problems. I sense that all the extra gobbledygook complicates things to the point that our one-time little math star is beyond confused. He’s clueless.
All this comes at the expense of omitting enrichment subjects like geography, social studies, and science. It’s a crime to deny the study of science to a little guy who answers, “scientist” to the question, “What would you like to be when you grow up?”
To be fair, his 5th grade teacher includes social studies and science, but his exposure up to this point is so minimal it barely exists. Topics and subjects I recall from the elementary school days of my grown children, or my own school days, are left out entirely. I recall classroom competitions to memorize all 50 states and their capitals—in 5th grade! Health classes in 4th grade featured the different physiological systems and their components in the human body. Yet today, nothing. To what end? What are we doing to the children of today?
It may go back to policy changes during the early days of this century called, “No Child Left Behind.” What it has become, in reality, is that no child is offered quality instruction. Schools madly teach so their students can pass tests—in order to keep basic funding for education. And when our state cuts funding to education even further, there is precious little left to offer our public school students.
That’s another reason I support sending Ken White to Topeka. He’s running on a platform advocating the best education for Kansas kids in these trying times. If that raises taxes, so what? It’s an investment in our future we can’t afford to overlook. Beyond that, Ken suggests we need equitable taxation in which everyone—including the very wealthy—pays their fair share. Public services shouldn’t be dumped onto the shoulders of low-income residents.
When I was young there was a huge effort to bolster public education. In an imagined competition between our country and another on the other side of the planet, we stepped up efforts to increase training in math and science. That was the educational atmosphere I grew up in and I’m horrified at the lax attention such enrichment subjects receive today.
What kind of schools will exist in your time, Tanna? I hope there is sanity restored to the system, and your friends and neighbors realize the value of quality education for all.
With enduring love,
Your seventh generation grandmother
The Bridge 