I've spent the last week thinking WAY too much about the terribleness of the education Duchess is getting. I've even been thinking that I should homeschool her for the rest of the year. This is not a suggestion I would have taken seriously even a few months ago, given how much we squabble even when I'm not trying to get her to do something, but now I'm unemployed, and my primary occupation is trying to make the school a little better. And she's not learning anything academic at all. I've been helping the 4th and 5th grade kids in the homework club with stuff that Duchess already knows or could master with an hour of work.* The school district has no social studies curriculum for K-5, so the only history/geography/politics she gets comes from the terrible Scholastic magazine they get once in a while. Science seems to barely happen at all. For "technology," they go to the computer lab and play typing games. I am being forced to face the fact that I am just warehousing my kid at school every day. She would learn a ton more if I apprenticed her to the bike shop we walk past on the way to school every day. Or, heck, the bakery. She would learn more from reading on her own from books she chose herself for an hour every day.
Today, though, I'm thinking about gender in the classroom. I went on a field trip with Duchess's class this week,** which included riding public transit with 24 2nd graders. Today I helped with a class in the after-school program I'm coordinating. In both of those contexts, I saw the same dynamic play out that I see repeated one way or other in most of my interactions with groups of kids. The boys are (generally) loud, and disruptive, and they physically or verbally interrupt activities. The girls are (generally) less aggressive. The boys get reprimanded, but they also get recognized, and they get heard, and they often get away with taking more resources. Today I watched a group of mostly girls sit down as directed on the floor with the teacher. Four boys, who had been horsing around and ignoring the directions, then barged right into the middle of the circle and sat down, laughing. The teacher had them scoot back, which meant that the girls all had to move, and the boys all ended up with prime seats in the front for the activity. The teacher made it clear that she disapproved of their behavior, but they still ended up with a positive outcome, plus the attention of the whole group.
I've been hearing about concern that girls are outperforming boys academically. My initial response was "So? In my experience, men get more breaks than women do outside of school." But now my response is "So? Everything else they experience in school supports the idea that boys deserve more attention and are entitled to be more disruptive without serious consequences." It seems to me that we're busy training these kids that girls are well-behaved and get good grades, but boys STILL get all the attention. And the girls do all the cleaning up.
Anyway, in my home school, girls will always get the best seats and have the loudest voices. Nobody will clean up.
* Division, fractions, antonyms, reading comprehension. Duchess has been attending homework club with me, and she is surprised by how easy the 4th graders' homework looks, and how they don't know who Martin Luther King Jr was, or what the word "pleasant" means. Now I'm worrying I'm raising a snob.
**Duchess has banned me from ever chaperoning again. Apparently I was too strict, and all the kids were looking at her "with disgust." The teacher, on the other hand, asked me with apparently genuine feeling if I would please chaperone every single field trip.
Today, though, I'm thinking about gender in the classroom. I went on a field trip with Duchess's class this week,** which included riding public transit with 24 2nd graders. Today I helped with a class in the after-school program I'm coordinating. In both of those contexts, I saw the same dynamic play out that I see repeated one way or other in most of my interactions with groups of kids. The boys are (generally) loud, and disruptive, and they physically or verbally interrupt activities. The girls are (generally) less aggressive. The boys get reprimanded, but they also get recognized, and they get heard, and they often get away with taking more resources. Today I watched a group of mostly girls sit down as directed on the floor with the teacher. Four boys, who had been horsing around and ignoring the directions, then barged right into the middle of the circle and sat down, laughing. The teacher had them scoot back, which meant that the girls all had to move, and the boys all ended up with prime seats in the front for the activity. The teacher made it clear that she disapproved of their behavior, but they still ended up with a positive outcome, plus the attention of the whole group.
I've been hearing about concern that girls are outperforming boys academically. My initial response was "So? In my experience, men get more breaks than women do outside of school." But now my response is "So? Everything else they experience in school supports the idea that boys deserve more attention and are entitled to be more disruptive without serious consequences." It seems to me that we're busy training these kids that girls are well-behaved and get good grades, but boys STILL get all the attention. And the girls do all the cleaning up.
Anyway, in my home school, girls will always get the best seats and have the loudest voices. Nobody will clean up.
* Division, fractions, antonyms, reading comprehension. Duchess has been attending homework club with me, and she is surprised by how easy the 4th graders' homework looks, and how they don't know who Martin Luther King Jr was, or what the word "pleasant" means. Now I'm worrying I'm raising a snob.
**Duchess has banned me from ever chaperoning again. Apparently I was too strict, and all the kids were looking at her "with disgust." The teacher, on the other hand, asked me with apparently genuine feeling if I would please chaperone every single field trip.
Comments
still wishing we lived next door to you all.
also, i'm sorry the education duchess is receiving is so lame. i wish it weren't that way. NCLB is really a piece of work.
at least she's learning that boys are more important than girls. (i jest. clearly.)