Tilting at Whiteboards
My one-person mission is to revive America by restoring the neighbourhood school. No more of this business of driving precious yuppie cargo all over hell's half acre to find the "best" school in an orgy of mobilized entitlement. If your neighbourhood school is crap, then roll up your sleeves and get to work to make it the place you want it to be. Do we want our kids growing up feeling like their mere existence is reason enough for the universe to cough up the goodies? Or do we want them to grow up knowing that they can change the world if they work hard enough? Knowing that their parents value them, their education, and their future enough to put in the hours it takes to transform a bad school into a good one, so that all their fellow citizens-to-be will be educated and taken care of, not just the elite few. What drives me wild is parents who would "do anything for their children" but can't get it together to put in a few hours a week at their local school. No, the monumental effort it takes to drive their kid across town is what constitutes "doing anything" for these folks. Nice legacy.
Anyway, this was not supposed to be a bitter rant, but a celebration of why all schools should be neighbourhood schools: Last night driving home from our Japanese math tutoring school (another subject for another day) we passed by a small clump of people and cars on the street. There was a 3rd grader from my son's school and his dad. Standing in the middle of the street joking with someone in a car was a 2nd grade teacher. Waving wildly, while trying not to hit anyone, I turned the corner, and there was a 2nd grade student with his sister, a Kindergartener, and their mother, who is our PTA Parliamentarian (she's a lawyer -- that's why). At the next corner, where we turned onto our street, there was our neighbour, mother of another Kindergarten student, out on her sidewalk, regaling one of her neighbours.
So look at that: students who are neighbours, neighbours who are friends. It's a community, people. It's so retro. It's so necessary.
