9:41 pm - Friday, Jul. 28, 2006
Homeschool
I can't remember if I told you I'd be homeschooling Boy. It was partly his idea. He started telling people he was going to be homeschooled before I ever agreed to hometeach him. He's very excited about it.
I am a big supporter of public education. I think kids should be taught in groups. It's good for them, assuming that the groups aren't too large and the kids are being Taught. The trouble is that Boy is pretty damn smart, and he didn't do a lot of learning last year at all. Mathematically speaking, almost the whole year was wasted, as he had learned the 5th grade stuff the year before, and everyone insisted on teaching it to him again.
Beyond that, his teacher at the local NY school did little to inspire faith in this school district with the way she bullied the kids. Anybody taking education classes knows you don't make examples of the "good" or the "bad" kids; the "good" ones get teased and you never know if the "bad" ones meant to be bad. You never ridicule kids; it's demeaning and just teaches them how to hurt other people. You let the small stuff go. His teacher did None of this. And the Principal knows what goes on in there and apparently doesn't care.
But it gets better. Another thing you learn in Teacher school is "Do your own assignments". So if you're going to assign math problems, do them and make sure the answers come out right. If you're going to watch a movie in class, Watch the movie yourself first. This is one reason why Teachers are underpaid, because this can take some time. Apparently Boy's old teacher was paid more than enough, because time and again she was surprised in front of her class when the movie turned out to have a sex scene, or it turned out she didn't understand what she was supposed to be teaching. A particularly nasty episode involved the order of operations. Boy came up to me with his homework, concerned that he was going to get a decimal answer. I pointed out he had the order of operations wrong, and he was almost in tears because he teacher had told him to do it the way he was doing it, and here I was telling him different. We looked it up on the internet and plugged it into our graphics calculator, and the home team won. Now Boy was ecstatic- the Bitch was wrong! But we couldn't have Boy going to school like that. We can't have the Boy leaning his math wrong either. I advised Boy to hang in there while I wrote a letter tactfully suggesting that she review things. Before I got through writing, another teacher corrected her. Still, it was ugly for Boy.
Want to know the final straw? Was it the delinquent 10 year olds talking about huffing and lesbian porn on the bus? Bothersome, but nothing we can't handle. Was it the fact that Boy used the F word twice in a week, even though he knows it's one of two I can't stand?
We're getting there,
ASIDE:
It's Faggot. You thought it was Fuck, but you're wrong. My two words are Faggot and Nigger, because they're both intended to be utterly hurtful. There is no other purpose or meaning in them, and I will not have them used in my presence. Shit fuck damn hell ass and sometimes bitch at least have meanings that aren't entirely hateful, and I think that telling kids not to use them is just creating one more thing to argue over.
SO THERE
No, the final straw was Boy's band concert. Boy and his peers were so cute. They played their little numbers very well, lined up in the gym. I was so proud. Then the choir sang. They sang a song called Ma�ana. As I figured out what the little cherubs were singing, I turned to SImon and said "No fucking way". He said "Yep". I'm saying"Why aren't people gasping in horror?" He says "They don't notice". Here are the lyrics:

The faucet she is dripping and the fence she's fallin' down
My pocket needs some money, so I can't go into town
My brother isn't working and my sister doesn't care
The car she needs a motor so I can't go anywhere
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me)

My mother's always working, she's working very hard
But every time she looks for me I'm sleeping in the yard
My mother thinks I'm lazy and maybe she is right
I'll go to work ma�ana but I gotta sleep tonight
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me)

Oh, once I had some money but I gave it to my friend
He said he'd pay me double, it was only for a lend
But he said a little later that the horse she was so slow
Why he give the horse my money is something I don't know
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me)

(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me)

My brother took a suitcase and he went away to school
My father said he only learned to be a silly fool
My father said that I should learn to make a chile pot
But then I burned the house down, the chile was too hot
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me)

The window she is broken and the rain is comin' in
If someone doesn't fix it I'll be soaking to my skin
But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away
And we don't need a window on such a sunny day
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me) Oba! Oba!
(ma�ana, ma�ana, ma�ana is soon enough for me) Oba! Oba!

No Shit. They sang this. And the principal smiled and clapped. Everyone smiled and clapped because no one had the last name of Gonzolez or Rodriguez or Villa. I was ill. I said something to the choir director afterwards, and I just couldn't understand was there wasn't a line of horrified mothers waiting to chew him out. I asked if this was an attempt at diversity, and he said he wanted to teach the kids how to sing in harmony. He thought it was a cute song. I asked him if he thought it would be cute to sing about drunk Pat or the stupid Poles. I think not, because all the last names around here are Irish and Italian and Polish, and those songs would be Unfunny.
That tore it. It's one thing not to teach at all, it's another to teach the wrong things. I'm keepin' the Boy to home.