It has been a very long time since I've written a post. Since the early postings we’ve moved to Kentucky. The girls are now in public school in Bellevue, and the long afternoons together seem like ages ago. I wouldn’t trade the year for anything. It did teach me that “home schooling” – even part time – is incredibly taxing. I also learned that good intentions aren’t enough. So many times other agendas controlled the order of the day.
So now we are facing the long road ahead known as “public education” and how our girls will fare within it. It’s that thing we’ve written about for years. We’ve studied it and theorized about it. Now it is upon us in the form of Grandview Elementary.
When Rick and I started looking in the area, trying to decide where to live, we visited a lot of schools. There were a few that seemed fairly impressive. Some of them, however, were in communities that came with a great deal of baggage. “Oh, they don’t respond well to outsiders there,” or “It really matters there whether you live on the north or south side of town.” These were phrases that pushed us away from some communities and their schools – however progressive the schools may have seemed. Then we walked into Grandview. It was vibrant. The principal was incredibly energetic. They seemed to work really hard to support all students and to ensure that “haves” and “have nots” were not easy to discern. Lots of parents were there when we visited. Everyone seemed incredibly happy to be there. We were hooked. We told the realtor to only show us homes in Bellevue.
Now we are in the second week of school. We are both still very happy with the school. I think for public school you really cannot get much better than Grandview. Nevertheless, we are still confronted with all that is “public school,” and what that may ultimately mean for our girls. Granted, part of my angst may come from reading Ken Robinson at the same time school is beginning. In his book, Out of Our Minds, he challenges the ways schools have killed creativity in many ways. He doesn’t lay the complete burden of this problem on the schools. Society has certainly demonstrated a very narrow view of intelligence and achievement. He does note, and I agree, that schools are the primary instrument we use to kill creativity in youth.
As I read and as I think about the very real changes in our family as we enter the public education phase of our children’s lives, I can’t help but wonder about how my girls will change over the next 12 years and how much of that will be shaped by their schools. The reality really hits when I stop and watch Niamh. She is a bundle of creative energy. For years now she has tried to stay awake at night by creating her own dramas. Sometimes I walk by her room at night and see her using her dolls (or her hands on the nights when we take the dolls away) to enact dramatic skits with different characters all exhibiting different voices, moods, etc. Other nights I hear what appear to be full-blown operas with protagonists, antagonists, vibrant lyrics, and a variety of plot twists. When she and her sister play make-believe, Niamh is typically the one who sets up the storyline. When she is coloring, the characters on the page take on life-like qualities. It’s not just a two-dimensional form on a page to fill-in. It’s a princess calling out to her “honey” about some exciting event.
In addition to her drama, Niamh SEES things. She notices all sorts of nuances in the world and she makes connections between things that would seem so idiosyncratic to the average person. She connects things in nature to movies, songs, things she may have experienced a long time ago. Not only that, but seeing things gets her so excited. When one thing reminds her of another she gets her wonderfully big grin and looks like she is about to burst unless she shares what she has seen.
Rick and I have often wondered what Niamh’s bundle of imaginative energy looks like in the classroom. We’ve always gotten wonderful reports about her behavior, so we have to assume that the temperamental outbursts that sometimes come with this imaginative spirit are reigned in while in formal institutions of learning. While we appreciate this, we can’t help but wonder whether the creative energy itself isn’t likewise reigned in, and if so, what does that mean if she feels she has to turn off her creative spirit – that spirit that defines her – in order to do well in school.
We’ve seen an unsettling example of this during homework this week. For the past two nights Niamh has had a worksheet where she has to practice her letters. For the record, I don’t object to handwriting practice, and I know that she needs to review her letters for the sake of what is expected in kindergarten and first grade. Niamh was particularly frustrated the first night because she felt she was being forced to write big letters. The paper had the very wide lines with the dotted lines in the center – designed to be more developmentally appropriate for kindergarten students. But Niamh loves to write her letters with a very small font. She was initially rebellious and protested, “My teacher wants me to write big!” However, by the second day her protests subsided and she had accepted the required font size. Much of this, I am sure, is a direct result of her adoration of her teacher, Mrs. Skirvin. She wanted to please her. If that meant writing her letters bigger than she otherwise preferred, then so be it. While she was practicing her B’s, Niamh danced, laughed, and imagined the bumps of the B’s as bellies. At one point, however, she made a B almost identical to the B on the worksheet. She stopped, grew excited, and declared, “I made a REAL one. I made a real B.” She then ran into the next room with the paper to show Rick.
I was left quite unsettled at the kitchen table as she ran into the other room. What are we doing if we teach her that there is such a thing as a “real B” versus the creative bellied B’s (some of which she’d given accessories) on her page? I know she wasn’t directly “taught” that there is such a thing as a real B in her kindergarten class, but after only five days in a public school she had somehow managed to learn that there are right ways to do things and being creative doesn’t have anything to do with being right. In fact, it could very well prevent you from being right. While a “real B” isn’t necessarily an educational tragedy in and of itself, I still worry about all the other lessons both she and Audrey will hear about what is “right” and what is “real,” and how that will shape their views of themselves and their world.
So, I guess my plea to Mrs. Skirvin , Niamh’s wonderful kindergarten teacher, and Mrs. Simpkins, the wonderful principal of Grandview, is that in spite of all the powers that are trying to destroy creativity and enforce a culture of compliance, please save spaces in your school for the amazing potential of imaginative spirits. Honor SEEING and animated BEING along with the standards. I know this is a lot to ask, but when I think about what is at risk - both in my own home and in society itself – how can I/we not ask?
