School Skirmishes

As a parent, you find yourself having to advocate on behalf of your child at all times, particularly in the public schools. And we are no different than any other parent, who work over time as parents. My son's recent school project has raised many concerns for us as a family, all of which has ended in a letter being written to his teacher. My son, who is a mere 5 years old, brings home endless notes from his teacher, it seems every day. I knew his class was working on a family project, the culmination of which would be an international luncheon. The international luncheon part is hilarious since his class is, for whatever reason, predominantly Irish-American. I know this has to do with the fact that the previous owners of this mammoth real estate didn't allow blacks to rent in their apartment buildings. And as my son noted, there are no Korean students in his class, unlike his preschool in LA, which was situated smack dab in the middle of the largest Korea community outside of Seoul, Korea.

A sheet was sent for us fill out with prosaic questions like: Where are you mother's family and father's family from? I, of course, filled in Korea for me and North Carolina for my husband since that is where his family is from. The teacher took me aside to ask what country my husband's family origins trace back to. Hmmm. It took me but a minute to respond his family were slaves. Of course she was flustered by my direct response. The urgency to know the origin of country for the kids' maternal and paternal family was a result of the flags the kids would make to correspond with whatever country their ancestors traced back to. She said she understood the sensitivity of slavery, a topic we have yet to discuss with our child. But she pressed the point in us identifying a region or, more specifically, a country in Africa where my husband's family could be traced. This is the point where I wanted to deck her, not only for her doggedness, but for her absolute dimwittedness about all of this. The worst part of this discussion was her revelation she'd run into this same problem before with other African-American students. Hmmm...Yes, this is an educated person in charge of teaching young kids.

You can imagine the discussions that ensued in our house. My husband, rightly, declared we should tell her to use the American flag since slaves were largely responsible for building most of the institutions of this country. And if she had a problem with this logic, she should call him at the office so he could make his point. Obviously, this was not an ideal solution for the situation since I'm the one having to deal with her daily. After some research, really just typing in Pan African flag into a search engine, I discovered there is such a flag. Again, why she couldn't do this is beyond me since she's the one who created this particular curriculum. I printed out the information sheet on this flag and attached a letter we wrote to address our concerns this project raised for us, but would certainly raise for others,most notably and ironically, the only true Americans--Native Americans.

My husband always points out that the majority of the country is run by C- students, a most sobering thought if you give thought to this. We know the top job in this country, namely the Presidency, could be attained by those with far less on their academic records. A certain idealism on my part would have hoped teachers would be more worldly and rigorous in their own classrooms. But that's expecting more than is the reality.

The Economist recently had an article about the academic rankings of countries. Finland, it seems, is the most ideal place for one to be uber-educated. The United States didn't even rank in the reading scores--a grim statistic indeed since Bush's "No Child Left Behind," touts its successes. The article pointed out the one stark differences between countries with high scores and those with scores that don't register is how the top scoring countries take only top students as teachers--hardly the reality in this country. We all know this stems from the devaluation of teachers in our culture, a trend that has reached an all-time low. What does this mean for our children? Well, it seems they will be behind many of their international peers in reading, math, and science. What does that translate into for our country's future? It means innovation, those ideas that can spawn entire industries, will occur more often on soil other than the US. It means the dumbing down of our cultural institutions will occur without the citizenry, smart enough, or engaged enough, to take note or to argue for more. It will mean the constant polarization where religious fundamentalism will take place of intellectual curiosity. People, finding their world confusing (and too dumb to understand why) will turn to the "opiate for the masses"--mega churches to answer all the ills of a world where children's futures are just a bit more hopeless than the previous generations'.

It is a grim picture indeed. It's enough to make us want to immigrate to Finland, the only biracial family to ever arrive on their shores.