The School Wars Begin
The little angel will be three in a few months, and already there is talk among my parenting friends regarding preschools, and specifically whether The Emerald City, for all its love and popsicles, will be a worthy candidate for our children's young minds.
I'm torn. While I certainly would never knowingly put my child into an environment that makes her dumber rather than smarter, I'm not as confident as my friends that she needs daily focused and structured (and expensive) cognitive-building activity in order to be set up for success in life.
(Note: This is not a discussion of whether or not she should be placed in a good school district, or whether she should be asked to study for tests when she's eight. I'm talking preschool.)
I come to this subject as the product of two intelligent and educated parents. I also come to this subject as the product of one small-town, rather underfunded and (in my opinion) somewhat backward school system. My beloved was in the same boat.
My mother, who was a preschool teacher herself, often tells me that preschool is intended mostly to teach social skills, like taking turns, using the potty, sharing and listening quietly. The little angel (with the exception of the potty), already knows how to do these things, and socially she's right on track. She also knows how to count to twenty in Spanish and thirty in English, knows all of her colors and whether or not my belt goes with my shoes. She knows not to wear white before Easter or after Labor Day. She knows the way to my best friend's house. She knows how to stand on one leg and what the word "opposite" means. I say this only partly to brag. I also say this wondering how hard I should really push her at nearly three.
I would like her to learn another language at a young age, mostly because it will be easier for her. I want her to learn to recognize letters and numbers. But recently a friend of mine admitted she was worried because her four-year-old daughter, who has Down's Syndrome, seemed a little behind in her reading. My food fell out of my mouth as I pointed out that I didn't think most four-year-olds could read, Down's Syndrome or not. She looked a little sheepish at that point.
I was a bright kid. My parents didn't push me. Few of my teachers did either, but I was not in a geographical location that offered a lot of alternatives. The little angel will have access to alternatives I never had, but at the same time, I managed to get through high school and college and graduate school with straight As even given my lack of prep school. I sense in the little angel an innate intelligence, and I don't think she's going to have any trouble mastering the game that is academics.
I worry more she'll think it's the only game in life, the way I did.
Because I was so very good at book learning, I developed an early perfectionism that would plague me up until graduate school. Because I knew I was capable of acing every test, I felt it imperative, as though I, like the wicked witch, would dissolve into a pile of steaming green gel if I didn't win every academic award. The pressure only I put on myself was deafening and paralyzing. I think it played a big part in my eating disorder - I was so used to mastering everything easily, I went to any lengths to master my own caloric intake when things didn't go the way I wanted them to go.
In graduate school, I finally started focusing on my writing in a more subjective way. In a group of good writers, I realized with a shock that I couldn't charge to the head of my class with naked intelligence alone. That realization almost broke my spirit. It was so hard for me to accept myself as I am, someone who can still learn and grow, someone who will not always be good at everything I undertake just because I undertake it. I also finally learned, as an adult, that it's okay to play to your strengths and let some other things be simply good enough. Putting Herculean effort into all things leaves little energy for those things you actually like to do.
My husband is quite intelligent, too, but he will immediately go to common sense in situations to which I try to apply book learning. I find it hard to override information I've memorized or that has come from subject matter experts in favor of observation and practical application. He will instantly assess a situation and decide if it calls for more information or just maybe some duct tape. He's usually right. I only override him in areas where my memorized cache of useless information is actually valid, like grammar or nutrition. Things that can be memorized and coughed up when needed. I don't do well with applied math. I remember taking a test when I interviewed at Price Waterhouse after college. I didn't finish the complicated math problems. Later, my friend E. told me that the only people who finished (he got the job) were the people who stopped trying to do the math and just looked for patterns. Either your brain saw the patterns or it didn't, and they wanted people who didn't have to TRY to see the patterns. I was shaken that there could be tests I wouldn't pass just because I didn't have the right brain. That conversation stayed with me for years - lesson one that maybe there were some things I shouldn't worry about trying to master, because it didn't make sense.
I do want the little angel to be in environments that foster learning, but I also want her to grasp more of her father's way of thinking. Whereas I would suck up any information given to me like a sponge, he tends to weigh whether or not the information is even useful in the first place before figuring out whether or not to expend energy learning it. I was better at school, but he is better at not having a nervous breakdown. If I can give the little angel one bit of advice about school and learning in general, it will be to teach her how to play the academic game and get good grades for the end goal of riding her education like a train to whatever destination she desires. Good grades open doors to opportunity, but really, in and of themselves they are just letters on a piece of paper, a measure of effort more than intelligence.
I remember being bored a lot in school, and I certainly want the little angel to attend a school that doesn't bore her, but I fear if we focus too hard on the RIGHT school, then she'll end up with four hours of homework when she's seven. Putting too much emphasis on grades and success at an early age can be just as detrimental as not enough. I can say this because I can tell already that she possesses the faculties to do well in school, so my main job will be to show her how to channel those faculties into good grades without losing sight of the big picture. Grades are not a measurement of self. Grades tell teachers what THEY need to work on in order to help your child, and they are used in our world of standardized testing as a way to find a slot for our children in the world of academia. I want the little angel to have the best slot she can, but not at the expense of her psyche. I don't want to hear my daughter waking up in the middle of the night to clean her room, the way my mother said I did. My fear of disorder and failure was overwhelming to me, and it was no fault of my parents or my school. It was something hard-wired in me that I want to help the little angel understand and overcome if she turns out to be too much like her mama.
Yes, good preschools are important. Exposure to lots of concepts is important. But a lot of the most important lessons are taught at home, in the conversations we have with our children and the activities we choose to do when we are together. For us, that's nights and weekends. Fortunately, we live in a city with lots of interesting things to discover on the weekends, lots of indoor activities in the winter and parks and lakes and petting zoos in the summer. We don't visit these places because they are educational, per se, but because they are fun. Learning is fun when you're two.
I'm not sure I'm ready for our quest for the perfect school to begin just yet. We'll most likely move to a different area of the city within the next year, and she'll need to switch schools then. For now, I'd like her to play with her friends in the comfort of familiar surroundings. Her main teacher, who has a degree and ten years at The Emerald City, has been absent a lot in the past month due to her father's failing health. That has caused the quality of cognitive stimulation to dip quite a bit. However, I think the little angel is learning an important lesson as a result of Miss W.'s situation. Sometimes people have to drop everything that they're doing to be with the people they love, and sometimes the people we love leave this earth. There's nothing we can do about it, and it's sad, but we get through it. We talk every night about Miss W.'s daddy, and how he's sick and Miss W. had to go be with him, and she'll be sad when he dies. We don't dwell on it, but we don't avoid it, either. The little angel is very matter-of-fact about it, and she doesn't seem alarmed that her own daddy might die. She already understands that everyone has their own situation - it blows my mind that she understands that. Part of me thinks that lesson might be more meaningful in the long run than a few missed weeks of learning about bugs. Because she already knows what we do with bugs in our house is put them down the toilet so they can go swim in the ocean with Nemo and Marlin.
She'll stay at The Emerald City until we are ready to move to the 'burbs, and it will be sad if we lose a few of her friends to other preschools. I know that my parent friends are not ready to leave the city, so they need to think long-term when it comes to preschools. I don't fault them for that, nor do I think they're being ridiculous to want a higher level of learning for their children. I have a feeling that I'll have the opposite problem with my little angel - I'm afraid I'll have to teach her NOT to try so hard, if she's anything like me. I don't want her to have to wait until she's in her late twenties to learn to play to her strengths, and to learn that people will not stop loving her if she's not always first. That was a hard lesson for me, even though my parents never rewarded me for grades and in fact begged me as a child to loosen up academically. I hope that the little angel will have enough of her fun-loving father in her to realize that on her own, but because she is half me, I will not be pushing for the sake of pushing. I have a feeling she'll push herself without me ever doing a thing. And if she doesn't, I'll explain again why I want her to try hard in school - not because it'll make her a better person, but because education is a free ticket to the train going anywhere. Once she gets there, she can decide who she wants to be, grades be damned.
