Re: Belated response Re: coping mechanisms

I could not do this and remain physically healthy
except by going delusional on the points tested, they punished me
severely for this fact as well (for "lacking flexibility" or some
such).

If you had found that happening to you, Tamar or Gary or anyone here
(at any age), what would you have done?

Re:

The material taught in second grade
is rarely the stuff of fierce battles for the truth.

For me, 2nd grade was such a series of horrors that, after my 2nd day
as a transfer student to a public suburban school from a Catholic city
school, I simply shut down for the rest of the year & was very nearly
failed, just narrowly avoiding a decision to make me repeat by doing
spectacularly on state-imposed placement tests.

The 1st day, my teacher told me to write my name, address & phone # on
a 3X5 card. When I turned it in to her, she announced, in the sort of
tone that is designed to get the attention of the entire class, "What
do you think you're doing here, young lady?" as she shoved the card
back in my hand, along with another blank one.

"I wrote down everything that you asked," was my reply, and I was well
past confused at her question.

"In 2nd grade, we print!"

"Oh, sorry, where I came from, we--"

"Obviously, you aren't 'where you came from', young lady. Here we have
rules, and you WILL follow them!'

By then, I was too tongue-tied to argue with her. Having been raised
as a good Catholic-school girl to unthinkingly assume that the adults
in authority knew best, that I WANTED to argue with her shocked me
into silence. But I remember how angry I was about being expected to
follow rules I'd never been taught.

The next day was library. My class filed in, & I stayed in line for a
few minutes while the librarian had his say (something like we were
expected to check out a book every week, but could have up to 2 at a
time if we wanted). As soon as he finished telling us we could go pick
out our books, I'd figured out the layout & made a beeline for the
600's (Dewey Decimal) bookcases.

I hadn't gone more than a few steps when I was jerked back by a hand
at the back of my collar. "Where do you think you're going, young
lady?"

Stumbling over some words as I tried to explain my latest passion, she
dragged me over to a low, 4-shelf section below the windows. "THESE
are the books 1st and 2nd graders are allowed to read."

Picture books. In my mind at the time, baby books. I didn't think
before I whined, "But I stopped reading those books almost two years
years ago!"

"What did I tell you about rules?" She went on for quite awhile, but
I'd bocked her out & turned her off at that point.

29 years later, when my son was in 2nd grade, in a private school that
used the Calvert School materials (secular private school in Baltimore
City that has a physical school & a home-school program that other
schools & individual families can buy into) for kindergarten thru 4th
grade, he was avidly listening to a discussion comparing the United
States to other countries that eventually focussed on where would be
the best places to live. Well into it, Matthew dived in, asking why
nobody had mentioned South Africa.

Silence for a moment. "Honey, you and your dad and your sister, and
your dad's relatives would get by fine there, but most of your
relatives on your Nana's side of the family would never pass for
white, and South Africa is a pretty wretched place for people who
aren't."

"That isn't what my history book says." So Leo & I went to his history
book. "See? It says that the Cape was an empty land where Europeans
got shipwrecked and made a colony and where the English and the other
people there get along real great and--"

"Damn. Leo, that's pretty much the way it's written here." The
textbook had been copyrighted in 1952, when texts were allowed to get
away with that kind of crap. So we gave our son a bit of some of the
actual history involved, an overview of the Boer Wars & aparteid
(sic?) & that because him being between 1/8 & 1/16th non-white, he'd
be considered 'colored' unless he went before a judge who could
declare him white based on his looking white & the judge's whim. And
that those of us with 1/8 or more were unlikely to have had that
option. And that such total segregation warped the whole culture. And
that even here in the US (well, especially here in the US) we've been
going thru entirely too much of the same.

Anyway, we questioned the headmaster and Matt's teacher at some
length, even tried to get some of the other parents involved in asking
for a revision of the text, BUT NOBODY CARED! The only positive (well,
neutral) thing I can report is that when my daughter was in the same
school & grade, that entire chapter had been edited out. But the one
in the Greek Myth text that went on about how Hera was irrationally
jealous of her husband's 'friendships with young mortal women and
their children' was still intact. So we read all of their texts, then
supplemented and/or contradicted with facts & opinions of our own
flavor.

So, yes, materials, facts & opinions taught in 2nd graded SHOULD be
the stuff of fierce battles, and I hope that such battles aren't as
rare as they once were!

Kathy Sands



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood
    ... your school. ... And the Captain Underpants books that were her guilty pleasure even in the fifth grade are obviously aimed at boys. ...
    (misc.kids)
  • Re: New Book Revives Lost Notions of Boyhood
    ... your school. ... The Baby-Sitter's club books that DD was into a few years ... At what grade level? ... a tabl on my toe and mad it blue and it changed to blak." ...
    (misc.kids)
  • Re: Now I have to brag a little!
    ... He brought home his school report card the other day. ... When I was in school, I remember we got our grades in a %. ... "Achievement Level" to grade the subjects and areas in each subject. ... Some new books that interest him seem far better than junk he ...
    (misc.kids)
  • Re: Q: standard grammar
    ... From my first years in school I always challenged that kind of thing, ... checked the facts, and came back with the correct answer the next day. ... from grade 7 to grade 8 because we were bored, ... At least in the US, there is so much standardized testing, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Growing up gifted
    ... In some cases, I was put on the "gifted" track (it was called "GATE" in my high school, for Gifted and Talented Education); in other cases, I was given books of my own. ... I know for sure that one reason I skipped the 8th grade was because in my first few weeks in the new middle school it was clear they didn't have math books that would cover anything I hadn't learned already in the really excellent Navy school I attended overseas. ...
    (soc.singles.moderated)