Something irrelevant and obnoxious...

I was going to leave the general contents of this passage as a comment to a friends blog, but I got really excited and when I was done typing it looked more like a dissertation than a comment.

The Piano teacher has a blog, a delicious on at that and I was perusing her thursday Thirteen looking for some inspiration for my already late installment. She made a great poignant T13 about 13 things she wants to accomplish in 2008, a sort of rundown on resolutions.

Off topic, I have never made nor kept even one resolution, so to see someone aspire to 13 blow my tiny mind.

Anyhow, one resolution was to read more and with her sons. She went on to mention that the boys both have reading goals set by their schools.

To broach the subject before I broach it I will start by saying that her children are in elementary school, my least favorite stop on the gravy train of education. I was awkward as a prepubescent. I was atleast a foot taller, 2 times stronger, and 4 years ahead of my peers in intellect between the ages of 7 and 12. The combination of those facts mademy elementary- middle school years complete hell.

I was too bored in class to participate and too bored with the kids around me to have fun. I was just a big, imposing doof with nothing to do but read. And read I did. Anything. Textbooks, novels short stories, articles, etc, until I got migraines.

With that being said....

One of her boy's is assigned to read 15 books per month. Here was my immediate and unrefined response to that fact :

"15 books a month!!! I was a book worm as a kid and I never followed the D.E.A.R. guidelines they gave us- to keep up I would have been reading Goosebumps and Amelia Bedelia until I was 17!! I would seriously consider throwing a hissy fit about that 15 book a month goal- How are they supposed to be expected to read the classics in under 2 days!! Maybe I'm over excited, but I can't even feel comfortable with putting away an OK magazine after just two days of reading and processing what I've read...."

Truth be told, I was reading 12 grade material in 5th grade. When they attempted to place me in advanced reading, our first assignment was "the Hobbit" I to this day despise Sci Fi books, especially those that involve alternate universes and things like trolls (excepting ONLY the CS Lewis series.) So I refused to read the Hobbit. They took my refusal as a sign of lacking intelligence, rather than as a sign of a maturity in taste and desire.

My point is, the educational system has lost it's purpose. Instead of being there to support and educate our youth, it is there in enforce rule and make sure everyone has a "fair playing field." Children who cannot keep up are pushed ahead and those that are ahead are ostrisized and turned into lazy idiots.

Had I been fostered properly in elementary school who knows where a better education would have lead me. But when I refused to stop talking because I already knew how to balance equations I was sent to detention instead of moving forward in my studies. When I finished my tests early I was told to put my head down and wait instead of being pushed to acheieve the next level of the course.

I watched friends struggle with simple reading and writing activities in 12th grade and peer evaluated my classmates who couldn't add and subtract without a calculator.

My teachers goal was to give everyone a fair education and to pass everyone through a standardizing testing window. Even in Advanced classes (which I was not allowed to apply for untill I was in my Junior year of high shcool) our teachers repetedly told us that we were not to learn about science, math, econ, history, and english, but instead the goal of the class was to prepare us to pass a test.

All of which I passed where my childhood friends failed, wasting time and money on tests they were never prepared for.

They were simply moved through the system like the rest. Given every opportunity to be lazy, slow and unaccomplished, and no real chance to flourish.

All because of pre-determined 5th grade reading levels and the No Child Left Behind statutes of this great state.