Grammar 101

Trinity Episcopal Church, at the corner of Broad and Third Streets in downtown Columbus, has a cool arched red entrance and a welcoming message for all just above its two front doors. But . . . “An House of Prayer”?

It violates one of the rules of grammar that were drilled into students back in grade school — namely, that you use “an” when the following word starts with a vowel sound and “a” when the following word starts with a consonant sound. It’s one of the many weird English grammar rules that trip people up precisely because of letters like h, which can be pronounced in some cases and silent in others — so you write “an honor” but “a house.”

So how did the friendly message above the front door at Trinity get bungled? I don’t know, but I may have to go inside to see whether there are violations of other key rules, like “I before E, except after C, or where sounded in A as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh.'”

Two-Cent Milk

Yesterday I had oatmeal for breakfast, and the waitress at the hotel restaurant brought me a small carton of milk along with some raisins, brown sugar, and blueberries.

Looking at the small milk carton immediately reminded me of my earliest days in the cafeteria in grade school.  Sometimes Mom would pack my lunch, and sometimes if she was too busy I would eat a hot lunch at the school cafeteria.  Either way, a staple of the lunch hour was paying two cents for a small carton of ice-cold whole milk.  It tasted good with either a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Twinkie from a paper bag or a hot plate of Johnny Marzetti on a plastic school cafeteria tray.

The two-cent milk was an important rite of passage in two ways.  It was my first real use of money and — equally important — my first real experience with being entrusted with money.  Mom would give me two pennies and I would walk to school with that cold, hard cash burning a hole in my pocket, knowing that I couldn’t lose it or I wouldn’t be able to get my milk with lunch.  In those first-grade days I didn’t have much of a conception of how the world worked, or how much things cost, but I knew that my milk at lunch cost two cents.

And, of course, the carton itself was a key test of young kid small motor skills.  You had to manipulate the carton just right to achieve the optimal milk-drinking experience.  The first step, of gently separating the container opening, was easy.  It was the second step, which involved applying just the right amount of pressure so that the carton would pop open in one clean motion, that was the challenge.  If you did’t get it on the first try, with each new effort the container would lose structural integrity and stay frustratingly closed, and you might have to use your fingernails to claw it open, leaving the milk drinking hole looking embarrassingly mushy and torn.

When I was presented with the small container of milk with my oatmeal yesterday, I felt my inner first-grader deep inside, focused on the task of opening the milk as cleanly and proficiently as the big kids did.  Alas, I still don’t have the knack.

Selling Reading

Schools are always trying to come up with things to make kids want to read.  I’m not sure any of it works — kids either pick up the love of reading or they don’t, and the summer reading clubs or painted signs or gold stars don’t seem to make much difference one way or the other — but I had to hand it to the unknown artists at the school down the block who came up with a flying saucer, a space shuttle and boosters and representations of all of the planet in the solar system.

One question:  does anybody use the phrase “out of this world” anymore?

Birds Of A Feather

Today two birds decided to roost for a bit on the ledge right outside the window in front of my desk.  I’m not sure what kinds of birds they were — mourning doves?  brown pigeons? — but I certainly understood their impulse to bask in the sunshine and enjoy some long overdue spring weather.

I would gladly have been out on the ledge with them.  Today was the kind of day where, in elementary school, you’d beg your teacher to let you sit outside for the math lesson — and the kind of day where a teacher sick to death of gray, chilly weather might just say yes.

Kids On The School Stage

A few days ago a drama teacher at Richard and Russell’s school gave Kish some pictures of the kids when they were in various productions, years ago.  There were some snapshots of Russell dressed up like a Native American for one school play, and this picture of Richard in a somewhat Harry Potterish old man costume and makeup for another.

The pictures brought back memories, of course — and they were all good ones.  Any parent who has watched their child perform in a school play remembers the tension and nerves as the show time neared, because you were praying fervently that there wasn’t some mishap or stumble after the weeks of learning lines and practicing and staging.  But then the curtain would go up, the kids would perform like champs, the parents would feel a sense of great relief, and in the end it was clear that the kids who were in the show had a ball.

And years later, when you think about your kids’ school years, it turns out that the theater performances created many of the strongest memories.  When Richard was in kindergarten he played a squirrel in a short play called The Tree Angel and had the first line.  The teacher said she picked Richard because she was absolutely sure that he would not be nervous and would say the line without a problem, and she was right.  I felt like I learned something important about our little boy that day.  Several years later, Richard played Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, even sang a song on stage (“Cheer up, Charlie . . . “), and did a great job.  Russell, too, had his turns before the footlights, memorably playing a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz and the aforementioned Native American character, who I think was named Bullseye and (intentionally) got a lot of laughs in another show.

The point isn’t that our kids were great actors or stars, and their participation didn’t turn them toward Broadway or Hollywood for their adult careers.  But those school plays did give them a chance to shine on stage and to know firsthand what it was like to perform in front of an audience — and, in the process, to get a better sense of themselves and their capabilities.  School is supposed to do that.  The fact that the performances are warmly recalled by parents, years later, is just the icing on the cake.

When I look at these old photographs, I think about the school systems that, for budgetary reasons, have cut their theatre programs, or their orchestra or choir programs, or their art programs.  When the budget axe falls, those programs get chopped first, on the rationale that they are non-academic and therefore non-essential:  after all, the standardized tests that seem to drive school policy these days don’t check whether you can act or sing or play an instrument.  But that reasoning is wrong-headed, and also sad.  It doesn’t recognize how those programs greatly enrich the school years and help to produce more well-rounded students who have tried something new and now are bonded by the shared experience of performing before an audience — and it also deprives the parents of that deep, lasting thrill of learning something new about their child.

The Joys Of Recess

  

On lunch break in Brooklyn, I walked past a park and saw a bunch of schoolkids playing during recess. They had no equipment other than a ball and no teacher or monitor telling them what to do, but they obviously were having fun playing a game of their own creation where one kid stretched out on the ground and the others had to bounce the ball over her prone figure.

Who doesn’t remember recess fondly — and these kinds of unsupervised moments are the most memorable.

Suddenly, September Traffic

If Gershwin were a Midwestern commuter, he might have written: “Summertime, when the traffic is easy.”

That’s because, at any given point during June, July, and August, a good chunk of the population is on vacation. That means, in turn, a reduced number of cars crowding onto highways and byways at the peak hours. The result, typically, is a smooth and pleasant ride to work.

When school starts up again, though, everything changes — which is why it’s not only schoolchildren who dread the words “back to school.” Vacations are over. School buses and school speed zones are blinking their yellow lights. Everyone is back in town and — what’s worse — everyone is leaving for work at about the same time, after they’ve dropped their kid off at school or the bus stop. People who might have been leaving for work at 8 in July are now on the road at 7.

It’s like the Super Bowl, where everybody is watching the same TV channel and uses the bathroom at the same time, placing huge burdens on municipal sewer systems at the same moment in time. Roads that formerly ran free and easy are now clogged and filled to rank overflowing with traffic, and it stinks.

It’s why September driving is usually the worst and most congested of the year. This week, it was suddenly September traffic in Columbus.

The Thanksgiving Pageant

It was Thanksgiving week at Rankin Elementary School, and there was great excitement among the second-graders.  Our teacher had been telling us for weeks that we would put on a Thanksgiving pageant, and preparations were underway.

Construction paper, crayons, and blunt scissors with rounded edges were put on every table.  Pots of paste and Elmer’s glue left a distinct tang in the air.  Pilgrims hats and bonnets and Indian headdresses needed to be made for the boys and girls.  We worked hard to cut out yellow buckles for the hats and colored feathers for the Indians.  It was tough to make a hat that fit and didn’t rip when you tried it on.

Most of the boys wanted to be Indians.  The members of our tribe had brought in empty Quaker Oats containers, which made perfect tom-toms when decorated with paper and crayons and even sounded like a drum when you tapped the top with your hand.

Our worried teacher had written the script and done the staging.  A few students had a line or two, but most of us would just don our Pilgrim or Indian garb and stand there while Squanto and the Pilgrim fathers gave stiff speeches about friendship and Plymouth Rock and being thankful for the harvest.  Eventually one of the girls wearing a white Pilgrim bonnet would bring in a turkey made of Play-Doh and the show would end.  When the big day came, the show went off without a hitch.

Of course, there was no pretense of historical accuracy or political correctness.  We didn’t know whether Squanto wore feathers and carried a tom-tom, or what the Pilgrim fathers said on that first Thanksgiving, or even whether they ate a turkey for their meal.  But it was fun to make things with my classmates after long weeks of spelling and arithmetic, we got to work together as a class to put on our little pageant, and we learned something about Thanksgiving, and each other, and the tensile strength of construction paper and the edible properties of paste in the process.

Do they put on Thanksgiving pageants in schools anymore?

And We Wonder Why We Have A Childhood Obesity Problem?

In case you wondered, paternalism and fears of liability for potential injury will trump generalized health concerns about obesity and lack of exercise every time.

Want proof?  Consider Weber Middle School in Port Washington, New York.  School officials are concerned that kids are getting injured during recess.  So, they’ve taken a proportionate response — they’ve banned footballs, baseballs, lacrosse balls, and any other object that might conceivably hurt someone.  Oh, and tag also is banned, as are cartwheels.  Presumably, even more violent games, like “red rover” and “smear the queer,” were banned long ago.

How ridiculous we’ve become!  Generations of kids somehow managed to survive throwing a football or playing catch during recess.  It was a good way to get some fresh air, blow off steam, and have some fun with your school buddies.  Kids got some exercise in the process and came back into their classrooms with a little less energy and a little more ability to focus on algebra and chemistry and civics.

The school says it just wants its students to be “protected” in the wake of a rash of injuries.  I’m sure that’s it — and there’s probably a desire to avoid potential lawsuits brought by angry parents, too.  When I was a kid, no parent would even dream of suing their public school district, and no lawyers would consider taking such cases, either.  Falls from the jungle gym and the occasional broken collar bone were just accepted parts of growing up.  No longer!

We wonder why we have obese kids?  We are so protective of youngsters that we take all of the fun out of play — and in the process make kids less and less likely to get any meaningful exercise.  If you can’t play physical games, why not just retreat into your video game world where your digital counterpart can at least have some fun?  Our paternalistic society is doing a tremendous disservice to our kids.

School Starts Too Early

Yesterday — August 19 — as I began my drive to work, I was surprised to see the neighborhood kids gathered at the school bus stop.  Unbeknownst to me, it was the first day of school.

It’s jarring to see school start in the middle of August.  It’s not the way it was when I was a kid, when school always started the Tuesday after Labor Day and ended right around Memorial Day.  That calendar left June, July, and August as idyllic, undisturbed summer months, when kids could play from dawn to dusk without worrying about homework or tests.

Why has the school calendar expanded to eat into the summer months?  At New Albany Plain Local Schools, our local system, the calendar is dotted with random days off — for Staff Inservice Days (in September and February), Central Day (in October), Potential Waiver Days (in October and January), Conference Makeup Day (in November), and a No School Day (in April).  Throw in a two-week Christmas break, a one-week spring break, and holidays like Labor Day, President’s Day, Dr. Martin Luther King Day, and Thanksgiving, and you’ve got the modern school calendar.

Why all the days off during the school year?  My guess is that it is a combination of teacher, administrator, and school board interests in building in breaks and allowing people to get away.  Some of the days are strategically positioned to create three, four, and even five-day weekends.

That might be great for teachers and parents — but what about kids?  We fret about overweight kids spending too much time sitting on their butts, watching TV or playing video games, rather than engaging in unstructured, creative play.  Summer is the best time for the latter, but the modern school calendar cuts two weeks out of that prime period.  When is a kid more likely to get some healthy outdoor exercise — in August, or during an “Inservice Day” on a wet and cold Friday in February?  And don’t even think about what it does to kids to send them to sit in classrooms during the broiling dog days of August.

Our schools should focus more on what is best for kids.  I think that means cutting out the random off days, compressing the school calendar, and letting August be the magical, outdoor summer month it is meant to be.

Death At The Schoolhouse Door

I loved elementary school when I was a kid.  I loved my teachers, I loved the principal Mrs. Owens, and I loved the brick building, and the chalkboards, and the desks, and the old hallways that smelled of varnish and cleaning fluids.

I always felt safe and happy when I was in school.  It was where I went to learn from teachers and act in school plays and sing in the school chorus.  The only small sign that there was a dangerous world outside the double doors was our periodic “duck and cover” exercise and trip down to the basement in the event of a nuclear attack.  I cannot imagine what it would be like, as a grade school student, to walk down the school hallway and see a gunman shooting into classrooms.  There could not be a more jarring disconnect, to my sheltered little world, than violence of any kind at a school.

But that was the early 1960s, and this is 2012.  It seems like every year we deal with a horrible new school shooting tragedy, like the one this morning at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut that left at least 27 people dead — 18 of them students.  18 children gunned down at their schoolhouse!  The parents of those 18 murdered children left with awful holes in their lives and a surging feeling of rage and disgust that a gunman would shoot down innocent children.  Countless other little kids who survived, but who are devastated and traumatized, and countless parents who wonder what the hell they can do to try to keep their children safe and sound in this increasingly random, violent world.  We know that what happened in Newtown could easily happen anywhere.

Where have we gone wrong?  How have schools been turned from places of order and learning into charnel houses and shooting galleries for deeply disturbed, heavily armed people?

We need to figure out what has happened and fix it, fast.  A society will not be able to endure for long if parents can’t feel secure about sending their children to a place of public education.

It just breaks my heart that happy little kids sitting at their desks on a Friday morning, no doubt thinking about their upcoming holiday break, could be shot dead.  What could be worse than this?

My Pathetic Penmanship

Mrs. Haddad would be disappointed in me.

She was the teacher who introduced my third grade class at Rankin Elementary School in Akron, Ohio to the wonders of cursive writing.  On the first day of school, she called our attention to the white shapes on green rectangles that appeared in a row above the blackboard, A to Z.  They were cursive letters, she explained, and this year we would learn to make them perfectly.  The message was clear:  we were leaving childish block printing behind and through our writing would be moving onto the road to adulthood.

Mrs. Haddad said that good penmanship was the mark of a well-educated person.  We believed her.  None of us wanted to be seen as ill-educated chumps.  We spent part of each day with pads of coarse gray paper with wide blue lines, tongues sticking out of the corners of our mouths and faces screwed up with effort, trying with shaky hands and thick pencils to make the loops and whirls and curves on that devilish capital G look like the perfection above the chalkboard.  Mrs. Haddad walked the aisles between our desks, glancing at our pads, shaking her head sadly, and pointing out where our efforts were falling short.

My handwriting was never great, and third grade may have been its high point.  It’s deteriorated considerably since then, to the point where it’s not much more than a scrawl that combines elements of printing, cursive writing, doodling, and hieroglyphics.  There’s no longer even an attempt to make that capital G or capital F, and the pathetic results are decipherable only by my long-suffering secretary and, occasionally, me.  I attribute the decline to trying to write as quickly as possible while taking notes during college and law school classes and hurried telephone conversations at work.  There’s also undoubtedly been a decline in fine motor skills and loss of nerve endings that is attributable to advancing age.

Yesterday I looked at the scribbles on my legal pad and thought once more of Mrs. Hadded, tsk-tsking and shaking her head.  How could I do, I wondered, if I had that pad of cheap, wide-lined gray paper in front of me and Mrs. Haddad at my elbow as I tried to make that ridiculous capital G?

Death To The Bake Sale!

When I was in school, the bake sale was a fundraising staple.  Whether it was for band uniforms, field trips, or a new suit for the school mascot, kids and parents turned on their ovens, got out their mixing bowls, and cooked the goodies that brought in the nickels, dimes, and quarters of which fund drives were made.

Now bake sales are becoming an endangered species.  In the Montgomery County, Maryland school district, bake sales are barred.  It’s just part of a growing national trend.  Why?  Because we’ve got lots of fat kids in school these days, and school administrators and food services kingpins think cupcakes, cookies, cakes, and pies are unhealthy.  As a result, kids can’t sell “non-nutritious” food in schools anymore.  Of course, as the article points out, what’s nutritious, anyway?  Pop-Tarts, which are allowed, or home-baked carrot cake, which isn’t?

Even more ridiculous, the federal government will soon weigh in on this topic (pun intended).  Uncle Sam will be publishing its “national school nutrition standards for food sold outside cafeterias.”  Just what we need!  More federal employees getting taxpayer-funded salaries to advise us about things that really should be left to parents.  No doubt there are other federal employees to police compliance, and still other federal employees to administer grant programs to award money to school districts for programs to encourage healthy eating, and state and local employees who will write grant proposals and administer the federally funded efforts — all to combat the lure of the humble brownie and kids who can’t say no.

C’mon, people!  Have we really reached the point where our schools are outlawing bake sales, and the federal government is giving us advice on what our kids should be eating?  Is there any facet of our daily lives that is safe from the heavy hand of taxpayer-funded government regulators?

Having Class Outside

Today was a beautiful day in Ohio.  The sky was bright, the sun shone down with friendly rays, and it was unseasonably warm.  Looking longingly out the window from the conference room of an office building, I was reminded of grade school and those fabulous days when you convinced your teacher to hold class outside.

It usually happened on the first warm day of spring.  You would walk into your classroom through a landscape reeking of grass and growth, with flowers starting to bloom and birds chirping.  One of the kids in the class would raise the possibility with the teacher, and then other kids would join in.  Soon the pleas would build to a crescendo:  “Please, Miss Tibbles?  Please???  We promise we’ll be good!”  And then the teacher, who probably was dealing with a touch of spring fever herself, would relent, and we would go outside and sit on the asphalt of the playground to listen to the day’s lessons.  And, because we appreciated the gesture and didn’t want to get our nice teacher into trouble, we actually would try to be good.

I always had a soft spot for teachers who agreed to hold class outside.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it showed some real flexibility — and real confidence in their ability to control their class.  And when it happened, it made those rare spring days that much more special.  Who doesn’t look back fondly on the days when they got to have class outside?

The Demotivational Impact Of Empty Platitudes

According to an article in the Washington Post, schools and teachers have finally begun to recognize that efforts to boost student “self-esteem” that aren’t tied to concrete accomplishment aren’t achieving anything.  The article says that three decades of research shows that constant praise irrespective of performance, participation trophies, and the like aren’t actually increasing self-esteem and instead are interfering with actual improvement and accomplishment.

This shouldn’t come as news to anyone.  Indeed, the only surprise lies in the fact that it took three decades for schools to figure out what is obvious to most parents — but then, once a “concept” like “promoting self-esteem” gets rooted in the hidebound American educational system, it’s almost impossible to dig it out.

Kids — even kids who learn at a slower pace — aren’t stupid.  They’re observant and socially aware.  They know who is smart or adept at math or science and who isn’t, just like they know who is good at sports and who is a klutz.  If you praise them for non-performance, they will feel patronized, not proud — and may conclude that you don’t care, or are too incompetent to determine, whether they are really learning.  Neither message motivates kids to work harder and learn.  Ask any parents whose basements are filled with boxes of the silly participation trophies or good citizenship medals or attendance certificates their kids have received — those “awards” mean nothing because the kids intuitively know that awards given to everyone mean nothing.

Self-esteem can’t be conferred, it has to be earned and developed by actual achievement.  It’s time to return to schools that feature competitions with winners and losers, like science fairs and spelling bees and speech contests.  When I was in elementary school, we used to play a game called conductor where two kids would stand next to a desk.  The teacher would call out a math calculation, and the first student to give the right answer would move on while the loser would sit.  If you made it through the entire classroom you felt legitimate pride — and those who sat down were motivated to work harder.

We need to forget about the trophy generation, and focus instead on how to turn our youngsters into an actual achievement generation.