School Daze

Teacher, teacher, listen well
My lessons all to you I'll tell
And when my day at school is through
I'll know more than aught I knew.
--Anonymous

Today's the first day of school for many children of all ages. I'd know this just from a look around our neighbourhood, which has shed its summer torpor and become a bustling hive of activity and garbage generation. There are many tradespeople who live by this time of year (notably bread salesmen) and just as many who loathe it (at least I would if I had to stuff all this garbage into a truck!)

So begins another nine months of our driveway being used as a turnaround point for those parents who drop off their little darlings up at school and pick them up later, which is pretty much all of them. One of the things we hadn't bargained on when buying this house (and remember, this house was bought with children of our own at top of mind) was the sheer number of cars on this street at the end of every school day. When your arrival home coincides with the arrival of a long line of cars, some of which park so as to block any hope of entering your driveway, and whose drivers resort to middle-finger waving if you make any effort to access what is, after all, your property...well, it gets old pretty quickly.

We have only ourselves to blame, of course. It never fails to amaze me when people move next to an airport and then bitch incessantly about the noise from the planes. Did you, uh, look around at all before you moved in? We hadn't thought it out, true, but in our defense, we grew up in an age when a kid being picked up at school would have been called a mama's boy to start with and beaten up shortly after. Sometimes--well, okay, often--we forget that time has passed.

As early as grade four, I was walking about a kilometer (a little more than half a mile) each way to school. And yes, it was uphill both ways and barefoot through ten feet of snow. Seriously, though, in high school, that walk nearly doubled in length and I don't remember ever once complaining. No, wait a second, that's not true. The first time I ever had to walk to school--grade four--we took a long, meandering walk through the neigbourhood one evening before school started. My feet were killing me when I turned to my stepdad and asked if I had to do this every day. He laughed and said no, there was a much shorter route, which he then detailed out (walk down here, turn left, then turn right, then turn left again, turn right and you're there. "Picture it like stairs you're going down," he said. I've never forgotten that. To this day maps turn themselves into flights of stairs.
A ride to or from school was a rare thing indeed, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. There were times (when a girl was on my arm) when that walk was entirely too short.

At least the public school across the street from me still has recess, or the generation of kids coming up through the system today would be getting no exercise at all.



Last weekend we had a lovely time at our friends' cottage in Wasaga Beach. We got to talking about their child, who's entering grade two this year and who loves school. "Of course, the homework got to be a little much last year," the mother said. "We'd deal with it right away, as soon as he got home, so we could get on with the evening."

"Back up," I almost shouted. "Homework?! In first grade?!"

"Yep," she said. "He had to read a book a night. Now these were little eight-page jobbies, not War and Peace. But still, between that and the math problems and what have you, it could take up to an hour."

If my jaw had dropped any further I do believe a Mack truck would have come rumbling out of my mouth. I tried to remember the first time I had homework. I'm pretty sure it was grade four--and that wasn't a daily thing, not even close. It was more like occasional research projects. The first one I ever did was on Toronto and its history. Jeesh, but I was a little geek. Daily homework? Probably grade six or so. It wasn't until high school that an hour's worth of homework became unremarkable.

"It makes you wonder what they're doing while they're at school," I said, "when first graders are getting an hour of homework."

What they're doing at school is more of the same. I really do expect to see a large number of kids exhibiting all the symptoms of burnout before they graduate high school.

Here is an interesting article concerning, in part, a school in North Yorkshire, England that has abolished homework altogether. Neither the students nor their parents seem to have noticed an academic decline when homework was replaced with various clubs and activities.
This remains a minority view, however. According to the article, the British goverment deems homework "the equivalent of an extra year's schooling" and "an important home-school link."

To which I say, bollocks and poppycock. Homework may indeed equal an extra year's schooling (I had about that much in OAC Geography alone). But is that really such a good thing? As for the home-school link, point taken, at least for those few parents (bless you) who still care what their kids are doing in school. These days, it seems the only thing many parents of even university-age children (and I use that word deliberately) care about are their final grades, which are to be automatic A's, of course.

There is a widespread latent feeling, exploited quite successfully by the Mike Harris government in Ontario several years ago, that teachers live on easy street, what with their summers off, their supposed 9-3 workdays, and a "cushy" job, to boot. It's fair to say that people who feel this way are not, and do not know any, teachers and have forgotten any decent teachers they ever had.
If you think it's so easy to be a teacher, go try it for a week. You're in for a rude, rude awakening. Odds are better than even you'll be sworn at, possibly even assaulted, before that week's out. You'll find that cushy 9-3 workday is just the beginning. You'll discover that legions of parents demand you assume the roles of psychiatrist, mediator and, not to put too fine a point on it, parent while still making sure their little Johnnies can read and write. And you'll very quickly realize that most of those little Johnnies have not the slightest interest in reading, writing, or anything else you might have to say. That doesn't excuse you.

It is my view that teachers are in fact drastically underpaid, and should be compensated on a level similar to that of professional athletes. (I feel the same way about doctors, police officers and firefighters). In a sane society, your job would be called your 'contribution' and I must say teachers contribute a great deal.

Finally, slightly tangential to this topic is the whole 'back-to-school' commercial frenzy. There was one shoe store manager on television last night saying that the Labour Day weekend was the busiest time of the year for them. It's reported--with a straight face!--that parents spend somewhere between $800 and $1400 per child on back to school items...creating the expectation that all parents should spend that much.
I get the clothes, I guess--kids, especially younger kids, have outgrown last fall's apparel. There are ways to cut your clothing costs significantly. If they were my kids, they'd either be spending their own cash, or they'd have an intimate acquaintance with Value Village. The law says I'd have to keep them clothed. It doesn't say anything about Tommy Hilfiger.
And nowadays I understand kids have to buy all their own school supplies, even in primary grades. I'd really love to know how that came about. We used to get our own notebooks and pencils and I don't know what-all else. But okay, there's another cost.
But a new knapsack? If last year's is so worn out, you really have to get on your child's teacher's case about excessive homework. A new cellphone? Hello? Count me among that number of people who don't think children should have cellphones until--well, at this point I can maybe make a case for them in high school. Maybe. Generations of people survived without them, as far as I'm concerned, and there's no need for them in class--which is where your child is going, right?