No Child Left Behind

It was a Tuesday last week and Madeleine was in Charleston for her latest orthodontic appointment.   When you get braces for half the price that private orthodontists charge, you take the appointment time they give you with a smile.    To defend myself, I had absolutely no idea that I was taking both girls out of school during one of the (a sacred hush permeates the room)  PASS test days.

If you do not have children or do not teach K-12 or do not have even the most rudimentary interest in the process molding our fine young people of America, than what I will say may come as a shock.

But apparently all happiness hereinafter and here on this planet depends on the children performing well on the standardized tests given at the end of the year to students.   Teachers are supposed to IMPROVE the tiny minds entrusted to their care, and apparently the only imaginable way that the bewrocrats (I attended school before No Child Left Behind and as a result I have no idea how to spell that word and I'm also too lazy to look it up and it's my blog neener neener neener) have devised to measure whether a student, class, or school is making acceptable progress in the process of education is a three day multiple choice test administered in May of each school year.  Yeah, I think it's stupid too.

"I'll need an excuse for both girls," I said, batting my eyelashes helplessly at the dental hygienist.   I had brought Meredith along feeling that a 3rd grader probably was too young to engineer her own pickup and delivery at school,  let herself in the house, cook supper, do her homework, and entertain herself till 10:00 at night when her father would be off work.

Here's another thing people--schools don't trust parents anymore.  I dreamed of one day grandly writing excuse notes as I changed diaper after diaper and shoveled mouthful after mouthful of pureed canned peas into recalcitrant mouths.   One day I could set pen to paper and take my kids to a burlesque show if I chose--all I had to do was write that they had a "stomach virus" and they would be excused from school.

Not so fast.  Today you have to have proof.   Thank you all you lying son of sea cook parents out there.

"She doesn't have an app..." the hygienist started to say when she was interrupted by my pitch, windup and delivery.

"I know but Dr. Jo said that if I brought her on the next appointment she'd take a look," I said, batting my eyelashes and grasping the chair desperately.   The gracious and kind orthodontic professor did indeed take a look at Meredith's baby teeth braces, needed to correct wayward adult molars, and announced that she'd need adult teeth braces too. 

But I got the excuse!  Meredith got told to brush her teeth as the ortho gloomily predicted three or four more years of braces and the thought of $3600 laid out for adult teeth braces for Meredith was presented to me in concrete form for the first time, leaving me to conclude that my husband had better get an extra job delivering papers or open an escort service.

But now I come to my manifesto, and it will be ignored and even laughed at by the PhDs currently populating whatever Presidental commission is now determining standards of education.  But that is all right.

People have been laughing at me (not with me, alas) for longer than most of you have been alive, missy, or mister.

I BELIEVE THESE THINGS:

1.  Children are our future.

2.  Learning to love yourself can certainly save a lot of anguish and money spent on worthless boyfriends, and costs only pennies for batteries.  Ergo, it is the Greatest Love Of All.

3.  Children should be able to sew.   See that white dress up there?  Mah deah old momma sewed it for me when I was named a Junior Marshal for being one of the top ten students in my junior class and asked to distribute programs at graduation.  I can sew a little, but you'd probably feel better wearing a "Lorrie" if you fortified yourself with a few healthy shots of bourbon.

4.  Children should be taught to scratch cook.  Yes, I SAID SCRATCH.   Take a raw chicken, a potato in its original skin, sour cream, a head of lettuce and some oil and vinegar and prepare a meal that will have your guests wiping their lips with a linen napkin and begging for more instead of wiping the toilet bowl after ingesting salmonella.  Sorry for the visual.

5.  Advance cooking courses would include how to prepare a nourishing, tasty meal with 3 eggs, some popcorn, a bottle of mustard, 47 packs of "FIRE!" seasoning from Taco Bell, 38 packs of Splenda that I liberated from Chik-Fil-A under the rationale "they charge so much for their food they DESERVE this!" a partially empty container of Sugar Free Cool Whip and some overripe bananas, which coincidentally happen to be the contents of my pantry at the moment.  Roger could do it.  Roger is a gifted chef, and I am not kidding.  I could only stare at the ingredients and weep helplessly with only my salty tears for sustenance.

6.  Children should be taught how to change a tire, change the oil, and text while going 75 miles on the freeway. (I'm including the last one out of simple desperation after seeing many kids doing it.) 

7.  Advance course includes how to cry your way out of a speeding ticket.   Let me know.  I've never had any luck.

8.  Children should be able to unclog a sink, change a HVAC filter, maintain a swimming pool, repair plumbing, lay a tile backspash, and redo a bathroom from the ground up.  I admit that most of this one is inspired by my complete inability to a.  do the work or b. pay someone to do the work.

There now.  If I knew how to do ANY of the above things, I know I would be better off.  My trigonometry course has not enriched my life in any way.