Bundling

Often enough, to get laws passed through Congress, additional sometimes completely unrelated issues are bundled into white papers simply to get politicians on the other side of the aisle to approve them. These might result in so-called "earmarks" (i.e. pledges to devote funds to particular pet causes, like the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere"). However, the following case involves a particularly cynical addition shoe-horned into the 2001 "No Child Left Behind Act", a law ostensibly designed to reform education for particularly America's underprivileged.

At the start of my children's new school year, I was sent a thick, glossy brochure about the school district. Tucked away right at the very back of this laudable yet mind-numbingly boring collection of waffle, mission statements, and back-patting, I stumbled upon a form that almost made my eyes pop out. The key sentence of this was the following:

"If you do not want the school district to release your child's directory information to military recruiters this year, please complete the bottom portion of this letter and return it to the principal's office at your child's school no later than Friday, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010."

Needless to say, that was three days after I had received the brochure. Needless to say, I had already missed the cut-off date.

College Sports

In the film Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks says, "After just three years of playing football, I got a college degree."

Americans love watching sport, especially college (i.e. university) sport, both live and on television. That makes it an extremely lucrative business, and gives universities a huge incentive to attract the best players. So it's hardly surprising that they offer gifted athletes scholarships that (in some cases more than) pay their tuition fees.

However, the best players are not always the brightest students. What's more, to get - and keep - at their best, these athletes need to train hard and long. And that in turn means that their academic obligations tend to get in the way of their sporting endeavours. And here's where the problems arise.

Because educational establishments are justifiably starting to insist that students at least get a minimum of education, college teachers regularly give their "jocks" (athlete-students) the answers to tests in advance or even write papers on their behalf!

This of course makes a complete mockery of the concept of tertiary education, but when winning is all that counts, most universities just turn a blind eye.

I Pastafari

Yesterday I realized that, ever since I became ordained as a priest last year, I have been subconsciously searching for a religious affiliation. This search is now finally over.

It is therefore with a certain amount of pride that I can now announce: "I am a Pastafarian!"

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, to give the organisation its official title, was spawned to parody the idiocy of the so-called "theory" of Intelligent Design, a belief espoused by some Christians that the universe is too complex and wonderful to be the product of mere chance or natural selection.

In 2005, when the Kansas School Board was considering whether biology teachers should teach Intelligent Design alongside Darwinism as an equally plausible theory of evolution, Bobby Henderson sent the board a letter in which he demanded tongue-in-cheek that pupils should likewise be taught about his theory of evolution, namely that the world was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The letter also claimed that pirates were the original Pastafarians, but that they - like witches - were stereotyped as evil by Christian theologians. An amusing graph provided "evidence" that global warming is directly attributable to the decline in the number of pirates.

So what does it have to do with me, you ask?

Well, as some of you know, spaghetti has always been my favourite food. What's more, I have on occasion (inexplicably) chosen to dress up as a pirate to go to parties. My son even wore a pirate costume to a Halloween celebration at his school this year. But all that might have been dismissed as pure coincidence had I not made the following discovery when I unwrapped my Subway sandwich:


As you can see, it is unmistakably an image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster drawn in grease and sweet onion relish.

There is therefore no doubt that I too have been "touched by His noodly appendage" (the title of the painting at the top).

I have found my calling.

Self-fulfilling Prophecy

You may recall that my children's language skills were tested last autumn and that my perfectly bilingual son was deemed in need of English as a Second Language input at his American school. 

As you know, Tom and his sister Anna were retested in April. Well, I've now received the results, and you'll be glad to know Tom is now considered to be not merely on a par with his peers but above-average in listening, reading, writing, speaking and comprehension, putting him in the top linguistic category: advanced proficiency.

This means that the ESL teacher who first assessed and then "serviced" him (her choice of words, not mine) can praise herself on a job splendidly done.

Eat your heart out, Henry Higgins. Ditto Joseph Heller, for that matter.

Praise

Nearly every day, my children come home from school with stickers attached to their work proclaiming it to be "awesome", "brilliant" or some other adjective usuallly accompanied by an exclamation mark when written down. And every Friday, their teachers send e-mails to the parents saying that their class had worked amazingly and learnt and achieved so much that week.

On top of this, the kids keep bringing home small presents or sweets for having completed the week's tasks or getting a certain number of "very goods". On one occasion, my daughter took part in a sponsored money-raising activity and was thanked for her participation with a plastic water bottle and a skipping rope (if she'd raised more, she could even have received an iPod)!

At first, such apparently over-the-top encouragement seemed somewhat misplaced, exaggerated, even embarassing, to me given that Europeans are schooled in self-analysis, realism, moderation and understatement - not to mention German Angst, Weltschmerz and similarly negative attitudes to performance and life itself.

One year into my stay in the New World, I now believe that I better understand the complex consequences of this:

Children who are constantly praised and told (whether justifiably or not) that they have performed excellently tend to grow up with very high self-esteem/self-confidence and the feeling that they can indeed achieve anything. Sure, this can lead to over-confidence and what we would in England term big-headedness, but it also means that Americans approach problems more positively and with more energy than their self-critical, navel-gazing European counterparts.

The sweets and presents are another aspect of this behavioural training. After all, America is a meritocracy. Whereas in Europe we are encouraged to do good things for the sake of it, Americans are taught to believe - bribed, cynics would say - that appropriate behaviour will be rewarded. And not with a mere feeling of having done good, as a European might expect, but an actual, physical reward.

Although I still cling to the Old-World Christian notion that people should feel morally obliged to do the things expected of them rather than having a carrot dangled in front of their noses, I do see that Americans are far more successful in business, science and industry than Europeans. Praise and rewards in childhood undoubtedly play a role in this.

I've also started praising my children's achievements more.

Over Their Heads?

My wife found the following five-day workshop (price: $155) advertised in the "Camps for Boys & Girls Ages 4-6" section of a community education leaflet:

Little Girl Power & Little Boy Power

Kids will learn about personal power & how attitude and beliefs about themselves affect how they handle friendships, peer relationships & opportunities/problems in life. Kids will look at their inner-self & the outer-self they present to the world to see if it fits with who they want to be.

Apart from wondering how many 4-6-year-olds really know what they want to be (apart from the usual vague fireman, spaceman or teacher notions), I have trouble imagining even my bright six-year-old contemplating his "inner-self". I therefore suspect that this is a tinsy bit too adult for the intended target audience.

Box Tops

Box Tops For Education and the Campbell's Labels for Education programme are two great ways for families to earn their children's schools hundreds if not thousands of dollars to spend on whatever they like.

So far, Box Tops alone has raised $250 million for schools.

All you do is cut out the relevant labels on everything from cereal packets to soups, kitchen roll to nappies, and hand them over to the school, which then cashes them in. The programme bills the relevant manufacturer and sends the school a cheque. Given that each label is worth 10 cents, the money quickly piles up.

You can also earn Box Top credits for your school by shopping on the Internet at sites like gap.com, and at some shops - e.g. Kroger - you can even register your store card online and automatically get the Box Top credited to your nominated school every time you shop. That way, the school is paid twice for each label!

Knowing how cash-strapped schools in Britain are, wouldn't this be a great thing to introduce rather than relying on grants from the insane lottery, which only encourages people to gamble?

Educational Insanity

I've reported at length about how my then 5-year-old son's English was assessed by his American school in the autumn and deemed so poor that he needed "servicing" by the in-house ESL specialist. This is due to be reassessed in the coming weeks (let's hope he's mastered the American accent sufficiently to get a more acceptable score this time).

What I did not mention is that my now 9-year-old daughter was also evaluated last year, and scored 100% (8/8 and 10/10). Yet strangely enough, she too was re-tested this week.

Do they honestly think that Anna's English could have deteriorated to such an extent that she may now need ESL input after all? I know she's started learning Spanish at (American) school and still attends French school in the morning, but isn't that taking bureaucratic pedantry a little too far?

Start Early

From the 'Enrichtment Camps' section of our local community education brochure for summer 2009:

CAMP MILLIONAIRE

(Ages 10-14)

Do you want your kids to get excited about managing their money? Do you want your kids to understand the value of a buck? Do you want your kids to grow up and live the lives they dream of? At Camp Millionaire you will empower your kids with the knowledge that they are fully in charge of creating their own lives, and that includes how much money that want to have when they grow up. Your child will walk out of our program truly feeling like they can be a millionaire one day.

The cost of the one-day course: $230.

Educational Insanity (contd.)

The plot thickens.

The woman who assessed my son's language skills and decided that he needs ESL tuition refers to him as "Tom" (including the inverted commas) and says she plans to begin "servicing" him this week.

So who's the one who needs help with their English?

Educational Insanity

Following an assessment of his speaking and listening proficiency, my five-year-old son - French-English bilingual since birth - has been enrolled by his American elementary school in their ESL (English as a Second Language) programme.

All irony and hair-pulling on my side apart, I wonder whether this is because he calls "freedom fries" chips, is baffled by the Pledge of Allegiance, or simply because the tester couldn't understand his accent (it probably sounded too New Zealand).

I hate to say this, but this does seem like yet another example of the country with the world's highest spending on education producing some of the least well-educated people.