Snow Days

Today's a "snow day", in other words a day when my children get off school because there's so much snow on the ground that school buses can't get through the side streets of individual subdivisions, i.e. neighbourhoods, which, in contrast to main roads, don't get cleared immediately.

As you can imagine, children love snow days because they don't have to get up early and can instead spend the entire day making snowmen, sledding and having snowball fights rather than listening to their teachers and learning.

Because kids prefer snow days to school, a number of fun rituals have developed over here in the New World to encourage the crystalised water to come tumbling down aplenty. Although not entirely scientifically sound, they make fun reading nonetheless:

• Putting a spoon under your pillow. Some say it should be licked beforehand. It doesn't matter whether it's plastic, metal or wooden, slide it under your pillow at bedtime, and a snow day is more-or-less guaranteed to follow. More comfortable variation: Putting the spoon in the fridge.
• Putting a picture of the Virgin Mary and a dollar bill under your pillow. More pious and costly than a spoon you can steal out of your mother's kitchen, but just as guaranteed of success.
• Putting a cotton ball under said headrest. Given how rare cotton balls are nowadays, if a child is clever enough to find one, it deserves a snow day for pure ingenuity.
• Flushing an ice cube down the toilet at 9pm on the night before the desired snow day. But only one ice cube (we don't want to call up a blizzard or block the toilet, do we?). A tried-and-tested snow-producer this, though whether it actually works is anyone's guess. Variation: throwing ice behind you so that it lands in the toilet. May have to be repeated several times until you actually hit the bowl.
• Saying "reverse" 20 times backwards. This one's challenging if your child is dyslexic.
• Wearing your pyjamas inside-out and back-to-front. My son does this most nights anyway, so since we don't constantly miss school, I suspect this might be a dud.
• Doing a snow-dance. The native Americans - red Indians to you and me - used this method to encourage rainfall, why shouldn't latter-day New Worlders dance to produce snow? Particularly likely to work if the dancer is wearing snowflake-patterned socks or sweater.
• Putting an orange in the freezer. Yeah, right! 
• Not thinking about or saying the word "snow". Very difficult if all you want is snow.
• Dancing around a cup of ice. Almost certain to add 2-3 inches of snow to the night's snowfall. I wonder whether European cup-dancers would add 2-3cm instead.
• Repeating a snow chant. Doesn't have to be complex. "Let it snow!" apparently suffices. Great for those unable or unwilling to dance. If you repeated often and loudly enough, the school authorities may offer you a snow day just to shut your kids up.
• Yelling "snow day!" into the freezer. Alternate, equally effective shout out apparently include yelling into the bath tub and under the bed.
• Placing 12 orange index cards on the hood of your car. This must be linked to the bizarre orange-freezing caper mentioned further up. If America had gone metric, this would, I believe, have been ten cards. But who has index cards in this digitised age? And how many children have their own car? The mind boggles.
• Throwing a paper cup out of the window. Why this should elicit snow I really don't know. But at least it saves on clearing up.
• Brushing your tongue for two minutes. I do hope this involves a toothbrush rather than a hair- or toilet brush. Even if this doesn't cause the sky to spew frozen gobs of water, at least your children have clean tongues. Tip for parents: get them to brush their teeth at the same time.
• Drawing three Xs and then colouring them sky blue. I have no information on whether this should be done on a piece of paper as opposed to a wall nor how one might colour something that has no un-coloured middle, but then again, I'm just a stupid Old Worlder.
• Running around the table five times. Not to be tried without adult supervision if your table is up against a wall. Injury rather than snowfall may result. The same goes for spinning around three times with your eyes closed.
• Sticking a white crayon in the freezer - and then putting it under your pillow. Presumably alongside the spoon.
• Sleeping on the opposite side of bed. I have no clue why this might work. Perhaps you feel so confused when you wake up looking in the other direction that you'll think it snowed. 
• Wearing gloves to bed. Even if it doesn't have the desired effect, at least you won't have cold hands at night.
• Placing ice cubes on your porch. This may well work. After all, if you put enough out there, you could be convinced it had snowed overnight.
• Sprinkling "shaved" ice on the branches of nearby trees and bushes. A very unsubtle hint to the weather gods to send a big freeze. If very desperate - or out of shaved ice - simply throwing ice cubes at the aforementioned plants may also suffice. 

And finally:

• Stacking pennies on your window sill.This one is clearly biased towards the rich, who have lots of pennies to spend on snow. Apparently each penny is worth one inch of the lovely white stuff.

Hand Signals

Don't ask me how I managed this, but it wasn't until this weekend - almost four years after we came to beat-around-the-bush America - that I had cause to explain the meaning of the word "euphemism" to my son.

Although premature Alzheimer's appears to have robbed me of the ability to remember what exactly triggered this teaching moment, I distinctly remember launching into my well-rehearsed lecture on bathrooms entirely bereft of tubs, restrooms that are more about unclenching than R&R, etc.

"That reminds me of something we do at school", my son replied.

Apparently, when children in his class want to ask or answer a question, they are told to raise one finger - the index, I should add, not the middle one, which has an entirely different connotation. By contrast, if they have to go to the toilet (see above), they are supposed to put two fingers up in a kind of V-for-victory salute. And if their need is urgent, they must put up three.


He didn't say, but I do wonder if four fingers means "Too late".

Pink Slime

Enjoying that hamburger? You may want to finish it before reading on.

The picture on the left is not, as you might think, of a strawberry Mr Whippy. In fact it is what the meat industry calls "lean, finely-textured beef" or more blandly scientific, "LFTB". A less euphemistically minded food inspector dubbed it simply "pink slime".

When butchers cut away all the tasty bits from dead cows, what is left over (aside from skin and bone) is scraps, gristle, sinews and connective tissue. However, waste not, want not, so these leftovers are ground down, heated up and centrifuged to spin out any fat. And because at least some of this slurry is likely to have been in close contact with the myriad germs of the cow's typically poo-caked skin, the resultant sludge is sprayed with ammonia to kill off bacteria like salmonella and E. coli. It is then flash-frozen and labelled "beef".

Pardon? Yes, of course I'll wait while you go and vomit.

...

Better now? Good.

Pink slime is illegal for human consumption in the European Union and even Canada. Many countries only permit it to be used in dog food. So what happens in the US? Over here the powers-that-be say it's fine for us to eat.

For about two decades now, pink slime has routinely been added to the minced beef sold in shops across this great nation. The meat industry has been happy because it can sell more of its slaughtered animals, shops have been happy because their beef may contain up to 15% pink slime, which is far cheaper than regular beef, and consumers have been none the wiser because pink slime isn't mentioned as an extra ingredient since it is technically 100% pure beef - albeit with a petit bouquet d'ammoniaque.

Jamie Oliver tried drawing attention to the problem in his Food Revolution TV programme a while back. But nobody in this regulation-hating country listened to this mad cow of a limey who was clearly out to interfere with Americans' right to choose. So it wasn't until a home-grown mother and blogger starting kicking up a fuss this March that people starting seriously thinking about what it was they were eating.

Indeed so great was the ensuing outrage that major supermarket chains began taking products containing pink slime off their shelves en masse. And even McDonald's, Taco Bell and Burger King decided pink slime was too low-quality to serve their famously nutritionally-aware clientele.

Meanwhile, in its infinite wisdom, the US Department of Agriculture bought another 7 million pounds of pink slime for use in the National School Lunch Program.

Packed lunches today, kids. OK?

Fighting Disease Through Poor Nutrition

We had another WTF moment at our children's elementary (i.e. junior) school this week.

My son came home a few days ago to tell us that his class was collecting money for charity. It sounded like a good idea, so I asked him to explain more.

Apparently some people from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation had come to the school not only to promote their "loose change" fundraiser, but also to inform and educate the kids about type 1 diabetes, a talk which, I must presume, also included the causes thereof, one of which is poor nutrition.

Because the US is a meritocracy par excellence, in which it seems that nothing is done without a payoff, and adults and children alike are routinely enticed into doing good by being offered an incentive, the JDRF spokespeople said they'd organise a special treat for the class that raised the most money for their research into the treatment and prevention of juvenile diabetes.

So what prize did this healthcare charity choose to offer the children?

A pizza party.

Chicken

America is often portrayed as a country of steak-eaters; of avid consumers of big, fat, juicy, barbecued hunks of beef. Although a great deal of beef is indeed consumed, the meat of choice surprisingly turns out to be chicken.

According to some estimates, 23 million chickens a day are slaughtered to satisfy America's hunger for poultry. In fact, so much chicken is served (primarily breaded) in the country which invented Chicken McNuggets and Kentucky Fried Chicken, that my wife has become positively averse to the stuff.

To give you some idea of the phenomenal prevalence of chicken in American cuisine, allow me to offer you an unadulterated list of the poultry-related items on this month's menu at our children's elementary (junior) school, where they have a choice of three main dishes:

• 1.12. Chicken noodle soup, chicken Caesar wrap
  
• 2.12. Sweet-and-sour chicken with rice, diced chicken with rice
• 3.12. Grilled chicken sandwich, baked chicken rings with rice
• 6.12. Chicken fajita salad
• 7.12. Chicken tacos, baked chicken tenders with fruit cup
• 8.12. Chicken corn dog with potato wedges
• 9.12. Chicken patty sandwich
• 10.12. (No chicken on menu)
• 13.12. Grilled chicken salad
• 14.12. Chicken fajitas, chicken pasta al fredo
• 15. 12. Chicken nuggets with hot corn
• 16.12. Grilled chicken ranch wrap
• 17.12. Chicken tenders with mashed potatoes
  

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.

School Dinners

Britain is not alone in having to rethink its school meals system. American school lunches are a shockingly non-nutritious mix of pizza, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, pancakes and macaroni-cheese, with the odd placatory chicken salad thrown in.

At our kids' junior school, for example, with the notable exception of potatoes in the form of chips, "potato rounds" and mash, most vegetables are offered as optional and therefore ignored extras, and the emphasis is clearly on fostering a fast-food mentality rather than teaching children about healthy eating, not least since the children have no more than 20 minutes from the time they start queuing up to be served to the moment they are shooed outside for playtime.

However, this month the canteen has truly outdone itself, offering an appallingly multicultural culinary abomination termed "spaghetti taco's" (sic!), which the menu defines as - and the spelling and punctuation are all original - "Crisp corn shells Filled with spaghetti topped with shredded Cheese".

We're over here, Mr. Oliver!

Health Warning

From a school district newsletter:

"We continue to see cases of H1N1 or flu-like illnesses"

Now there's a surprise. One's a pandemic and 'tis the season to get sniffles (falalalala lalalala).

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.

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?

Warning

The following warning was sent to parents today by my children's American school:

"Several children reported a suspicious individual Tuesday evening in the area of XXX. An elderly white-haired, white male in a dark purple/maroon mini-van repeatedly drove up and down the street waving to the children. They reported the incident and a police report was filed. Please continue to remind your children to be cautious and to report any incident that is suspicious."

I guess the ice-cream van won't be back in that neighbourhood then.

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?

Letter From Teacher

This week I received the following e-mail from my 6-year-old son's teacher:

"Tom has been doing some kissing in kindergarten. I'm glad he is so friendly, but please let him know that we don't kiss at school."

When I passed this on, Tom asked why this wasn't allowed (he is part French, after all, so kissing is more-or-less in his blood).

What do I say to him?

Really?

From the Upcoming Events section of our children's school newsletter:

03/31   "March is Reading Month" ends

President Obama

Well, the votes have all been cast and counted, and the results are clear: Barack Obama has been elected President of the United States by a landslide.

No, you haven't slept through the entire 4th of November. This was the outcome of the mock election held at my children's elementary school today.

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.

Shooting Simulation

A local school carried out a shooting simulation this week. According to the article in the newspaper, 

"Six months of planning and a federal grant went into the simulation, starting with the gunman's alarming behavior to administrators and escalating to him firing shots and wounding students at the high school"

The following picture appeared alongside the article:

Two things strike me about the simulation.

Firstly, it's sad that school shootings have increased to such an extent that people need to prepare for such an eventuality (rather than wondering if lax gun laws and the alleged right to bear arms might contribute to this).

Secondly, it's interesting to note the "costume" they've put the gunman in: he's wearing explosives. As far as I am aware, no previous school shooter - usually disgruntled former pupils - has ever come armed with more than guns. What we have here is the blending of two primal American fears: shooters and suicide bombers. Apart from the fact that I very much doubt that Al Quaeda would target schools, I can't quite imagine that would-be bombers would waste their time arguing with school authorities first, as the article seems to suggest.

In case you are wondering how the story ends, the shooter was cleanly shot dead before he could blow up himself and his 25 hostages - just like in all the best Hollywood movies.

Note to Kindergarten Teacher

Dear Mrs Clark,

Just to let you know: the scrawl that you circled in red and corrected at the bottom of the homework sheet headed "Sign and return" was not an attempt by my son to write the word "van", but rather my signature.

Yours, etc.