One of my least favorite things about schools (and becoming less favorite all the time) is the way in which they poison the well for conversations with your children about life stuff:
- Careers
- Love and friendship
- Drugs and other risks
- Health and self-care
- Study habits and academics
The problem is that the “educators” drone on about all of this stuff endlessly, and give tons of busywork to students about it as well, and do it every day of every term of every semester of their entire school career. For this reason, and completely understandably, any attempt to discuss these things with your own child is met with fatigue and eye-rolling and an “ugh, I know, I know, that’s, like, all we ever talk about at school, I come home and I really don’t want to dwell on it for the rest of the day after school, please.”
This wouldn’t be so bad, except that:
- “Educators” to a shit job of it for a variety of reasons
- Not least that they have to use boilerplate rather than a deep, lifelong relationship with the kid
- The “resources” and “materials” they use are also generally shit, unsophisticated, and boring as sin
- They don’t necessarily share the same priorities or values that you do as a parent
Sometimes, this makes me furious enough that I’m tempted to go and really bury them beneath a piece of my mind. But I know what the story will be—this is in the curriculum and important to do at school because “some kids won’t get it at home.”
As a very involved parent, my position is: f*ck those kids and their worthless parents. I’d rather be able to provide my child a good discussion of careers and college (and in the process sacrifice someone that we’re trying to boost from no job to a job of serial appointments at convenience stores until a premature death at 42) than burn them out with poor quality discussion in the interest of trying to save said soul.
The older I get, the more I think this “leave nobody behind” mentality is just terrible. It brings everyone down, without ever managing to raise anyone up.