Monday, May 18, 2015

The Red Shirting Question Resurfaces

Here were are again, like our own family's version of Groundhog Day.

The end of the academic year looms and we are faced once again with the breaking news that the Grape is the youngest kid in his class.

His teachers probe our opinions carefully, as if fishing for a splinter with a needle.

We sit around the tiny table in the tiny chairs. They lean across the thoughtfully curated spread of art projects and barely whisper: "Do we want to 'loop' him?"

The Grape is scheduled to enter first grade at age six years and three weeks.

There are no other Boys of Summer in his kindergarten class. In the kindergarten class across the hall, there is one. Perhaps two, but I think only one.

The kindergarten girls have more widely distributed birthday demographics than their male classmates, but they're all older than the Grape, too.

This data point interests me, because it's the girls with whom the Grape has forged deep friendships. One of his besties will actually celebrate her seventh birthday in June. So what we have is a young boy who plays best with older girls.

The Grape likes the "girl" games: elaborate, often drawn out, imaginative play scenarios and role plays. They build little worlds in their corner of the classroom or recess yard. He's got laser like focus and a marathon attention span for this type of play.

Whether at home or at school, he still lives very much inside his imagination—something I'm in terror of stifling with too much didactic learning.

I cringe when the handwriting sheets come home, and in fairness, our school doesn't do a lot of this.

Apparently I'm not alone.

The New York Times ran a brilliant piece yesterday by David Kohn, singing my song: Send children to school young. Very young. But don't make them do much in the academic sphere except learn through play and natural exploration until age seven or eight. Because it's going to backfire. Not for everyone, but for too many of them.

I firmly believe that if you crush the love of learning early, you will almost never be able to rekindle it, especially with the limited resources available to most public school teachers in this country.

I'm afraid that the national conversation about universal preschool (VERY GOOD) will lead to younger and younger children bent over desks, resigned to dull tasks, as if they're some sort of midget medieval scribes (VERY BAD), instead of socializing, playing, imagining, exploring, reading, running in circles like banshees outdoors, and resting.

The article didn't open the attention deficit can of worms, and I'm not a pediatrician.

But to me, it's common sense that if a significant number* of otherwise healthy kids need to be drugged to get through an elementary school day, the problem isn't with the kids, it's with the structure of the school day.

I, for better or worse, can't decide national education policy. I can only decide the Grape's plans for next year.

The Grape hangs in there with the older kids on the more academic side of kindergarten. He loves "making books" and he likes math. He likes exploring new subjects like nature and the solar system with his classmates. He loves music and art and going to the library. I'm certainly not against academics; I just believe they shouldn't make up the bulk of a young child's day.

The class hosted a sweet event this winter, where parents came in and everyone made a book with his/her child. The Grape came up with "The Dog Who Wanted to Ski." I admit I helped draw the dog's crossed skis, but the rest is all Grape:

"They went to the green circle but the dog's skis got tangled."

He got the thing done and turned in on time. From that I infer his attention span for a high-focus task is the creation of four pages plus a cover. Seems reasonable to me.

Most importantly, the Grape wants to go to first grade.

That's where his friends are headed, and we've explained that there's more writing and reading and less free play (though thankfully first graders go outdoors for recess twice a day).

He claims to understand, but I'm skeptical.

But not as skeptical as I am of keeping him back.

In my book, the only thing worse than more didactic learning is a re-run of the past year's didactic learning.

We aren't "looping" (or red-shirting) him this year.

I'm sure we'll have to field this question next year. I have no idea how we'll feel about the jump from first to second, but my thinking is that we keep him with his class as long as he's happy and keeping up.

If and when he asks to be kept back, or he cannot handle the material, we'll "loop" him then.

What I'd really love to see is all the little ones freed from their desks for most of the school day. 

Unfortunately, the Let Them Play More trend has about as much chance of catching on as our dog has of learning to ski.

* The actual number of kids on drugs for "attention disorders" is hard to nail down. Various sources use various methods and yield various stats. But all sources agree the number of cases is trending steeply up.





Tuesday, May 5, 2015

The Mouse Sees and Hears All

There's something creepy afoot in Disney World, and it's got nothing to do with classic cartoon villains.

It's common knowledge that Disney employees an army of logisticians, consumer analysts and transportation engineers, to track its customers and facilitate movement and control of crowds. We expect security cameras everywhere.

But Disney's facial recognition software veers too far from Disney Magic and too close to Big Brother. And the eavesdropping is off the hook.

The U.S. military, the most powerful military on the planet, wants to buy Disney's spy technology. So basically the Mouse has better capabilities than the CIA. Or at least the Pentagon.

The Grape, luckiest kid on the planet, recently returned from his second trip to the Mouse Empire.
Innocent magic rodent? Or an agent the envy of spy agencies worldwide?

Thanks largely to David Shute's AMAZING crowd calendar, the Grape had a ball, and we adults had the most stress-free trip possible (which to Disney novices, still feels crowded, crushed, and costly).

I noticed two things on this trip that I didn't fully process on my first.

They are always watching—at least on their newer attractions.

On our last morning, we went straight to the very popular Mine Train ride, stood in minimal line, and rode the newest coaster.  At no point did anyone in my party scan their band. We didn't have fast passes for the ride.

Yet, two days after we returned home, Disney sent us a video of us on the Mine Train. It came in the same email as several stills from Buzz Lightyear and Expedition Everest. Note that this also means they presumably sent pictures of us, including the Grape, to the people who happened to ride with us.

Possibly creepier: They are listening. (?!?!?)

It was the post fireworks rush from the park at the Magic Kingdom. The Grape was cooked. We stood in line on the dock to take the Disney water shuttle back to the hotel.

The gentleman behind us in line (a party of two adults and two kids) struck up a conversation with R.

"It's all for the kids," we agreed when he expressed that sentiment. "And it's all VERY expensive for what you get, especially in the restaurants and hotels."

Our new friend agreed effusively. "Five star prices for three star food!"

"But we know that coming in. Again, it's all for the kids. They love it."

We pointed at fake Tahiti (Disney's Polynesian Resort) across the man-made lagoon.

"If we didn't have kids, we could go to real Tahiti!"

"Or real Paris! Or real Venice!"

And so forth. The boat began loading. The Disney employee allowed R., the Grape and me to board then abruptly cut off the line. He physically blocked our new friend from taking another step.

Plenty of room on the boat. Maybe a dozen seats left. Literally two hundred people on the dock.

Coincidence?

Survey says: Doubtful.

We all accept that the Magic Band, which enables park, room and Fast Pass ride admission, contains a computer tracker. Fine.

Call me old fashioned, but I see a world of difference between tracking guests' choices in attractions and shopping, and actually listening to their conversations and snapping candids without consent.

I'm sure Disney doesn't care what I think—as evidenced by the behavior of their front desk staff and their maddening restaurant reservation rigidity.

My kid loves the place, and he's in the prime window (I'd say the prime window opens at age four and runs into the early teens—a perception Disney works hard to dispute).

Despite this newish ick factor, and the highly disturbing tolerance by Disney of rampant abuse of its wonderful handicapped accommodations, we'll likely return at some point.

Ultimately it's academic; I don't do or say anything in public I don't mind repeated.

So yes, Disney, I'd rather go to real Paris than your Paris, and I don't care who knows that.

All I'm saying is it would've been nice to be forewarned of all this surveillance that makes the Pentagon swoon.

Even George Orwell's characters knew that Big Brother's telescreens could see and hear them at all times.

And maybe they could tweak the Mouse Club song:

M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-K-G-B