Suburban Princess

I was getting my hair done last night and my stylist and I had a great time talking. He suggested I read some of Christopher Hitchens' work, a writer for Vanity Fair and sometimes for Slate.com. So I looked him up today and found I agree with him on a lot of things. Here's a quote I found from the San Francisco Chronicle that I really identified with:

Q. What kind of world do you want your children to inherit?

A. Struggle. I think most people want their friends or family to have a peaceful future. I don't think that's possible or desirable. Far too much work is done to make children feel their world is safe and reassuring. That's a tremendous waste of time for teachers, who should be spending time teaching poetry, history and science. For Valentine's Day at school, my youngest daughter, who is 12, sends a Valentine and gets one. When I was a kid, it was a day of extreme anxiety and tension, as it can only be and should be. One: Will you get a Valentine at all? Second, will you know who it is from? Because it would mean someone had or hadn't made an effort, and yours had already been sent. These anxieties are important. They prepare you for life. She gets a Valentine from the entire class. They might as well e-mail one from the headmaster to everyone. It's painless. Excitement-free. Risk-free.

I love that quote, as I have often thought we are keeping one another down when we award every kid the same way and for mediocre things. My son's preschool had a huge preschool graduation dinner last June with 200 attendees, ranging from parents to grandparents and friends, and we all sat for an hour while we watched each child (about 40 kids, from 2 different classes) get on stage and recite a nursery rhyme. Each child wore a paper graduation cap and were given a "diploma" and a yearbook containing pictures from their year at preschool.

Hello?! People, it's PRESCHOOL! Nobody fails, you just show up and play with toys and sing songs and make friends! That's the point! And when I suggested that next year we just do it on a class level, with just the parents and some refreshments, and we could still enjoy the nursery rhyme recitations, I was politely told that "people wait a long time for this event, and we've been doing it this way for 12 years, so I don't think we'll be changing it."

Hubby and I were also talking about how when the soccer season ended in March, every kid in the league was given a medal. I realize that at the 5-year-old age it is not competitive, and no scores are kept, but what did they accomplish that warranted a medal? Even the kid in the league with the worst sportsmanship, pushing other kids and not playing by the rules, got a medal. For what?

Maybe I'm just a crusty downer when it comes to stuff. I'm not the kind of parent who pushes my kids too much, and I worry about how my passive, sensitive son will get by in this world, but I try to give them the tools to survive with, rather than try to make every situation easier on them.

Thoughts?

Bex ended the show on Saturday, September 03, 2005 at 12:45 PM | Permalink