Du temps perdu
I still remember the day my mother took me to the Mason county, West Virginia, health department for my pre-Kindergarten checkup. It was a sunny, warm day, probably in May or early June 1978. We drove there in our white, mid-seventies model Dodge Dart with mustard-yellow vinyl interior.
That car is still sort of the primal car, for me. We owned it for so long–until at least 1985–that it is the usual form of transportation when I am having one of those crossing over types of dreams in which past and present mingle bizarrely. On trips to Parkersburg to visit family, I used to stretch out on the back seat and look at the sky passing overhead out the rear window. No one wore seat belts in 1978, least of all children.
Cars in those days had flat bench seats, as well, which made stretching out and (probably) copulating much more comfortable. I don’t speak from experience on copulation in old cars, however.
The health department was in a red brick building of several stories, and we rode up to the office in an elevator. Maybe that is my first memory of riding in an elevator. Maybe it is my first memory of being in a building of more than one floor. Anyway, the whole experience was new and strange, to me.
I sat in a chair beside my Mom, and the nurse said, “This may pinch a little,” and she stuck me in the arm. I howled in pain, not believing what just happened. Mom had to hold me for the next shots.
In 1978, there was no pre-school, at least not in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, so I really had no idea what to expect. Still, I don’t remember the first day being particularly painful. No clinging to my mother or tearful wails of “please don’t make me go to school.” In fact, I imagine I probably rode the school bus by myself. I have no memory of either of my parents ever taking me to school, except for a brief period of about a week when I didn’t want to ride the bus because of a bully, and so I purposefully missed the bus so Mom would have to drive me.
The first day of Kindergarten, we sat in a circle on the floor and got to know one another. My teacher, Mrs. Eisenhower, read us a story–I wish I could remember which one, but all I remember is sitting there shyly with other quiet children, looking at her holding up the book as she read. Kindergarten was not even a full day, in those times. I went home on the bus at noon, after lunch and a brief recess.
Those five-hour school days seemed very long, however. We played and painted and listened to stories, recited our ABCs, learned to write our names. We napped. How did we fit all that in before noon?
And then, what a shock it was to go to first grade and have to stay in school all day.
Observing my own son’s experience, it’s odd to compare my past to his present. He has been in school since age three. He goes all day, sometimes from 8:30 AM until 5:00 PM, if Lynn has to stay at school after three o’clock. At five, he already knows more than I ever did at age five. He has been saying his ABCs since the day he started speaking, it sometimes seems. He can count into the thousands. He can read a little. He can tell time on a digital clock. He has a rudimentary science background. His artwork has really taken off, in recent months.
Sunday night, he drew a picture of Spongebob and Spongebob’s house; then he drew Gary the snail; then he drew Squidward and Patrick’s houses, even putting the TV aerial on top of Patrick’s house. All of these were identifiable for what they were, so long as one knew of Brendan’s intense interest in all things Spongebob.
Then he took another piece of paper and drew what he called a robot Spongebob. I asked him what the little things were in Spongebob’s holes, and he said “people.” “Do they control the robot Spongebob?” I asked. “Yes,” he said. Then he asked me to spell out a complex sentence for him, which apparently he wanted to use as the caption for his picture: “If we do not remote control this robot, he will explode.” So I spelled it out for him, and he wrote each letter carefully, if a little jagged and oversized, beside the picture.
One of my distinct memories from Kindergarten is of making a water color picture and having a breakdown, with big tears and sobbing, because the picture was just a mass of colors. I couldn’t make the picture represent what was in my head. My teacher comforted me and told me my picture didn’t have to be perfect, but I still felt frustrated that my ability to express myself was so limited and childish.
Brendan draws and writes left-handed. He seems about equally interested in both right-brain and left-brain activities, however. He loves books and stories, but at school he seems to choose activities more associated with the left brain: math, science, and art.
Two weeks ago, I took him to what will be his elementary school, Central Elementary, and the Kindergarten teachers there gave him his placement evaluation. Again, this was something new to me. When I went to school, we were all lumped in together, mentally retarded with the mentally hyperactive, intelligent with the dumb, prepared with the unprepared.
The testing begins early these days, I suppose. However, the only part of his evaluation I got to see was his hearing test. The teacher put a pair of headphones on him and asked him to raise his hand when he heard the sound, and his hand popped up regularly, as he looked at her intently for validation. Then, we were separated. He was taken into a classroom, and I sat outside at a table and filled out paperwork. I also had to write a one-page essay about my son’s interests, education to this point, strengths and weaknesses, etc.
I identified his strengths as intellectual curiosity and creativity. His weakness is a lack of patience. He needs to learn to finish what he starts before going on to something else (boy, does that sound familiar). My wife thinks I’m off base with that last assessment, however; maybe I am reading my own failings onto him. Or maybe children in general just don’t understand what adults have internalized: we are all waiting to be happy. We cannot be happy right now, but if we are patient and wait, happiness is bound to happen. Right?
When Brendan and the Kindergarten teacher came out, she said he’d done very well. He answered all her questions quickly and correctly, she said. He’d even read a few words for her. He is definitely ready for Kindergarten and will be a big help to whichever teacher gets him, she said.
I beamed at him and was in a good mood the rest of the day. Yet I felt vaguely guilty at being so emotionally invested in his success. I don’t want to be one of those parents. But I am one of those parents.
As we left the school, Brendan wanted to play on the playground equipment, so I watched him as he climbed and played. Again, I was struck by the differences time has wrought. The playground equipment at my elementary school was a metal-barred jungle gym, some half-buried tractor tires, swings (some of them broken or missing, empty chains dangling loosely) and odd pieces of metal sticking out of the ground.
At my elementary school, there was a metal pole, it’s base in cement, that kids had dug around until it was loose and wobbly on its cement pivot. It might have been a pole that had once held up one side of a tennis net, although the tennis court would have had to have been dirt-packed, but to this day I don’t really know what that pole was for. When I was in the sixth grade, a bully pulled it back and let it go while I was standing in front of it. It shot upright and hit me square in the forehead, knocking me cold. My teacher carried me into his classroom and stretched me out on a table at the back of the class and put a cold ice pack on my forehead. I woke up before my Mom arrived to take me to the emergency room. I still have a small lump above my right eye, where the pole hit me.
Nothing as dangerous as that pole was visible on the Central Elementary playground. The equipment was solid wood and plastic with rubber pads underneath it and mulch in other areas, under the swings and so forth. Small chance of a child being knocked unconscious by a mysterious, randomly placed steel pole.
As Brendan played, I asked him what kinds of questions he had answered. I never did get a straight answer.
“The teacher said you read to her. What did you read?”
“Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Oh, you didn’t read Willie Wonka.”
“Yes, I did, Daddy.”
“Did you draw any pictures?”
“Yes.”
“What did you draw for her?”
“People.”
So as much as I wanted to know just how smart my kid is, I felt disturbingly in the dark about what had transpired in the classroom as I sat outside and wrote my essay about my son.
Why does not knowing bother me so much? Over the subsequent weekend, I called up an elementary school teacher I know and asked her what kinds of questions are asked in these evaluations. She said it varies, depending on the teacher. At her school, the teachers ask the kids odd questions such as “How many legs does a table have?” to test…well, I’m not sure I understand what that question is supposed to test.
She said pre-Kindergartners are also asked to write their name, to say the name of their father and mother, and to demonstrate that they can follow instructions given by a teacher. If a child is too shy, or too obstinate to answer the teacher’s questions, obviously that is not a good thing in terms of the child’s placement in Kindergarten. Undoubtedly, I would end up in the class of dullards, if I were to enter Kindergarten today.
I also asked my teacher-friend if the purpose of this test really was placement. She said, “Well, it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be merely to determine if the child is ready for Kindergarten, but to an extent placement does occur because the kids are already being judged and started on a certain track, based on whether they did well or poorly in their evaluation.”
When I got back to work last week, I told a co-worker, who also has a five year old, about Brendan’s evaluation. He seemed almost affronted that his Maryland county public school system did not do these evaluations.
“I thought we had a good school system,” he said grumpily.
“Maybe these evaluations are a Virginia practice,” I said.
“Yeah, but I’d like to know how Reed would score on one of these evaluations,” he said. “Why doesn’t our school district do them?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Does Reed have to get vaccinations before starting school?” I asked. This was something else that had been worrying me, based on my own experience.
“Oh no, he had all his vaccinations when he was an infant. Brendan should be OK on that score, too.”
The striving begins early, and our kids don’t even realize it.
My Mom was my pre-school teacher. My Mom was a stay-at-home mother, and I can remember her sitting with me in the floor, teaching me to write my name on a piece of that soft, brown, multi-lined paper used in Elementary schools in those days. Maybe it is still used. To write my name, I used a fat, red pencil that felt thick and clumsy in my hand. Mom told me several times to try my other hand, until I decided that it felt better in my right hand (I didn’t know my right from my left, though). This happened probably during the summer before I began school. I still remember that, after all this time.
This is my name. This is me. This is the first important lesson we learn. Writing it makes it fact. Especially the last name was odd, to me, because I hardly ever heard it used. Putting the two names together with the pencil, Matthew and then my last name, was like fitting two pieces together in a puzzle. Suddenly, the whole picture becomes a little clearer.
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In another life, I did a story on a local kindergarten program. The administrators explained to me the various types of testing, their cirriculum, who had to go a full day and who didn’t, the tracking… The classrooms had no toys, there was recess but no nap, no play time. They were reading. Not just picture books, but stuff with fairly complex sentences.
I have an inkling of what you mean, trying to compare his world with yours at that age, and likely finding very little common ground. And am kind of fascinated by the other parent’s response, of how more testing would be validation of his decision to live in Maryland’s school district, send his kid to those schools.
As many failings as schools had when we were growing up (a random steel pole? yeah, my school had one of those, too, but it was much taller, you could climb its wobbly length to the top and no one could blast you in the face with it. Good god!), at least they let us be kids, for a little bit.
What do you think Brendan thinks of himself? Do you think he’s had a moment as you did before you started school, where it seems you realized you were your own entity?
Comment by Heather — Tuesday, 30 May 2006 @ 12:21 pm
I think he has had such a moment. Last night, he wanted to take one of those small, round pool rings in the tub with him, so we let him do it. But we turned the water off before it got really deep enough for him to enjoy having a pool ring in the bathtub. After a few seconds of trying to figure out how to express himself, he said, “Mommy, you’ve been ruler of this house a long time. It’s my turn to be ruler now.” It was all we could do to keep from laughing–he said it with such a serious face. But Lynn looked at him sternly and said, “When you make the house payment, you can be ruler. In the meantime, you shut the water off when I say.”
So yes, I think he has a very pronounced individual identity. He can be very forceful, when he feels hurt or discriminated against.
I think the kind of pole you refer to was probably one of those tether ball poles, Ã la “Napoleon Dynamite.” My school had one of those too, though it was upright and unwobbly, but I never saw a tether ball attached to it.
I enjoyed my elementary school years overall (the bullying aside), and it has only been in retrospect that I realize what an impoverished school system I went to for the first seven years of my education. The library was literally a janitor’s closet. The walls of the closet were lined with bookshelves too high even for teachers to reach without a stool, and you had to move the mop bucket out into the hallway before sending kids in one or two at a time to pick a book. There was no librarian, of course. But I read a lot of books from that small library that I remember to this day.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 30 May 2006 @ 12:42 pm
I’m always struck by the different between generations. Each set of kids is learning different, more, and somehow it seems odd to be left in the dust, of being a clumsy girl with poor motor skills who had to be shown how to tie her shoes by someone who was later tracked into the slow group.
Tracking at such a young age is disturbing to me. Your Brendan is really smart, but he’s also been given a good start. How do the kids that don’t go to Montessori do? My brother’s two older kids have gone to Head Start (the poor person’s answer) and I think they’ve been doing OK. They’re smart kids, and I’m amazed what they learn.
I think parenting is intimidating, another reason not to have a child. I would constantly worry that my child wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t getting the right opportunities. I think my parents didn’t have a lot of interest in how I did in school. That I did well enough on my own was good enough for them.
I think my biggest benefit was reading at an early age … not necessarily because I can remember my parents working on it with me … but because I saw my mother reading constantly and I started to read early, and was reading way above my reading level.
Btw… my parents did put me in preschool, mostly so they wouldn’t have to worry about child care. But I got myself kicked out of preschool.
Comment by Mel B. — Tuesday, 30 May 2006 @ 1:42 pm
My teacher-friend told me a story about a student who, during his pre-Kindergarten evaluation, refused to answer any questions or do as he was told. The Kindergarten teacher went out and talked to the boys mother and father and said, “Look, I need to know if he can answer my questions, or if he doesn’t want to answer my questions. The result will mean that he is put into one of two entirely different classes, one for kids who are behind and need special help, or the other for kids with behavioral issues.” When the teacher told the parents the kinds of questions she was asking the boy, the parents had no idea whether their son knew the answers. So the kid was tracked into the special needs class.
Then, as it turned out, the parents did not compelte the paperwork they were supposed to be filling out while their son was being tested. When the teacher asked why, the mother said that neither she nor her husband could read. The teacher completed the paperwork for the parents, but in the meantime, she also discovered that the boy’s father was not actually his father, and the mother didn’t know who the boy’s real father was. The teacher said, “Look, if this is the man he has grown up calling Dad, we’re going to put him down as the father, OK?”
What happened to that kid? High School graduate, working in low-paying minimum wage jobs. No future beyond the radius of the county he lives in.
I think my Mom took an interest in my education. My Dad was typical of his time, though. You probably know the song ‘The Cat’s in the Cradle.’ Neither of my parents ever met my teachers or had a parent-teacher meeting. At the time, I was glad of that–I didn’t want my parents to meet my teachers or take an interest in my education. I preferred leaving them out of it. But in retrospect, I could have used some guidance and encouragement.
I don’t remember learning to read before second grade. I might have begun in first grade, but second grade is where I really remember taking off, with some difficulty. My second grade teacher would divide us into small reading groups of four and we’d sit with her and read aloud. I remember breaking down and crying, once during one of these group readings, because reading was so difficult for me. Another little girl seemed shocked at my sobbing and put her arm around me and told me it was OK, that she had trouble reading, too. I was an emotional child and ended up crying a lot, looking back.
There was nothing exceptional about me as a child. In fact, I did pretty poorly in school. I could never have gone to a private college, due to my grades and my financial situation.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 30 May 2006 @ 2:08 pm
BTW, Mel, I’d like to finally hear this story about how you got kicked out of pre-school. You’ve hinted about it, from time to time. I think this is a story that deserves a full blog post
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 30 May 2006 @ 2:17 pm
My parents didn’t take much of an interest in getting me into college. They just let happen what happened, which was that I got to go to community college because we couldn’t afford for me to go to a better college just then.
I really wish I’d done college differently, but I didn’t have the encouragement or the drive to do it that way. My father always told me, don’t be in debt, don’t be in debt, yet he had debt and has made some poor financial decisions, in my opinion. Dad has stopped being god to me (and I don’t think he reads over here, so I’m safe.)
I wish I’d just found a way to go to a better college. I think my life would be a lot different.
As for preschool: the way I remember it, I was chasing a boy, and tried to kiss him. This was a Lutheran preschool, as this was before widespread public preschool. We weren’t Lutherans; this was just what was available in my town.
Anyway, I guess Lutherans don’t think very much of little girls chasing little boys. Perhaps if it’d been the other way round…
Anyway, my parents asked me if I just would like to stop going to preschool now, and that in the fall, I could go to kindergarten. Sure, I said. It’s my understanding that my parents were asked to not bring me back.
I was also generally the youngest person in my class; I was 10 days away from the cutoff for the next year. I think again it might’ve been a question of getting me in school part of the time so they didn’t have to pay a sitter so much.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 1 June 2006 @ 2:49 am
Sounds like we had some similar experiences. My parents didn’t express any great desire for me to go to college. It was my decision, and believe me it should not have been left up to me. I needed guidance from someone, which I didn’t get.
The only time I sat down with a guidance counselor was the time I made a mistake on some form or other and indicated I was Native American. I was called into the guidance office and the counselor was very excited at my prospects for scholarships. He asked me like three times, “Are you sure you don’t have even a little bit of Native American blood in you?” I said, “No, I just made a mistake.” He lost interest in me real quick.
But I didn’t seek out guidance, either. So I ended up at a community college for two years, then went on to WVU to finish up my education. I stayed at WVU for my Masters, as well, though I was accepted to the University of Virginia. I really wish I’d found a way to make UVA work, but they offer not a dime of financial aid, nor any teaching assistantships, to first year Grad students. You have to survive your first year entirely on your own.
When I finished community college and began looking for another school, the school I really wanted to go to was the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. Home of the Sewanee Review, a prestigious literary journal. It’s literary credentials are why I wanted to go there. Also, it has a European feel to it that I really liked. The Seniors have to wear robes, as if they were at Oxford or something. But in 1992-1993, when I was looking at it, it cost $19,000.00 per semester to go there. I actually visited the school by invitation, however. When I met with the financial aid officer at the school, he basically burst any hopes I had of going there, saying that my parents were in a bad income bracket for income-based scholarships and my grades weren’t good enough for merit-based scholarships. So I was just shit out of luck. That was a depressing moment. But in the end, everything worked out. I loved WVU. Yet I probably would have liked any school. The college years are a good time of life.
Comment by Matthew — Thursday, 1 June 2006 @ 7:07 am
Really good thread you’ve got going here. Brings back kindergarten memories to me too. Like Mel B., I was the youngest in my class too, having turned 5 just a week or so before kindergarten started.
Things I remember from that year:
*sitting next to Richie who ate glue and stuck crayons up his nose
*milk and cookies time when a crate full of little cartons of milk was brought down from the cafeteria and cookies were served off a small round table by Mrs. Taylor and a visiting mom
*sitting in a semi-circle around Mrs. Taylor who read to us from these thin yellow readers and liking that I could read along with her
*getting the “messy duck” stamp for sloppy work–coloring outside the lines, etc.–still haunts me to this day
*taking until the very end of the year to be able to tie my shoes and learn my phone number
I remember liking kindergarten. Liking the room that had toys against one long wall and liking the round cooperative tables throughout where we had to sit boy-girl, boy-girl as we learned. I remember my first friend, a girl named Kellie who had dark hair and dark eyes, who used to sit and talk with me on the monkey bars at recess. Kellie must have moved after kindergarten as I never saw her afterwards.
I never went to preschool except for one day, as I recall. Can’t remember the occasion; can remember the cinnamon graham crackers which hold a special place in my heart to this day. Mom read to me (and my sister) all the time, though. During my first years we lived out in the country but a library bus would come every week or so and we would pick out a bunch of books and take them back to the house in a laundry basket. At some point in my early childhood, my dad also picked up a Collier’s set of children’s books, encyclopedia style. My favorite was the first–full of nursery rhymes and songs.
My dad, he wanted us to do well, but it was my mom who actually helped us do it as I recall. Even as I grew older, she read books to us (Anne of Green Gables, A Day No Pigs Would Die), and when I reached high school and had big books to read in English class, I would often sit out in the kitchen and read to her (Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, King Lear, A Separate Peace) as she cooked. And I loved spending time with my mom in this way.
The only thing I remember being tracked in in school was math. In fourth grade I got stuck in the “slow” section, which felt pretty devastating at the time. But I worked my way out of that and got back in the regular class. Then in seventh grade, I got stuck in a slow section again. And I hated, HATED it.
As far as I was concerned, the teacher could do no good and was slower than I was (both herself and the class–in retrospect, I could be a cruel child in my thoughts and actions towards some of my teachers, but that’s another story). Still, the class was frustrating, and I did eventually get out of it and into the regular class once I assured everybody that I could keep up and that my self-esteem wouldn’t suffer terribly if I didn’t. Mr. Chrobak–this wonderful man who smelled of pipe tobacco, tomato juice, and coffee combined–taught in a way that made me feel capable instead of stupid, that turned math into more of a puzzle than an enemy. I even liked (yes, liked) algebra because of him. Geometry was a different matter (different teacher too); geometry made me feel really, really stupid and was my first “C” grade ever. I’ve always been marginal at math, though, and have lost virtually all my ability since I had to stop taking classes. But who needs math when we have calculators
Comment by Dawn — Sunday, 4 June 2006 @ 9:20 am