Binding Our Children's Minds

Originally posted September 27, 2011

The mother I spoke about a few blogs back, whose child was bored and sad, has found hope. She took her daughter to check out a local grade 4-6 fine arts school last Thursday and the child was floating on air. She had her first day there yesterday and came home buzzing about the things she had done - AND - she was exhausted. A real, honest to goodness, pooped out kid who had been excited and challenged all day.

Sure the newness will fade to some degree but the interest will not wane. She met the kids who have been going to that school for two years and still wake up excited for the day to start. It’s true for anyone at any age - when we are constantly being asked to look at things from a new angle, to think independently and expand our learning rather than continually review the same things - we are invigorated.

Meanwhile my daughter’s grade three class spelling words this week included: “I”, “my”, “swim” and “wind”. I understand that not all kids are avid readers and spellers but shouldn’t there be a way to challenge the kids who are?

At home Clancy often asks me what words mean and we will look them up, spell them, conjugate them and use them in a sentence. And we play with them.

This morning she wanted to know about “fraternize” as she had read it a book last night. We looked up its origins and she was thrilled to learn that “frat” comes from the latin “frater” which means brother. She rhymed it with “brat” so her brother the “frat who is a brat”. She thought that was funny until she suddenly realized that by rearranging the letters she got “fart” and that resulted in gales of laughter. Poor Jack now is a frat brat that farts.

I asked her what she thought of having easy words on her list. She said it was great because she got perfect scores and that put her ahead. "Ahead of what?" I asked. "The rest of the class." she replied. It was sad to see she what she drew from all this. I told her: "Clancy, most of the other kids are spelling these words just as easily as you are. You are not ahead, you are behind in your capabilities. Finishing fast and getting more time to doodle is not a good use of your time and likely the reason that when I ask: "What did you do in school today?", you say you can't remember.

These young minds are thirsty and capable of so much more than we give them credit for and I thank my lucky stars every day that I met Aaron and Moses Renert (the frats) and that they excite and challenge my kids’ “bright minds”. 

Speaking of which ...

A parent in the Bright Minds group told her school’s principal that her child was taking the Bright Minds course where kids in grade one are learning to multiply. The principal said that wouldn't work because 90% of kids CAN'T learn stuff like that at that age. So the mom asked the principal if she had tried to teach the kids to see for herself. The principal said no she had not because "studies" show a child can't process that kind of math yet. 

The mom, whose grade one child CAN multiply, replied: “you keep saying you “can’t” do things. You simply won’t. It's like the chinese binding babies feet so they stay small, that’s what you are doing to our children's brains.”