Friday Night

You don't have to think of somewhere to go.

     I was trying to think of a place that my daughter would like to go after school on a Friday. A place she would love going to. A place filled to the brim with sights and sounds and fresh excitements. So of course I decided to take her to a Target store.

     While there, I picked this bad boy up:

     This is the third Brain Quest workbook my child has gone through, in addition to her other workbooks. She also demanded this workbook, as well:

     A lot better than the toy I was probably going to get.

     These workbooks allow you to push your child into learning over their objections.

      I also saw my daughter's friend on the way out of the Target store. 

     Her mother is the sort of person you catch looking at you mid-gulp with a rather quizzical look on her face as if she has seen something which offends her greatly. The kind of woman who will lecture you, without provocation, because you pecked at a lunch platter with your bare hands. Short, graying, she seems to hold her daughters most nearly as captives.

     Her youngest, my daughter's friend, writes very well for her age. It seems like her older sister or someone else works with her on it. Wish I knew what method they had used, but it's impossible to talk. I'll just discover fresh reasons why I am the worst person to have ever walked the Earth, as per usual.

     Too many people in this town think parenting is some sort of competition. You win when your child slays all the other children on the field of battle and is declared champion of all learningdom. Of course, there is not much they do not think is a competition. It's counterproductive, though. Learning is collaborative. You do it with others. You do nothing much alone.

     Their school is not so much collaborative as collective, with laurels awarded not for high ability but for ability the most in line with average. That my daughter can read and write well is not a subject approached; though children a year older who cannot read or write as well are praised, I suppose, for their properly age appropriate averageness.

     These workbooks prepare my daughter to, perhaps, go to school one day and be recognized for what she is; until she is recognized, we wade through dark waters together not knowing if and when help will come.

     One day, so far as I know, a great hope will emerge from the shadows: the extraordinarily Oridnary Child. This androgonous creature will hail from the deep and show the incredible awesomeness of not striving above station. Because of the presence of the Ordinary One, no one will ever feel inferior, except for those with readily diagnosed behavioral provlems or learning disabilities. All hail the Ordinary One.
     But what will the ordinary do? What will they solve? People managers being caught unaware, of course! They will ring the having-to-be-flexible alarm, and so will appear the Ordinary Child.
     Collectivism always fails to recognize that the power of one extraordinary individual, properly motivated and substantially empowered. There is enough energy there to help the weak, too! Hindering the strong does not help the weak; but it can seriously hinder the strong. It can motivate them to use their energy unproductively.
     Having exercises for her mind to do reminds my daughter that there is so much more to know, even though according to her teachers she knows more things than it is permitted they admit that she know.