Good Morning.
When my children were in school I was known as an activist for education, apparently a very annoying one. School board members and administrators would have done anything to shut me up, but I didn't, particularly after the legislature passed a bill stating that any student desiring admission to a state university had to take a minimum of two years of a foreign language and a semester of fine arts. I was absolutely delighted, but the administrators went haywire. The study of music, art, or theater clearly seemed foolish to them, and it ticked me off. I went to a packed school board meeting after the legislation was passed and pointed to a course in the student handbook that offended me big time. It was entitled Suds and Duds, a full semester of learning how to do the laundry. The handbook said the course would cover the sorting of clothes, measuring the detergent, selecting the correct washing and drying temperatures, and folding the items appropriately. The highlight of the course was taking a field trip to the laundromat that presumably acquainted the students with how to plug quarters into the machines. The same academic credit was awarded for this challenging work as it was for trigonometry or American history.
I learned how to do the wash, iron a shirt, and sew on a button from various female relatives. I did not go to a school that actually paid someone to come in and teach this stuff, all the while fussing about having to hire a Spanish or an art history
teacher. Turns out there were a lot of parents like me, and we decided to form a boosters club for the people who had kids involved in chorus, band, school plays, the student newspaper, and the debate team - everything but sports. The athletic
boosters had a weekly spread in the city newspaper and we demanded equal coverage and got it. Even more astonishingly,
within a few weeks we had twice the number of members in our artsy fartsy club as the other guys. Listen up: I think sports
are wonderful. My father played hockey in college, was a top-notch skier, and an avid baseball fan. My husband lettered
in football and lacrosse in high school, was a nationally ranked junior skier, and played lacrosse in college, but not everyone is a gifted enough athlete to make the team, even warm the bench. Teenagers need to feel they matter, and they shouldn't be slighted, let alone bullied, because they can paint a fabulous set for the fall play but are less than adept at dribbling a basketball.
I have two grandkids in sports and two in music and theater, but they aren't taking courses guaranteed to jack up their grade point. They're doing geometry, calculus, world history, English lit, biology, physics, French, and Spanish. One of them is nuts about Shakespeare, and all of them are good writers. The soccer player will be working on the school newspaper next year, and the band and chorus member plays golf with her father. It's called being well-rounded and all of them are succeeding in that regard, maybe, in some small measure, because I raised hell about using the brains that God gave us. Their parents clearly share that view, for which I am grateful. Either that or they're afraid I'll show up in the driveway with my megaphone.
I am quite aware that not every student can plow through a physics course and indeed I was probably one of them, but think what would happen if we offered a selection of course options truly worthy of academic credit and threw out the stuff that should be taught at home by a kind old granny or a big brother. We might even raise the intelligence level of the country where we demand candidates for office who actually make us proud.
And now I must plan my evening of watching the figure skating that combines athleticism with ballet. It is the most
watched Olympic event which means there's hope for us all.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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