Still hangin' in there

Today I feel awful, and I know it's because I didn't give N. adequate sympathy when she was being extra whiny a couple of days ago. Karma. Thanks for the well wishes. I'm sure I'll be feeling better in no time.

I mentioned that taking advantage of the free K12 curriculum through the public school system was wearing thin. No one who knows me is surprised in the slightest that I would eventually come to loathe this arrangement. They may be surprised that it took me this long to feel that way, but then I'd have to remind them that we were teacher-free for the first 2 1/2 months (that's how long it took them to finally assign us to someone and make contact with us). What's driving me batty is this constant push for "progress". Each month we (meaning every student in the school) are supposed to get a percentage of the curriculum completed. It's usually around 11%, which gets you to 100% by June.

At this point I'd like to take you for a stroll down memory lane in which you are reminded that NEVER in all your years in public school in America did you ever make it completely through a textbook by the last day of school. Case in point: US History my junior year in high school. I recall spending the first 3/4ths of the year getting up through the Declaration of Independence, and then we tried to quickly wrap-up the next 200 years during the last nine weeks of school. I remember reading about WWI, and wistfully flipping pages ahead to WWII, the Korean War, and Vietnam, and wondering when in my life I would ever be taught those. Never happened. But I digress....

As I was saying: progress. So we mark off lessons completed each day. I'm not going to try and make excuses for the days when we don't get all our lessons done, but life happens, and we generally make up for it. What I would like to complain about is the fact that there are all these wonderful lessons in Math, History, and Science that are marked "optional". These are great lessons that delve further into the subject matter, and really help cement the ideas that are being presented. We like them, and look forward to them. What I didn't know is that every time we choose to do an optional lesson as it comes up in our daily plan, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. The optional lessons DO NOT COUNT towards progress! If we do the optional lesson, then we are putting ourselves behind. Kinda sucks that love of learning right out of you.

So this discrepancy between optional and core lessons explains my confusion when last month I thought we had reached our percentages, and the teacher informed me we hadn't. She then fairly hastily brushed it aside as my voice began to rise like that of someone who is about to go off the deep end. This, people, is what happens when you give over control of your child's education to someone else. I've said time and again that nothing is ever free - there are always strings attached. Earlier this evening I indicated to hubby the thoughts I would be expressing to N's "teacher" the next time I spoke with her on the phone, but as this blog is a family-friendly place, I can't really repeat those things here in good conscience. And one really shouldn't shoot the messenger. Sometimes it just feels good though.