LifePundit

Covering Up

Graduation is tonight (the first of two for one girl graduating from one middle school) and I have come up with a solution to the bosom problem.

A foot of lace trim, an old T-shirt cut into a strip, and some safety pins.

Lily had the choice of death or taking the lace ($1.59 at Hobby Lobby) and facing it with the doubled-over T-shirt strip, then pinning both sides to her undergarments. Voila! A modesty panel.

I don't get mad at her very often, but she found out this afternoon that it does happen.

She looks very nice and we'll be off shortly. We're not showing anything but our smiling faces. We're smiling, right?

Happy Confederate Memorial Day!

This is a photo I took on Saturday of South Carolina's State House. That's Lily in the front left. I don't know who the Confederate re-enactors are, but I'm sure they were hot. They were also extremely serious people, like the Beefeater guards you can't get to acknowledge you.

Not that Lily was one to find out. I could hardly get her to stand in the same town with them to get this photo.

"Who are those people?" she asked.

"Why do you think I'd know?" I answered. I have a lot of crazy friends but most keep to themselves and dress normally. "Just stand in front of the State House so I can get your picture." I practically had to haul her over there and sit on her just to get this picture. This was as close as she would get to them.

"They look like rapists," she said.

"They're not. They're just men with a love of history and too much time on their hands," I said.

"Why are they doing that?"

"Smile, honey, and we can get this over with."

We had a wonderful confluence (is that the word) of things this past weekend. Lily had a school project where she has to take pictures of various historic places (about 25 in all) downtown. She gets extra credit if she's in the photo.

And I got a brand new Nikon D60 for my birthday and Mother's Day. Yahoo! As soon as the battery charged, we were off, with Paul driving and Lily and me hopping out in traffic to take the photos.

Today I found out from a friend who works in state government that today is Confederate Memorial Day and she has the day off. So that's why there were sweaty re-enactors standing in front of the Confederate Memorial. (Though I'm beginning to think that a secession might be in order with the Obama administration doing all it can to dismantle what made America great. But that's another topic.)

Here's probably my favorite picture of the day -- Lily standing by the Gervais Street bridge. Sherman's troops sat on the other side of the river and shelled Columbia from there before crossing the river to burn the city.

I remember that Confederate Memorial Day was something my mother observed, but I don't remember how. Maybe just by remembering. She knew her grandfather, who was in Virginia when the war ended and had to walk home to South Carolina. She told me once about how as children she and her siblings would pretend to listen to their grandfather tell his stories, would say "yes sir" and nod their heads and not listen to a word. She said she regretted that she didn't pay more attention, that she didn't remember more. I guess when Confederate Memorial Day rolled around she remembered all that she could remember. And more. Now she can't remember who I am.

For those of us who can still remember, Happy Confederate Memorial Day.

Do You Have to Lie to Get Your Child in a Good School?

Sending Lily to the single-gender middle school was the best thing we ever did. So was switching churches to one where she felt more comfortable (can you have two best things you ever did?). Alas, her middle school only goes through eighth grade, so we've got to find a good high school to send her to next year.

Then we have to figure out a way to get her in.

The single-gender middle school she's attending is in another school district, Richland District 2. A good school district, run by professional, fair-minded people. They are very upfront about how somebody from outside of their district can get a child into the school of their choice. We had to:

1. Buy property in that district (we bought an empty lot from parents whose daughter was finishing up the single-gender program and returning to District 1);
2. Apply for the magnet single-gender program and be accepted;
3. Pay tuition every year. This year's tuition was $4,000. Yes, we pay tuition to go to public school. Don't that beat all?

We could stay in that district, keep paying tuition, and get her into a good high school by getting her in a good magnet program. But the schools keep getting farther and farther away from where we live. And why should we pay tuition and drive two hours a day (30 minutes there and 30 minutes back in the morning, same trip in the afternoon) when there are good high schools in the district we live in?

Trouble is, we aren't zoned for the good high schools. And District 1 is not run by fair-minded, professional people. The school we are zoned for is better known for the gangs it breeds and the occasional football player who goes on to be a star in college or beyond. A neighbor's daughter went there. If you asked her how school was, she would burst into tears. Her parents wouldn't allow her to talk about it. They moved to Florida.

Lily is not going to that school we are zoned for. Period. It is a failing school and not safe either.

But here's the thing. How do I get her into one of our district's two good high schools?

On April 15, I will need to go to the district office and plead my case to get her transferred to a decent school. I understand I need to treat this day like a rock concert where the tickets are quickly sold out, waiting in the darkness of the early morning, standing in a line with other hopeful, stressed parents for the district office to open and the bureaucrats to begin their bureaucratting.

Based on the experiences of my friends, this is a nearly useless exercise. One woman had all of her paperwork for the transfer typed up, notarized and included back-up documents. When she got to the front of the line, the bureaucrat dismissed her, saying her paperwork wasn't right! The person behind my friend had no paperwork at all. The bureaucrat filled it out for her and accepted it.

My friend is white. The bureaucrat and the person she helped were black. My friend called the district supervisor that afternoon. She said, "I think my problem is that I'm the wrong color." The supervisor did not like this at all.

Unfortunately, another white friend had a similar experience and came away saying that she, too, had been the victim of racism.

These are the things that happen and we whisper among ourselves, afraid that in our charges of racism we will be called racists.

I'm calling around, talking to other parents and teachers, trying to figure out how to get my daughter into a school where the challenges will be academic, not challenges for survival, and where she can get into a good college. I want her peers to be college bound, not bound to drop out before graduation. So far, the advice has been that I have to play the game. That means I have to lie.

Some people "borrow" addresses of relatives and friends who live in the right school zone. Some sublet rooms or pay people to use their addresses. And they teach their children to lie about where they live so they won't be thrown out of school.

There's another route. If I can find a course that is offered at one of the good schools that is not offered at the gangsta high school we're zoned for, we can get Lily in on that. So far, all I've found is Russian. I think you need a burning desire to learn Russian in order to succeed at Russian, so I'm still looking. I'd hate to do that to her. She loves French.

The district bureaucrats know that people do this, so they don't make the course roster easily accessible. I'm trying to get a listing of what the two good high schools and the one bad high school offer so I can compare. I did find the comprehensive roster for the whole district, and I have to say, it was disturbing. They had a special section on students who are going from the eighth grade to the ninth grade. They call these students "raising ninth graders." This error is repeated everywhere. They call themselves educators. It's rising. I guess I should be grateful that they're not planning on razing them.

What a world.

Showing Our Bosoms

One of the great things about single-gender education is that the teachers can say things in class that they wouldn't say in mixed company.

For instance, Lily's English teacher announced to the class on the first day of school that everywhere she looks she sees bosoms. (It's true. Are there any TV announcers, characters on "24," "Lost" or Fox News that don't show cleavage? Providing they're female, of course....) Even Hillary has followed, uh, suit.

Lily's teacher said, "Girls, I do not want to see your bosoms. Do not show your bosoms in here."

And the girls went fetal. Mrs. B. was doing it again -- saying the un-sayable.

Bless you, Mrs. B.

How is it that when Lily and I go shopping, the shirt that looks fine in the store sneaks down when Lily puts it on later? I suspect that Lily pulls it up a little higher in the store when Mom is deciding whether or not to buy.... Fortunately, Lily has Mrs. B. every day, and Lily doesn't want her bosoms discussed.

That's not the only end of a girl that Mrs. B. has a problem with. One day Crystal dropped her pencil. When she leaned over to pick it up, Mrs. B and the class got an eyeful of butt cleavage. Mrs. B. was appalled and said so.

"Crystal, fix you pants. Don't you know that Crack Kills?"

School Starts Right as the Money Runs Out

School started yesterday with an abrupt change in schedule that I'm sure we'll all be accustomed to by Easter break. Lily gets up too early for good sense and gets fully dressed in a calculated casual indifferent sort of way -- a look that says -- I really don't care what I look like but you should see all the clothes I tried on that didn't make the cut this morning. Makeup so carefully applied as to look unmade up (Thank God!), hair blown dry to look like it dried naturally. And jeans. Always jeans. ($10 jeans from Target -- am I lucky or what?)

Anyway, she does all this in time to come down by 5:30 a.m. to wake us up by playing Reveille on the piano, then collapses on our bed because she's exhausted. (We are currently in discussions about doing the math for what time you need to go to bed in order to get eight hours of sleep before getting up at 5:00. She is never tired at night.) All I have to do is get my gym clothes on, my teeth brushed and yes, I do make her lunch just because I like to.

She's the punctual alien, the person in our family who is determined not only to be on time (not my best thing), but also to be there early. So, if she wants to be on time that badly, I take her, work out on the way home and can be at my computer at work by 9:00 -- clean, exercised, fed, horses fed, even some procrastination thrown in. It's a good thing. Except for the part where I see her running out of steam....

I miss her. It was fun to work at home and have this wonderful, interesting person at home with me. But she needed to go back to school. I was running out of money buying school supplies. No clothes. Just supplies and things to put the supplies in.

Tell me, why does an eighth grader need a $100 calculator? And how long do any of us believe she can keep up with it? Shall we take bets?

Maybe it will help her do the math on what time to go to bed in order to get enough sleep....

And how did she talk me into a Vera Bradley purse? She has to carry a purse at all times because she needs to have her Epi-Pen in case she gets exposed to nuts and goes into anaphylactic shock. I used to buy purses for her at Target and hand them to her when I got home. Now she wants to pick out her purse, and I have to admit, I don't want anybody else picking out my purse so I cooperate.

So after we looked at every purse ever made, I caved and went to the Vera Bradley store. How can those things cost so much? But I got her one, and even a couple of things to go with it. I asked her if this purchase would make her happy forever, and she said yes. Happy Forever.

So there you go. We're all Happy Forever. And very, very sleepy.

A Reason Not to Go Back to School I'll Bet You've Never Heard

Lily doesn't want to go back to school. I guess that just means she's normal. But a few days ago my grown-up nieces asked her why she didn't want to go back to school, and Lily's answer surprised me and almost made me cry.

She said,

"I don't want to go back to school because it's my last year there and I don't want it to be over."

Her single-gender middle school magnet program has turned out to be the best decision we've ever made. She's happy and she's learning and even earning some recognition. What's more, she appreciates what she's got. As I've reported here before, she says that at her public, single-gender magnet school, "even the mean girls are nice."

Maybe this year will pass very, very slowly and she can savor every moment.

NYT Magazine Cover Story on Single-Gender Education

Very interesting and long article in the NYT Magazine on Single-Sex Public School Education. Lots of good information that if you're at all interested in the subject you'll enjoy. I don't do it justice by these excerpts, chosen because they either supported my opinion or made me laugh:

In 1995, there were two single-sex public schools operating in this country. Currently, there are 49, and 65 percent of those have opened in the last three years.

There are two movements behind single-gender education: one is based on the belief that boys and girls are wired differently (this group led by Leonard Sax), and the other based on the belief that society shapes behavior. Here's a statement from a teacher at a school founded on feminist theories:

Wylie described her job to me by saying, “It’s my subversive mission to create all these strong girls who will then go out into the world and be astonished when people try to oppress them.”

And I thought this was funny:

Speaking to a group of sixth graders, Sax explained his theory that girls’ hearing ability is much better than boys’, as is girls’ sense of smell. The girls, just on the edge of puberty, sat utterly rapt, seeming to want to understand why their brothers, boy cousins, cute skater-dude neighbors and fathers were so weird. A few weeks after the lecture, Sax sent me a packet of color photocopies of thank-you notes he had received from the girls. One, from a girl with two fathers, read: “Dr. Sax, Thank you so much for coming to Burkes. . . . I had a smell in my room and my Dads couldn’t smell it but I could. I thought I was going crazy. It ends up there was a dead rat in the wall. Hope you come back soon.”

And this, from all-boys Excellence Charter School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, makes me cry:

There, (Sawicki, the principal) told me that educating lower-class black boys is “the new civil rights movement.” He then walked me down the hall to one of his kindergarten classrooms, where a sign on the door read “Fordham, Class of 2024.”

“Jacob,” said Sawicki, folding himself into a tiny chair and pointing to a line in a workbook, “will you read that for our guest?”

Jacob, who is 5, straightened his tiny tie under his green cardigan and used his index finger to track his place on the page. “A rat and a rabbit went down the slide.”

“Thank you,” said Sawicki. “And can you tell our guest what you like about the Excellence School?”

“I like that I get to wear a sweater with buttons,” he said, glancing down at his uniform. “And I like that I’m going to college.”

There's really good stuff happening in single-gender education. I see it every day. Can't explain the theories or even defend them. I just know that it's working for our family.

Should Students be Allowed to Have Cell Phones at School?

If Lily is found to have a cell phone at school, it will be confiscated.

We bought her the phone because she didn't feel safe at school. Although she's in a magnet program, it's within a larger school where it's not uncommon to have fights. One of the boys in the single-gender program was jumped by some girls in the general population, who beat him up under the guidance and direction of an older male student in a gang-initiation.

Her first day at school she got in the wrong place at the wrong time and didn't know where to go to get away from a fight that broke out between two older male students. The high school this middle school feeds into has a known and uncontrolled gang problem.

And even if the school were filled with pacifist cherubs, that doesn't mean that some crazy with a gun won't turn up and do what crazies with guns do. There is an armed guard, but it's a large campus.

I understand why schools don't want the students on phones. They can be disruptive, distracting and used for cheating. They can also be used in case of emergency.

I keep telling her to take it in spite of the rules and to keep it turned off and hidden. Being a good kid, she won't break the rules. I don't want to alarm her by telling her why I want her to do this, so I've backed off.

I wonder if there is a way that schools could accommodate cell phones by using permission to carry them as an incentive? If you're on honor roll, for instance, you can carry a phone that's turned off. You can turn it on after the final bell rings. During tests they'd sit on the teacher's desk, just to be sure.

If more students carried phones and used them legitimately, I think our schools could be safer.

And in a culture where it's not cool to be smart, maybe earning the ability to carry your phone would counter some of this destructive attitude.

What do you think?

Failing Georgia School District Changes to Single-Gender Approach

Thanks, Lori, for the article from AJC.com about Georgia's Green County's schools switching to single-gender education starting next fall. I'll bet it gets sabotaged before then. Parents are apparently upset because they won't have a choice.

They should have been upset when their kids were failing.

I'm not sure this is the way it should be done, but they certainly can't do any worse that they've been doing with their current program. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  Here's some of the story:

Students in all of Greene County's regular public schools will be separated by gender starting next fall, a move educators hope will improve rock-bottom test scores and reduce teen pregnancy and discipline rates in the small, rural system.

The school board approved the measure last week, drawing vocal protests from some students, parents and community members.... School officials say they need drastic change to save the low-performing district from slipping further behind the rest of the state.

One thing to note is that Leonard Sax, the man who wrote the bible on single-gender education, Why Gender Matters, is one of the most vocal critics:

Leonard Sax, head of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, said he knows of no other public school district that has switched entirely to single-gender classrooms.

"This is the worst kind of publicity for our movement," he said. "It misses the whole point. Our movement is about choice, about giving parents a choice. One size does not fit all. Even a small school district needs to provide choice."

He called the news of the school board's vote "very embarrassing."

The real embarrassment  is continuing to do something that isn't working.  However, I'm also sure it can be sabotaged. The girls who don't want to be in Lily's single-gender school simply flunk out.  If enough folks are against this, they can be sure it fails. Just like it's failing now. Only this time, they'll have someone or something to blame.

Lily's Going to be on Japanese TV!

As regular readers know, my daughter, Lily, attends a public single-gender middle school that somehow has attracted international attention.

Today a Japanese film crew spent the day with them and interviewed Lily and two of her friends through a translator. They also filmed the teachers and the classrooms a lot.

"Mom, they stood this close to me and talked. Then the translator would say what they  just said. It's a good thing I don't have personal space issues because they were this close," she said.

Sounds to me like she does.

Don't know who it was, where or if it will be broadcast or anything else, but if you see a Japanese production about single-gender middle schools, Lily is the one who talks about how much better Algebra  is in a single-gender environment, though it's still a math class.