My six year old knows the difference between a possum and a king-sized rat. He also noticed that an arm-uh-dilluh looks an awful lot like a little bitty rhinoserus who has survived a good ol' fashioned horn poaching. Thankfully, he doesn't know that the rhino horn has been used to make some of them afro-dee-siacs for some fur-in person with erectile dysfunction.
At any rate, it's pretty clear to me that MY BOY GOT SKILLS! So when the first grade teacher sent home the application for second grade "gifted and talented," I thought I'd give it a shot.
Have you ever filled out a form braggin' about how brilliant your own offspring is?
But he didn't make it. I was a little hurt, but Bumpus had an outright cow. After all, any child that can name 132 different pokey-men (they are CARTOON BEASTS and NO RELATION to Michael Jackson, thank Ba'hai) and all their battling statistics and can tell you all about photo-sin-thesis (which is not a bible scripture about taking nasty pictures, by the way) should at least get a ribbon or something!
So while my boy isn't on the road to becoming a doctor of physics who lives with his parents and writes computer games for the Japanese, Bumpus convinced me to call the woman in charge of this "gifted and talented" program to ask a few questions.
Her strategery was to take the first part of the conversation to go over every qualification for the program and tell me, one by one for all nine parts, that my child FAILED and DID NOT MEET STANDARDS and WAS NOT QUALIFIED to participate in their program. I tried to ask what, in a small school district, a 6 year-old "high achiever" (her words) who never studies anything and is currently reading chapter books and has started learning his times tables out of his own curiosity could do when he is otherwise a COMPLETE FAILURE at her tests. I also asked her what percentage of students are gifted enough to be at the party: 1-2%. That is 1-2 students PER GRADE. What the hell kind of party is that anyways?
The bottom line is that now I've had my first run-in with the public schools here in small town America, where we are and forever will be "outsiders" because we moved here 10 years ago and because we didn't marry our own cousins and because we don't keep an icebox on the front porch. And now I have officially been awarded the title of "trouble makin' anal retentive Mother."
Why do the schools always say "Hey! We want you to be INVOLVED in your child's education! Good parents are INVOLVED!" but then when you try to ask a question they give this attitude of "STAY OUT OF MY BUSINESS YOU PSYCHOTIC IDIOT WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THE DELICATE PROCESS OF EDGE-Y-KATIN' YER CHILRUN!"
But I got to get these kids into college so they can buy my dentures and fix my cable TV!
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3 comments:
Welcome to the wonderful world of public ed-u-kashon - better buck up - it only gets worse. Maybe you will get lucky and get a teacher like we got (for both kids) who has her students massage her bare feet during classroom hours when they are SUPPOSED to be learnin. Don't feel bad about the GT program, MY son who is doing almost high school level math and is teaching himself to play the trombone is ALSO not invited to the GT party. Maybe Hank and Matthew can start a new club "Idiots-R-Us" and analyze their boogers under a microscope in their spare time.
I'm just glad I ain't alone.
Can I come to the booger party, too? Maybe as a supervisor or elderly guest picker?
BRING ON THE POP-UP AND FIFTH WHEEL!
And I'm really just glad that someone is reading my highly so-fist-o-kated blog. Shouldn't I be getting college credit for this?
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