Read this article http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090927/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school
It is disturbing to me, to say the least. More school? Less summer? Oh, come on. I don't even know where to start. Why should my kids go to school more because some people can't stay home with them during the summer? Why does the government, particularly the big O., think they, he, can raise children better than their parents? "Here, let us take those kids off your hands." And only the wealthy can enrich their kids' lives during summer vacation? Does anyone really think it is better for kids to be sitting in classrooms all year round? I am sorry, but I think the kids don't have enough free time as it is. In fact this morning, when I roused poor Jonathan out of bed for a nice warm shower, he started crying and crying....and I felt like pulling him out of school. It just goes against the laws of nature to drag sleeping children from their beds and send them out the dooor. Or against the laws of what I find comfortable, anyway. And Samuel, my 8th grade is such a smart kid. But he always seems to forget to do some part of the homework from one of his classes, so he has afterschool homework hall almost every day. He is gone from 7:30 to after 4:pm. It DOES help to teach him responsibility, hopefully he will catch on and be more diligent. But homework doesn't set well with me anyway, they are in school for so many hours, and if each teacher gives them an assignment, they have no life. Especially because for some of them, they are not really learning, just doing the work to satisfy the teacher. When a child already "gets" something, the meaningless repitition is well, meaningless. And that is my public school rant for the day.
Evelyn Joy is home today. She says she doesn't feel well. She is cuddled up in the chair under a nice quilt Mirielle made a few years back for Gramma. She is watching channel 24 (PBS)....she doesn't seem to sick, but she never had the flu-y thing we had, so.....
Charlotte Claire is up bright and early this morning. She does this thing during the summer where she wakes up when everyone else is still sleeping, and goes back to sleep in the hallway. With her blanket. She got up and got all settled in, and I went in the wake the little kids and she started crying, saying she wanted to go back to bed. But her night-time pull-up was soaked, she was wet, she needed a shower....so she's up. She is playing dollhouse on a small rug, a rug that Rosie thinks is just for her.
I am crying because now her bedding is wet and Jon's bedding is wet, and the pile is growing and growing. I need to go put in a load and get moving. I wish I wish I had two washers, but then I am glad I have one. Maybe I just need a trip to the laundrymat to get all this bedding washed. hmm. I wish there were two of me. Wait, three. One to just lie in bed and read. ha. With cookies. No, that would have to be on the couch, I can't eat cookies in bed. yuck.
The apple turnovers that Mirielle and I made yesterday were excellent, the best I have ever had, but I am not a good judge, I think every baked good is the best I have ever had. I will ask her for her recipe. It was very buttery and flakey. She cooked the apples up on the stove with the sugar and cinnamon. I rolled out the chilled pastry dough. My squares were rounded, they looked awful, only fit a little bit of apples, they seemed like a flop. But they taste so good. We had tons of apples leftover, so I made up some pie crust quick and we put the cooked apples in and baked them. I have not tasted a piece yet, but they look really yummy. We spent so many hours in the kitchen yesterday. Right now, the sink is full of dishes, the counter is full of dishes. The dishwasher ran after dinner, but I guess it wasn't enough. Talk about meaningless repitition, unloading and loading the dishwasher is getting OLD. But then it is better than washing them all by hand.....or trucking the water from a well 5 miles down the road in a jug balanced on my head. God has really blessed us so much. I don't want to be like the Israelites in the wilderness. God had given them freedom, and bread, and yet they complained. They complained so much, they did NOT enter the promised land. And look at me. Wah, wah, wah, laundry, dishes, buying more milk..........ouch.
Now that I have encouraged myself, I will start the day with thankfulness in my heart.
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2 comments:
I am so with you on the school thing. Our governor proposed a plan to add twenty more days. Right. My kid needs twenty less days! I am preparing for a big post on this too (and a letter to our editor). We also recently enacted a booster seat requirement for kids up to 7 years old. That was frustrating too. My kids ride in the seats but what about school busses? Or when they catch a ride with a friend? Government is so obtrusive these days...Glad I got my rant out too! :-)
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was starting to think I was the only mom in the country who thought more school was simply out of the question! I barely see my son as it is because after he comes home from school he is in his room doing homework half the night and last year, when my daughter who is now in college, was a senior and in all AP and Honors courses she worked on homework from the time she got home until after I went to bed and most of the weekend too. Our kids don't get enough time to be kids as it is.
Plus, I just don't think it is the job of the school system to provide day care for our kids. If parents work (and most have to - myself included) then they need to arrange for child care. I chose to have a job that pays much less than I could make doing what I was originally trained for because I get to work from home and have done so since my daughter, who is now almost 19, was about a year old. I understand not everyone has the ability to do that, but when we have kids we have to make hard decisions about the direction our life is going to go and how we handle work/child care is one of those hard decisions.
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