I rang the school this week. The organisers of Cass's choir were coming over & she wanted to join the grade 7 class for that period. No problem. We occassionally participate in things & they have generally been worth upsetting our schedule for. The staff are great about including her & the kids are used to her although they mostly seem to think she does no work. So I get given a time & we duitifully trot up to find they've screwed the times & the whole thing is just wrapping up but we sit down for the last 20 minutes or so prepared to enjoy what we can.
Forget it. The kids are behaving like a bag of monkeys on speed. Cass eyes got bigger & bigger (& they are pretty big to start with!) Apparently the rather nice chappie we've been working with for several months is a minor t.v celebrity ~ the kids all knew him off some show we've never watched & were swarming him like fleas. One very ADD boy was hitting him! Very few of the children would sit still & quiet to hear what he wanted to say. I could practically hear the cogs churning over in Cass' brain. My very silent child clutched her flute & eyed the pandemonioum with disbelief.
I thought of this wonderful lady directing her choir of 50 odd kiddies, one of whom is just 5, who behave so very proffessionally Cass doesn't look like an oddity & wondered how we got to the point where children have lost their innate respect for adult authority.
When I offered to drive them back to the boat Cass came too although she had a flute class about to start. Our famous friend shut the door with relief, turned to me & said from the bottom of his heart, 'Good call on the homeschooling.' Yeah, well I knew that. He then turned to Cass & gave her a pep talk about the 'bigger world' she will eventually move into where she will find like minded people to share her enthusiasims with. I appreciated the kindness of his intent but Cass is a hardy soul & she is savvy enough to know that there are some things that bigger world cannot give her: enough of nature's beauty to drown in, the sense of community, the love & closeness of family, a love of God. I know Cass sometimes feels deprived because she hasn't had the whole school experience but there are some things it's just as well to pass on ~ & for us school is now one of them. Honestly, if the kids behave that way at school, what are they like at home? And how on earth do their parents cope?
1 comment:
Although we haven't ever home-schooled, we have raised our children to practice self-control and to respect authority! You know you've done something right when your high school son's teacher tells you that having him in their class is the highlight of their day and what a delight he is. I'll bet they don't get to say that about too many 16-17 year old teenage boys!
Connie
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