Hurried Season; Hurried Child

According to the calendar, August is past; September is hear.  It must be true because it the temperature dropped to a cool 99 degrees today.

 

In many parts of the country, leaves are already beginning to turn.  Sunflowers grow as high as the barn roof and crispy apples are ready to fall from the trees.  Not so where I live.  Here we are still swimming, shopping early to avoid the heat, and spending time in an air conditioned inside.

 

Things have really changed for this time of year.  Time was in my childhood and even the childhoods of my children, back-to-school occurred the day after Labor Day.  In most states, school children return at leas t by early August if no late July!  It's one of those iconic markers of life that has blurred into tedium. It seems as if we are losing more and more of these life event markers that divide time into manageable bites.

 

 

Here it is too hot for sunflowers or apples.  The stores are already selling candy and costumes for Halloween!  I love the season of pumpkin flavored everything, but that is not in September.

 

While I'm at it, we seem to rush everything.  We expect children to read before they leave kindergarten.  We send school work home with primary school-aged children who should be spending their afternoons playing in the late summer sunshine, using their imaginations, and connecting with their families.  They "reinvented" math so that children are supposed to understand the why of numerical equations when they should be mastering simple arithmetic first.  The wonderful curricula in art, music, drama, P.E. have become throw-aways to make room for more kill and drill math and incomprehensible common core objectives. Children are so stressed, the frequently melt-down and grow to hate school.

 

I think we need to slow down and reconsider our priorities.  Start school the day after Labor Day.  Give children the time to be children before they have to become adults.  They'll get there much faster if was allow a pace that is child-friendly.  Let their imaginations run free.  Don't do massive state and federal high stakes tests.  Simplify.  Trust teachers as the professionals they are.  Don't micro-manage them either.

 

Then let the barefoot boy with cheeks of tan put on his shoes after Labor Day and bring a ripe, crispy apple to his teacher.