There is one priest at our Church that can wrap up Sunday Mass in 40 minutes or less. He's the kind of speed reading, prayer condensing, get me out of here before the Bears game starts celebrants that Catholics love. We rarely have him at 10:30 Mass though. Instead, Peter and I settle in every week for a good hour and ten minutes, set to the sonorous, soft and slow prayers of our Pastor. I'm not complaining - I need that time. But generally the jersey-clad assembly starts getting restless when the myriad of post-Eucharist guest speakers step up to the pulpit. This past Sunday, that speaker was the School Board president who extended an invitation to us to stop by the Parish's elementary school for an open house.
For kicks; a trip down memory lane for Peter and an accelerated planning session for me and Mary; we heeded the president's call to action and took a tour of the school. We were met in the auditorium by three enthusiastic eighth grade ambassadors, eager to show Mary her potential classroom.
While Peter moseyed down the hallways where he had grown up, reminiscing about where his old teachers had reigned, I started to notice things that didn't look like school as I knew it. I suddenly became an incredulous observer of bulletin boards, classroom decor, and academia that were a far cry from what I remember.
There was the second grade artwork, hanging on the walls of the first floor. The herd of dinosaurs wasn't depicted with the help of a set of crayons or markers, instead it was composed with the paint brush function of Apple's drawing program.
I saw a bunch of exercise balls in the classrooms.
'Um, what are those for?'
'Oh those are for the kids that can't sit still. They use the balls instead of their chairs and it helps them concentrate.'
'Are you kidding me?!'
The blackboard - that wonderful tool that I used to practice writing on before class started - was covered with maps, schedules, pictures, and other laminated paraphernalia. There wasn't an inch left to use. And the chalk? There wasn't a single slice of it.
'A lot of kids are allergic to chalk.'
'Seriously?!'
'We have interactive white boards instead! How cool is that?'
Then there was the library. A classroom that boasted perhaps four, maybe five book shelves.
'This is the library. But they cancelled library classes. They were replaced with additional computer classes.'
My heart skipped a beat. No Mrs. Sabeh. No plastic covers that crinkle when you open them. No library cards and overdue notices. No quiet time at a table in between the stacks for you and a good book to bond.
'So, they don't teach you the Dewey Decimal system?'
'Um. No. They don't teach that anymore.'
I left school, feeling a little uneasy. It was shock I guess, but it was exacerbated by the daunting themes of my recent non-fiction reading binge. Within the past two weeks, I've read Omnivore's Dilemma, The Last American Man, and Cod - A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. I highly recommend them all. Each book painted a rather ominous portrait of our society - from manipulating the food chain, to replacing hard work with laziness, to raping the oceans - we have spent decades, no centuries reshaping and reclaiming natural human systems.
And as we do this, we foster and pass on new techniques to future generations. Instead of teaching our children how to do things for themselves, we give them products, which are most likely electronic and programmed to do the work for them. We surround our children with over stimulation to the point that it is impeding their ability to process things in a linear fashion. And apparently, the stimuli are making us so attention deficit that we need bouncy balls to concentrate. We are feeding ourselves and our children food that we were never as humans were supposed to eat. Whether its something jacked up on corn and its bi-products, shot up with hormones and chemicals, synthetically farmed, or genetically modified, it's doing crazy stuff to the way that we think, age, and interact. And yep, it's probably making us allergic to freaking chalk.
Yes, I'm being pessimistic. And honestly, for all that had changed in the classrooms that I observed, there were many things that were the same. The love that our tour guides showed for certain teachers, especially that science teacher who drank her coffee out of a beaker. Hey, I had one of those teachers too. The fear they remembered as second graders in the middle of a bustling third floor hallway filled with seventh and eighth graders. Their band pride - from the remedial Hot Cross Buns playing fourth grade band to the more advanced group of instrumentalists in the upper school. And their giggly friendship accentuated by their matching Sperry shoes.
With Mary arriving in five weeks, I've been doing a lot of thinking about parenting and the world that she will inherit. It's far different from the place I knew and the speed at which it continues to shift is scary. But I've made a promise to myself that despite what the rest of the world is pushing and promoting, Mary and the rest of our children will be raised in a rather analog house. We'll always be equipped with a record number of books per capita and everyone will have a library card, we'll stick with economy cable, music will come from a record player,
there will be ample tools for growing, gathering, and yes, hunting, we will spend quiet time listening to the crackling of birch wood in the fire place, we'll open up the box of art supplies on lazy Saturday afternoons, and our refrigerator will continue to be stocked with food that is local, fresh, and as unprocessed as possible.
I am bound and determined to
fill in the gaps in Mary's education with the stuff that I'm afraid is going to be
missing from school by the time she gets there. There will be plenty of time for artwork, exploration in Bemis Woods, theater, dance, and imagination. And if there ever comes a day when there is a choice between the short version of Mass and the long version; a pew versus a bouncy ball; an e-reader hymnal versus the bound edition; our family will always take the longer, slower, sturdier, steadier, and more tangible route.
Lo.
