During my
years living in New York City, my roommate was a first grade teacher at one of
the best public schools in the city. She had studied at the Bank Street College
of Education and her classroom was a perfect example of how children can
benefit from non-traditional approaches to education. None of the mindless
worksheets that I remember from my time in elementary school. Instead they would spend their days
participating in “community meetings,” writing and illustrating their own books
and, well, I don’t really remember what else they were doing. Running their own art gallery while building
energy efficient cars in their spare time or something like that I imagine.
To be fair,
I should admit that my job during those years was doing intakes at a rehab which was
not exactly all rainbows and safety scissors. I saw plenty of shining faces but
rather than shining with joy, they were shining with withdrawal-induced sweat. Instead of
writing me cute little notes, they were demanding to know if I had ever spent
four days straight smoking crack with a hooker who then robbed me and left me
tied to a bathroom fixture. I hadn’t? Well then there was no way that I’d ever be
able to ever possibly relate to them, let alone help them.
I digress.
My point is that I may have glamorized her job just a little bit. A fact that was made clear to me when I taught an after-school collage class at her school and was made to cry by my students after only three days. Nevertheless, I always
thought that when I had kids, I’d want to send them to a school just like hers.
Up until
now, it hasn’t worked out like that. In Japan he went to a daycare two afternoons
a week and to be honest, I have no idea what the hell was going on in that
place since my Japanese skills were rudimentary at best. I just remember “sports day” where Nico was
herded out in formation with a dozen other confused looking two-year olds, all
of them dressed in identical light blue baseball caps. The maniacal high-pitched shrieks of “kawaiiiiii!,”
the traumatic mother’s relay race where I had to don a flowered apron and push
a tiny plastic shopping cart through an obstacle course, the rest is all a blur…
Also, one time they claimed he made bread
but since he was only 18 months old, I had my doubts.
Next he
attended a nursery school in Switzerland three mornings a week and although he picked
up a great deal of French and seemed to enjoy going there, the only thing he would ever talk about when I
picked him up was a “bad boy” named Malik who’s antics seemed to provide the
structure for much of the day.
When we
first moved to Madrid, he went to a guarderia
called Kindermayer which like many institutions here, claimed to be bilingual
English/Spanish mainly due to the fact
that all of the teachers knew their colors in English as well as how to say “hello”
and “bye-bye.” I have even less of an idea of what went on there than I had had
about the Japanese daycare. Parents were
not allowed inside and unless greatly pressed, the teachers said next to
nothing about what the children had done that day. Rather than assembling
energy efficient cars, I suspected that my son was working in a top-secret
munitions factory. But at least I had three hours free per morning.
In Spain,
children start regular school at three which means that Nico has now been
attending the local public school for almost two years. He loves going there
but like most schools in Spain, the methods used are a far cry from progressive
or innovative. Very little emphasis is placed on creative thinking or
originality and we are practically buried in all the worksheets that he brings
home. He is obsessed with staying within the lines and refuses to color with
gray, black or brown because according to his teacher, those colors are muy muy feo.
Which brings
me to the present. We are currently in the process of choosing a school for
Nico in Barcelona and the decision has been harder than I thought. This post
has turned out to be ridiculously long however so I’ll adjourn for now. In the
next installment I shall discuss the school we have chosen for Nico. I shall
expound on its virtues and then wonder if perhaps I am being a total moron for
putting so much obsessive thought into all of this. Stay tuned.
