I don't know if you remember this, but I did a column a couple of years ago on School Projects, inspired by your daughter's story. I transplanted her to Texas and turned the mission into the Alamo for local relevance. It struck home for a lot of parents, though I worried I would get hate mail from the parents who made the Conestoga wagon.
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Today I am bravely going to tackle a sensitive parenting issue, one which requires great tact and diplomacy. I do this because I am an intrepid and honest writer who does not
hesitate to confront the truth when she sees it
And I believe it is time to talk about ...
THE SCHOOL PROJECT
or
Just Who Made That Three Stage Rocket Now Orbiting the Earth Anyway?
What led to this courageous move on my part, you ask? My children are almost grown, I could forget the horrors of those years. True, but I still have friends in the trenches, and I care, care about all of you out there, who may, as I do, grow faint at the sight of a sewing
needle, whose loving spouse is unsure which end of a hammer is used to hit a nail, and who believe that going through the sixth grade once was enough.
A friend phoned one morning this week, frantic. Her son had a school project due that day; he had told her that he had it under control and she had believed him. Of course, he now stood before her a whimpering mass of desperate child. The assignment was to give a report on an historical Roman, dressed as that particular figure. At 7:30 am, he
appeared in the kitchen, near tears, bearing in his large twelve-year-old hands, the tiny plastic breastplate of a suit of armor he'd worn when he was a toddler.
It doesn't fit!” he cried. “I was sure it would fit!”
What can I do?” She moaned to me.
I felt her pain.
Strip him, glue a magnolia leaf to any crucial parts and cover him with cornstarch.” I said. “He can go as a Roman statue.”
The memories came flooding back.
Build a model of the Mayflower.
Create an authentic diary about being a pioneer settler in the Old West.
And you, good parent that you are, offer to take your child to MJ Designs and buy a glue gun, or to make tea and show her how to soak her paper for that antique look.
But elsewhere in the neighborhood, there are parents whipping out their jigsaws and sewing machines, graph paper, instruments, checkbooks, eyes gleaming with excitement and competitive spirit. The teacher wants the Santa Maria? How about a caravel that can sail across Grapevine Lake with the entire class on board?
You go to Parents' Night and and you hear about the boy who arrived at school in a small-scale, fully functional, Conestoga wagon pulled by a German Shepherd. Dad smiles proudly and smacks anyone who gets too close, although to hear him tell it, all he did was hand his son the wooden nails and murmur mild encouragement. Mom certainly didn't have time to help; she was birthing the German Shepherd.
Then there's the little girl who stands in front of the parents in her adorable Indian costume and smirks, "This is my authentic Indian Princess dress that my mommy and I
made from real deerskins. My daddy killed the deer and we tanned the hides over the weekend. Then my Mommy taught me to make a needle from a rib bone, and thread from deerguts, and we sewed the dress on Sunday evening. The moccasins have fake beads on them though," she adds apologetically.
Well, I certainly hope the teacher counted off for THAT.
And there stands your son with his model of the Mayflower, made from a bar of Ivory soap, a toothpick and a kleenex.
A friend told me this summer she was considering homeschooling her second child because this was the year he would have to make a model of the Alamo for Texas history. Her firstborn had done it two years before and she had still not recovered from the humiliation.
"I insisted Meg do it herself. I mean, it was her assignment, wasn’t it?"”she cries. "She made it out of cardboard and glue and markers. If you kind of squinted,you could see a slight resemblance. She cut the Taco Bell symbol out of an ad and pasted it on the front. I went in with her to her class and it was a nightmare. There were all these perfect little Alamos sitting around. Tiny exact replicas. They were made from sugar cubes tinted to look like adobe. Some mothers had fired their own teensy weensy bricks- and some people had bought all those little trees and bushes that come with model railroad sets. And they shot tiny mortar scars in the walls with b-b's. I said to the teacher, ‘Well, Meg made hers all by herself.’ And the teacher looked at it and sneered, Yes, I can see
she did."
’”
Concerned, I called my friend, mother of the Roman gladiator, that evening. She was quite pleased with herself. She had rushed to the store and bought gold spray paint and fake grapes, sprayed a blouse gold, wrapped a rope around her son's waist and stuck grapes in his hair. He wore a pair of her lace-up sandals and was only an hour late to school. His costume got applause and he got an A; she was very proud of the grade.
I fear we may have lost another to the Dark Side of the School Project. |
