As I come to the end of this year, for some reason I find myself thinking of ways to prank the teachers I am sending my kids to in fall. Harmless ways, like telling them there are 8 continents or 27 letters in the alphabet but the last one is silent. That got me to thinking about all the things we were taught and continue to teach in some places, that are just rong. For example, the sun does not come up in the east. The sun is always up. This kind of oops teaching has long term ramifications. I still remember when I was in my 20s and walking along the lakefront with a friend very, very early in the morning. It was “sunrise” as the first saboteurs called it. “Wow”, she said in her best 70s sigh. “I wonder what that looks like to the people in Michigan.” Okay, point made.
It iis warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the sun, right? Nah-ah. That is a belief that people gradulate from college with under their mortar board. Maybe the tilt thing is thought to be too complicated to teach, but I figure if kids can play “Wipe Out” on Guitar Master, they can get that the Earth tilts toward the sun through a Shorewood summer.
This leads me onward to the sugar makes kids hyper theory. I know this has been kicked around a lot, but I tend to agree with those studies that conclude that’s a bunch of malarkey. Maybe even malarkey with jimmies. After watching children eat sugar for three decades, I find that the event around the eating of the sugar is far more excitement making than the food additive. I know that fun can be stopped on a dime in the midst of ice-cream and chocolate syrup if say someone starts smearing ice cream on someone else’s face or throwing chocolate chips around the room. Oh, the hyper can be sucked out of a party for sure. Children all supposedly high on sugar have been able to sit and read, process, make their ways to the bathrooms and write touching poetry. I’ve heard that Sylvia Plath was a chocoholic. That sure didn’t perk her up much.
When two vowels go walking the first one doesn’t always do the talking. So aside from how weird it sounds to a six year old that their teacher just looked at them straight faced and told them that letters walk and talk, it’s hard to argue with the wording of a petition filed by the words guess, friend, could, pageant and niece. Right at their heels are the words right, love, have, are, were and house. An e at the end of a word doesn’t necessarily make the tongueless vowel “say its name”, they insist.
I think it might be fun to teach a curriculum based on misconceptions and exceptions to rules. I could dedicate it to my late father from the lone star state who convinced me when I was a kid that Texas…
is a country.
