Kinderwerk

My son came home from Kindergarten early yesterday. Parent - Teacher conferences. So I asked, "what did you get done this morning?" Ev responded, words, numbers, morning meeting, snack… Wait: What?? Morning what??  "Morning meeting."

Turns out morning meeting is that time when you look at the weather for today, review your agenda, do the calendar. "The pledge?" "No. That's before it."

Nice. 5 year olds having morning meeting. My kid is smart. He likes books and reading and it turns out he is reading at a second grade level. But morning meetings? It's like we need to have our kids groomed and ready for employment by the time they hit their double digits.

Three things:

First, I always keep in mind that the most social, economic, and technical growth this country has so far accomplished has come out of the very unsophisticated and politically incorrect era of reading, writing, and arithmetic. School was for kids. Teachers were for teaching. Meetings were for grown-ups.

Second, the schools have their hands full in much the same way store-based retailers face the competition from Amazon and other web-based suppliers: Electronic learning via iPad, iTouch, Leap Frog, and the like, absolutely blasts this generation of kids through the basics at warp speed.

Finally, the most important tool, the one that can either make a teacher appear a smashing success or a noodle-headed disaster does not require batteries or an electrical outlet. It does not need to be used in the classroom, it is fully portable and can be used anywhere, it costs the school district nothing, and it is available nights and weekends. It's the parents.

Looking at page after page of evaluation during parent-teacher conference the other afternoon, I felt sorry for the teacher and unsettled about the schools. The volume of testing and evaluations performed to create a quantitative measure of learning is unreal. And, unfortunately, in this era of cost accounting and outcomes based valuation, the testing is needed to justify maintaining taxpayer support for education. With as many children coming from homes with no functioning give-a-damn apparatus, it seems the evaluations should include a modifier for parental involvement.

Let's have a meeting about that. In the meantime, we'll just have to wait and see what comes of this era in education: Great accomplishments, great test scores, or the great meeting society?