Quitters, Knitters, and Cane Toads

Sophia has quit many things over the years. Smoking. Drinking. Eating. Exercising. Eating Meat. Jobs. Men. Talking to Exes. Talking to Siblings. Therapy. Facebook. Writing this blog.

As you can see, she has also Quit Quitting some of these things. She is still a vegetarian, but no longer anorexic. She doesn't smoke, and seldom drinks. She is currently building up enough guilt to resume some punishing exercise regime in the near future, having quit her Martial Arts Experiment a few weeks ago (subject for another post). She no longer talks to any exes--the two main ones are certifiably insane--and she communicates with only one of her four siblings. She has quit Facebook numerous times.

Having quit and now un-quit this blog, she returns today with another scintillating report from the desolate hinterlands of Over Fifty America, a national subculture of serial quitters and recidivists.  Sophia loves the word "recidivism," btw. It has such a nice Penal System ring to it.

Quitting comes in many forms. It can be dramatic: "Your twisted idea of intimacy revolts me! I'm leaving you and taking the cats (dogs, jewelry, TV's) with me!" It can be anti-climactic: "Please forward my mail to this post office box in Perth, Australia. I will no longer be accepting phone calls, text messages, or posting insipid status updates." It can be gradual and almost imperceptible: "My goodness, it's been ten years since I had sex! How depressing." By the time most people are Over Fifty, they have quit and unquit so many things, it's hard to keep count. 

Sophia's husband Thor and son Percival have jumped on the Quitters bandwagon. Thor recently quit a job he hated and began his own business as a web developer. He's been scarily successful at it, although he works so much that Sophia wonders if she's she's going to have to add sex to the list of things she's quit doing. Thor is not averse to conjugal relations, but he works ten-hour days writing code and stuff like that, so he mostly just turns off his computer, walks down the hall, and falls asleep instantly.  Subject for another post, should Sophia decide to keep unquitting writing this blog.

The biggest change in Sophia's life is that she and Thor pulled Percival out of his alternative school in January, so she is now homeschooling him. Now, Sophia has always looked down on the whole crazy homeschooling movement. She has long suspected that not much learning goes on in these home "schools," since the parent/teacher is doubtless some raving ideologue who forces her kids to make dioramas of dinosaurs cavorting with people in biblical garb, while singing hymns and watching the 700 Club on TV.  In the left-wing homeschool, the kids are planting Peace Gardens and eating spelt lunches while they learn the Dangers of Genetically Modified Foods. Sophia has no truck with either of these oddball groups, but she is nonetheless homeschooling her kid.

How did this come about? Well you may ask. Thor's former job was as an administrator for Percival's alternative school. It wasn't his ideal job, but at the time, his other options were less attractive. So he took this job, which came with almost-free tuition for Percival to attend said school. Now Sophia was only keen on this school when Percival was in kindergarten. She loved the soft pastel walls of the classroom, the fuzzy rug for circle time, and the hand-carved wooden toys. Loved the rainbow-colored silk scarves that the kids used to play knights and pirates and princesses in jeopardy. Yep, it was a cool place for a five-year-old who didn't need to worry about learning anything but how to get along with other five-year-olds. Sophia doesn't believe in overly-academic preschools and kindergartens. She was not going to insist that Percival learn the Laws of Thermodynamics or Mandarin grammar before first grade.

That said, things began to get dicey the very next year. At the end of the first week of school, Sophia found Percival's weekly schedule stuffed into his lunch box, in between the browning apple slices and the cheese sandwich with only two bites missing. (Percival is not a big eater.) Anyway, his first grade week consisted of these subjects:

Painting
Knitting
Woodworking
Gardening
Music
German
Weird Folk Dances (okay, the "weird" is Sophia's editorial comment.)

Where, Sophia wondered, is Reading? Arithmetic? Social Studies? And who the hell needs to learn German? Sophia has lived in Germany, and everyone there speaks better English than many Americans. So she worried, but decided that maybe, since she's a tad overeducated herself, she ought to just lighten up on all this.

Which she did, for two years. When Percival came home after completing second grade and still couldn't read, she had had enough. She complained to the teacher about it, and Frau Birkenstock (not her real name) admitted that some kids at this school didn't read until fourth or fifth grade. Because they weren't Developmentally Ready. Sophia, for her part, was Developmentally Ready to kick some Alternative Educator Ass, because only kids in poverty-stricken third world countries remained illiterate at ten.

But Thor worked for this school, and so she couldn't say or do much of anything. She got out Percival's baby books, and some flash cards, and proceeded to teach him to read herself. He learned pretty fast, so clearly he was more than Developmentally Ready. All he lacked was, you know, a teacher.

Having conquered the reading issue, Sophia decided that Percival could probably move forward on his own, even in this school for addle-headed, non-vaccinating lefty flakes. Third grade added Old Testament Studies to his curriculum. Sophia assumed that these lessons did not include the many tales of rape, sodomy, and bloody divine vengeance that she remembered from her own readings of the OT.

Explanatory aside: Percival's (ex-)school is not religious. It's too diffuse and New-Agey to sustain any consistent theological narrative. The ideology, as far as Sophia can discern one, is somewhere between Enlightenment Humanism and Shopping for Sacred Truths. Kant meets Oprah. The program begins with the Old Testament in the third grade, then proceeds to teach the kids about other mythic systems in subsequent years. Fourth grade is Norse mythology, and later there is Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. Norse mythology, you ask? Well, it goes with the Germanic theme. The kids all wear horned helmets and sing Deutschland uber Alles as they knit.

Okay, not really.

Basically, this curriculum ensures that when the ill-educated children in Percival's class grow up and are unable to find work anywhere except at the local food co-op, they will have a multitude of deities to choose from in bewailing their hopeless, impoverished state. Perhaps Odin will intervene, and get them a job at Siemens.

Well, anyway. When Sophia went to look at Percival's work during the required third grade parent meeting, she was appalled to see that he could neither draw a good Moses, nor write a coherent English sentence. This school didn't believe in teaching spelling until fourth grade. About the time most of the kids were finally learning to read, presumably. The teacher suggested that Percival might need Occupational Therapy, because his writing was so bad.

The school does not believe in paper with lines, by the way. No, lined paper would inhibit the free-spiritness of the Learning Adventure. So Percival's ill-written, phonetically-spelled sentences slanted off the page, like muddy water running downhill.

Moreover, Percival could barely add and subtract. Multiplication was still a mystery. Sophia's rage at this stupid school was, however, multiplying exponentially. She began to look around for another school. And she found one, a very nice Montessori near her home. Small classes, collaborative learning, and no horned helmets or knitting needles anywhere. So she signed him up, and he went for a visit.

Now Sophia must do a little maternal bragging. Although Percival isn't great at math, and his writing slants downstream, he is incredibly handsome, charming, and just plain sweet. He loves babies. He's polite. And did Sophia mention good-looking? He's tall and athletic, with perfectly symmetrical features and the most gorgeous gray-green eyes. Someday he will be a veritable chick magnet, and Sophia will have to stand between him and the hordes of over-made-up, under-dressed little tarts that will be lining up on the doorstep to Ruin His Life.

But fortunately, that's a few years off. 

Anyway, because he's so wonderful, the school admitted him. Despite the fact that he was from one to two years BEHIND IN EVERY SUBJECT. Now Percival isn't dumb. He can tell you all about the Peloponnesian War, which, as the spell-check indicates, Sophia can't even spell. He was admitted on the condition that he have two hours of tutoring every day after school to catch up. Two hours. Aside from the fact that this was going to make Percival hate his new school, it was going to cost Sophia and Thor about 3 grand a month, on top of the already not-cheap tuition.

And thus, the homeschooling began.  Percival needs to do two years' work in about eight months, so he'll be ready for the new school in September. Sophia is pushing him a bit. She is also learning about all kinds of stuff she either forgot, or never knew. Did you know homing pigeons can see the Earth's magnetic field? That Cane Toads are ruining Australia's ecosystem? Sophia didn't either. Do you remember how boring it was learning the Parts of Speech? Sophia had also forgotten this.  Did you know that sloppy, downstream handwriting improves dramatically with the use of lined paper? Sophia suspected this, but was pleased to find her hunch vindicated.  And so it goes.

This is one job, by the way, that Sophia will not be quitting...until Spetember, when she will gratefully hand Percival's education off to the professionals.

Next: Sophia reaches her Martial Arts apex, gets her Green Belt, and quits instantly.