Fear and Loathing on the Parenthood Express: A Back to School Special

Sums up Life -- and parenting -- nicely.

Da-da's said, on several occasions, that parenting exists somewhere between Christmas and being roasted alive. Nowhere is this brought into sharper relief than when one reads educational material, brochures and ad copy meant for parents. At a recent school open house/orientation, the literature they handed out instantly set Da-da's feet to the fire with rubrics like...

"Preparing Them For Success and Happiness"

...and...

"College Prep Begins in Kindergarten"

...and Da-da's favorite...

"Don't Let Your Child Be Left Behind."

Ah, fear. Parenting and fear. Da-da had no fear until he had children... so, it must've been in there all along? But, "preparing them for success and happiness"? At best, the above words in red are a myopic inaccuracy; at worst, a manipulative lie, designed to sell you a high-priced education via FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Da-da can't send his kids to insanely priced private schools, but he can give them a leg up by being there for them, and teaching them everything he knows... which isn't much, admittedly, but might make them more fun at parties. Or standing in the eye of the hurricane.

Da-da doesn't know about you, but besides preparing his kids for, "SUCCESS," he's also preparing them for those times when they're NOT successful, or happy. Because, like Dr. Suess says, it will happen quite a lot.

A neverending stream of extreme happiness and success is untenable... and maybe even a bit boring. But how would Da-da know, right? It's trite, but Life is an amazing, horrible, thrilling, tedious, boring-as-hell roller coaster that may very well fail while you're riding it. Let's go with that a moment.

Roller coasters aren't all about thrills. You usually have to first drive a ways to get to one, pay a price to get near it, drink $6 sodas and eat $12 hot dogs, then stand in line a looooong time, exercising those boredom and patience and auto-entertaining muscles. When you're finally there, strapping yourself into the seat requires a bit of courage -- and precision, so you don't fall out. Enduring those various flavors and odors of humanity around you works your forgiveness mojo. The ride itself invokes fear -- one of the two human common denominators -- as well as thrills, centripetal and centripedal forces, getting barfed on, etc. Then there's the end of the ride, the inevitable part where the cars slow and prepare to disgorge you back into the unwashed masses, a little queasy and dizzy. Up and down, round and round... and back to square one: welcome to Life! If you can prepare kids for this, you're doing well.

Thus, Da-da encourages both unstructured play vs. structured play, as one teaches reinforces creativity, the other patience and, "the social game." Might as well call it what it is. Da-da's children won't be deliriously happy, or hideously successful. Da-da hates extremes. "Happy" is such a lame, vague, overused word. Da-da hopes his children will be content. Content, patient and resilient... with a bit of non sequitur.

O the places you're gonna hurl.

Welcome to the Plagiarism Police State?

Don't worry, education will break you, Joe Parent. But it'll feel so good after it stops hurting.

While Da-da's boys are years away from this, it's inevitable that one of them will be forced to use one of the increasingly rampant, "plagiarism prevention" tools being used by so many schools today (with a 100% penetration into the Singaporean edu market, if this tells you anything). Having worked in K-12 and post-secondary education markets, Da-da has conflicted opinions about this "tool." An educator once told Da-da, "A good teacher knows when kids are plagiarizing; they don't need a computer program's word for it -- or the hefty bills associated with it." However, given how easily kids can now just cut-n-paste wikipedia articles and other content from the 'net into their papers and call it their own, there might be a need for some type of safeguard.

Meanwhile, the point appears to be moot: the Plagiarism Police are making sizeable fortunes playing on the fears (and laziness) of some academics -- and kids now, too, with moneygrubbing "lite" versions marketed directly at kids, so the already academically paranoid can "vet" their paper to get their, "originality score." Sure, it makes sense to be original and keep your money, but even original kids who do their own work are being made to feel paranoid about their papers, just so some company can make a profit. What kind of lesson is this teaching? 

Like other Orwellian Borg-o-types, the Plagiarism Police State pretends to care, telling you it's a teaching tool... but is this what it's really being used for? The fact that prices for these services (which are just web-based computer algorithms) go up in price 8% every year, even when things are bad-going-to-worse in education, worldwide, should tell you something about the mindsets of those running the companies. Perhaps if a not-for-profit arose to do the same thing, partnering with the schools instead of preying on them?

Plagiaristically speaking, it should be noted that the best schools don't hype or subscribe to the plagiarism police state (Da-a won't list them, you can uncover them for yourself). These last bastions of academic trust rely on their educators, where the onus should be in the first place. So, if you're the head of an academic department or a dean or provost, you need to ask yourself a question: Is this plagiarism prevention service really worth the money? Or should you use that moolah to pay for more teachers?

The biggest academic ship taking on water is TRUST. Da-da has worked with kids for years, and there's a special magic to giving a group of kids your trust and having them work to keep it. Sure, there are setbacks; people are inherently imperfect (no, really), but if you give them your trust first and foremost, they often far exceed expectations. YES, there will be a few who abuse said trust, but they're just hurting themselves and will feel their self-inflicted pain later on in some other way. Bottom line: children need to be NURTURED, not policed.

But don't take the word of a parent who is the future gateway to countless hundreds of thousands of dollars of future education-buying potential. Nooo, don't do that. Like governments and the Federal Reserve, corporations really do have your kid's best interest in mind. No, really. Jeez, how could they not?

Timmy meets his new first grade teacher.
"Do your work, citizen, or there will be... trouble."

The Sitter [spooky music UP]

Yes, it's almost Halloween, so it's time for some FEAR, yay. Ready?

To any real parent (as opposed to all those fake ones), leaving your children with strangers pretty much pegs the Sphinctometer. Indeed, choosing the right babysitter is tricky, esp. as Mr. Mom, which somehow carries a greater level of anxiety than for Actual Mom, who can somehow sniff these things out like some kind of Alpha animal (in a good way, honey), but Da-da has his own standards and he's gonna stick to 'em. Da-da means, when he goes to the door to let in that latest highly recommended $20/hr. sitter and she's wearing a freaking bunny mask and standing there staring at Da-da and breathing heavily... well, Da-da's mind conjured this:

Um, hello? Wearing a bunny mask, however cute and endearing, is right up there with showing up for a job interview wearing a white-painted William Shatner mask and bloodstained coveralls... which might explain why Da-da's unemployed, hmm. Da-da thought it was just the clown makeup. Anyway, it's safe to say that Da-da and company ate IN that night. Sure, our family wears masks almost constantly, but OURS aren't creepy, jeez.

[NOTE: John Carpenter's, "HALLOWEEN," was so scary because THE SHAPE (as he was known in the script) is wearing a William Shatner mask painted white; the prop guy couldn't find any scary masks -- the only one he could find was the Shat -- so John Carpenter said, "Paint it white." That's why the film works: IT'S AN EMOTIONLESS WILLIAM SHATNER KILLING PEOPLE. You never saw The Shat this way because he was consistently overacting, which explains the movie's puzzling fright -- and why the pathetic remake was... well, pathetic. Overactingly speaking, you might overact, too, if you were humping giant rabbits one moment, waxing white commanche the next.]

[NOTE2: If you wanna see something reeeeaaallly scary, try THE SITTER II. Mmmm, burned baloney.]