The satisfaction of schoolwork

I used to hate schoolwork. Boring, boring, and again boring. To my surprise, the Kid says what she likes best about school is the work. Arithmetic is her favourite. She has been taught to add up columns of numbers. She is very accurate at this and finds it quite satisfying to fill up sheets with numbers and receive tick marks. "Sometimes," she says, "I like to be told what to do and not have to think too hard. It's relaxing. It's like colouring in." Well, knock me over with a feather. Perhaps I had better order her around more often!

I can certainly see great progress in her writing. With mandatory daily practice, in the space of a few weeks the stray uppercase letters have disappeared from the middle of her words, she usually punctuates correctly and her spelling has really come on - not so much through the word lists she is asked to memorise, as through writing certain common words so often in her essays. All the letters are now correctly formed and reasonably neat. Joined-up writing remains a mystery, but it's early days yet.

So, am I a convert to school methods? Far from it! Having seen that it's possible for the Kid to "catch up" so quickly on spelling and handwriting now, I'm more convinced than ever that it would have been senseless to waste her precious previous five years slaving away over it. I doubt she would have been ready or willing at a much younger age.

Moreover, her recent gains have been the result of one simple thing: plenty of practice. Who's to say that school is the only place to get such a heavy dose of practice? If she hadn't gone to school this term, at some point in her life she would have found it desirable to do lots of writing, and then it would have come together for her as it is coming together now. And if she never found it necessary to do lots of writing, then what difference would it make if she had poor handwriting and spelling?

Last year she asked me to buy her a maths workbook, which she whizzed through with relish. I think there will be more of those in our future. Once she comes out of school, I mean. I can't see her having the time to pursue recreational arithmetic while she's at school.

Tradeoffs

Kind people, of whom there are many at this school, keep asking me how my daughter is "settling in." It's a curious turn of phrase, that, suggesting that any dislike she may have of school will be temporary. Indeed, I've heard some people speak of children who take years to "settle in" to school. As adults, would we stick with a new job if it took us years to settle in?

Until yesterday I focused on the positives, expressing my pleasure and gratitude at the efforts everyone has made to be friendly to my daughter. The children include her in their games (in fact they seem to be fighting over who will take possession of her), the teachers explain patiently why one should leave a margin round an essay, the dinner staff show understanding in the face of her on-again, off-again vegetarianism.

But since The Kid seems quite constant in maintaining that she will leave after this term, it seems only fair to drop a few hints that school isn't entirely to her liking. After all the kindness everyone has shown us, it would be rude to drop a bombshell in December with the news that she is leaving, thanks very much, goodbye. So yesterday, when asked by another mum how she's settling in, I said that there were things she liked about school, but that she and I were both astonished at how completely her free time had disappeared since she began school. I gave examples of the hobbies she used to do, and the many new pastimes she wanted to try, all of which had been shelved indefinitely. I spoke of friendships on hold and library books returned unread, of the sewing machine gathering dust and the roller skates shoved to the back of a cupboard. And she said, lightly, "Well, I suppose there are always tradeoffs in life."

This took me aback, and I walked on in silence. I'd had a few good conversations with this mum, who seemed a very sensible person. Was I being overly dramatic? Did it really matter that my daughter had had to give up a few things she liked to do? She did have some fun at school, and she was learning some things. Was I being too precious here? Hmm. A tradeoff.

But no. She wasn't right. Suddenly I felt sure of that. The almost complete loss of a growing child's free time is not just a "tradeoff." It's more like losing a limb. Living in a society of amputees may make it seem inevitable and acceptable, but it just isn't.

I tried to find the words to express the magnitude of the change, and looked up at her. But she was already throwing me a quick goodbye over her shoulder as she turned off toward her house. Like her young daughter, she is a busy person.

An award

On her way to bed, The Kid mentioned in disgust that she had received an award at school today, for "fitting in and making new friends." She feels insulted.

"It's not exactly a hard thing to do," she said. "Well I guess it's hard for shy people, but if they've worked hard to make friends then they've already had their reward, haven't they? Friends, and being happy. They don't need a stupid certificate up on the school wall, like the teachers are saying to everyone, 'We didn't think she could do it.' They didn't even ask me if it was OK to stick it up."

And she hasn't even read Alfie Kohn.

Power socialising

The Kid has got together with friends five times since school started two weeks ago. She's seen three new friends from school, and two other schooled friends she's known for a while. None of these playdates was over an hour and a half. We can't fit in anything longer. The other parents seem to find this normal and acceptable, though I've asked them all to reconsider letting their children skip Saturday sports or stay on until after dinner, so our children can have a proper time to have fun together. I can't really blame them for saying no: missing their family dinner might mean parents don't get to see their children at all, and could lead to unfinished homework or late bedtimes.

It seems quite bizarre to be saying goodbye before the visitor has seen our chickens and played with the stuffed toys and seen the computer game and had a tickle fight and a fashion parade and tried out the new roller skates and helped mix up a cake. Is this what they call playing, these brief flying visits?

We haven't even contacted any home educated pals - I feel we'd be wasting their time if we invite them round only to send them home again so soon. The calendar says my daughter has two afternoons free in the next two weeks. If she has her friend stay for dinner and there's no homework and they're allowed to stay up a bit late, that's four hours each afternoon, which is just barely adequate.

On the plus side, she has invited a younger child from school to come round next week. I'm very pleased that she's managing to stick up for herself when the children in her class are telling her that it's uncool to play with little kids.

The Verdict

The first week of term is over. I expected a honeymoon period of a few weeks during which school would be great, followed by increasing boredom. I was wrong; there's been no honeymoon unless you count that trial day in July.

"I've decided about school," she said early on. "I guess I can put up with it until the end of term, like we agreed. But I don't think I'll be going any longer than that." Everyone has been very nice to her, she LOVES her main class teacher, school dinners are better than mum's cooking, and there are things she enjoys doing at school. But she doesn't actually learn very much, which she finds frustrating. Most of what she's being taught is not new to her, and when she does get an interesting activity it is over too soon. She likes some of the kids, but they fight with each other and try to make her choose between them.

And there is just no time to pursue her interests. She's done no work on sewing her teddy's new outfit which she wants to enter into an online competition by the end of the month. The fabulous huge cardboard box which we scored outside the shop last week sits forlornly unused in the corner. The pile of library books is untouched. (According to the school, she should read more at home: she isn't filling up her little logbook to show the required 20 minutes of daily reading practice. Before school consumed all of her time, she used to read for several hours a day!)

I've tidied up her room in her absence. At this rate, it might actually stay tidy for a while. I used to think an always-tidy room would be nice. Now it seems barren. While we were tidying, Small Fry fished her big sister's teddy out from under the bed, where it had lain for the last week. "Sista not like bear now?" she asked.

Being cool

The Kid cares hugely about being liked. I wish I could immunise her against that need. It's hard to do the right thing, to stick up for yourself or others under pressure, or just to be yourself, when you live in fear of being unpopular. She's not alone in this affliction.

Fortunately, she is reasonably popular at school. I suppose she has a certain exotic appeal, because she knows different things to the rest of the children school. I'd anticipated she would be learning all the games and rhymes and slang expressions of her schoolfriends, and I thought they might look down on her because she wasn't in the know. But I forgot that she had plenty to teach them too! She can "shoot" people by popping dead flower heads off at them. Her daisy chains are in a different style to theirs. She has plenty of songs to teach them, including some which are rather unsuitable - of course, those have gone down particularly well! She's the only one at her school who can do a duck call by blowing on a wide blade of grass.

She'd expected to be given a hard time for having been home educated, but after the first few days it seems to have faded from everyone's minds. No one asks, and she doesn't mention it. They do seem surprised that she has friends outside of their world. On her third day, someone asked her, "Who's your best friend?" She explained that she didn't exactly have a best friend at the moment, but did have several close friends, and rattled off their names. None of them attended her new school. She was asked about them: which year were they in? She didn't know. And two of them were BOYS? You can't have a boy as a best friend. The girl persisted in trying to get her to declare a new best friend: "But who's your best friend: Katie or Susie or me?" The Kid had no answer. She didn't want to give offense, but thought it very strange that she was expected to throw off her oldest friends in favour of someone she'd only known for two days.