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.