There comes a time in every unsuspecting fifth-grader’s life
when school suddenly becomes really weird and icky, and for some reason your
parents want to talk to you about weird, icky stuff too. All you want to do is go
outside and play some kind of animal/space invasion/kickball game, but the
adults at home and at school want to talk about kissing and boy parts and girl
parts and babies. It’s gross.
Son Number One is only about a week or two away from the “Family
Life” portion of the fifth grade curriculum, and he’s not thrilled. “It’s going
to be weird,” he says with an uncomfortable grudiggle (equal parts groan/shudder/giggle).
Since I have my finger on the pulse of American education, I
was surprised when he told us.
“That’s in the fifth grade?” I said to my wife,
incredulously.
“Yes, dear. Don’t worry, I’m on it.” Apparently, she
actually talks to people, and she’d already gotten a book recommended by a
friend, and she and Son Number One were already reading it together.
Hmm... Either she doesn’t trust me to handle this sort of
thing, or else she asked me to handle it when I was watching TV and I didn’t
hear her. That one could go either way, but I’m leaning toward her wanting to
handle it herself. She is probably – very rightfully – worried about what I
would tell him without a strict script. Can’t blame her there.
We got a consent form the other day from the school. I had
to laugh. It said if you wanted to opt your child out of the Family Life class,
they would do other work in an alternate classroom.
That’s pretty funny to me. I don’t care what classroom you
send them to, they’re still going to be out on the playground. If you don’t
want them to get Family Life information, the form should really just say, “Pull
them out of school now.”
Without homeschooling, you’ve got two real choices: If you
want them to get the actual Family
Life information, have them stay with their class. If you want them to get a
skewed, eleven-year-old-crowd-sourced, wildly inaccurate interpretation of the Family
Life information, opt them out and they can hear all about it at recess.
Have you ever tried to extract verbally communicated
information from a fifth-grader?
You: “Hey Jimmy. Tell your mom that we have her casserole
dish. And the enchiladas were delicious.”
Jimmy’s mom the next day: “Jimmy told me you think we should
enroll him in Make a Wish? And go to Ensenada for some fishes? What’s that all about?”
Good luck with that.
Our boys share a room, so all I know is by the time Son
Number Three gets to the fifth grade (God willing), he’ll probably think he
could teach the class, since he’s heard all about it after lights out. The information
will have been so poorly transferred that he’ll think all babies are born in
Virginia and circumstantial evidence means someone’s peep got cut off, but at
least he’ll have the information.
The consent form also said that we could go to the district
office on a particular evening to preview the material and the videos that the
kids will see. I pointed that out to my wife and started to say, “Maybe we should...”
“No!” she shot back, not letting me finish my sentence.
She is, of course, afraid I’ll bring popcorn and narrate
from the back of the room. She’s obviously right, but I don’t think that’s any
reason not to go.
So I guess she’s going to handle the information dispensing
for now, and she’ll probably hand the reins off to me when they get to high
school. I’m still not sure why she doesn’t want me to impart my wisdom right
now about the direct correlation between Chardonnay prices and pregnancy rates,
but I guess it can wait.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen
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