No Parent Left Behind

As the end of school draws near, I've come to the conclusion that the 'No Child Left Behind' is a bunch of bunk. It really should be 'No Parent Left Behind' because I'm pretty sure that come third grade next year, I'm going to be left in the dust.

For example, here's some recent spelling words...

digraph: Now I don't even know what a digraph is let alone how to pronounce and spell it. Apparently it means a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

And a second grader needs to know how to spell that word, why?

Then there was macron, the symbol ¯ placed over or under a vowel which was originally used to mark a long (i.e. heavy) syllable in Græco-Roman metrics, but has now been taken also to indicate that the vowel is long.

Yes, another important word for a second grader. A word in which she corrected my pronunciation 13 times.

If we move into another important discipline, like math, I was pretty much left behind last year. This year, my second grader is asking me about square roots, obtuse angles, fractions and division. Hmmm...

Go ask your father.

Second grade history has been an in-depth look at Egyptian history. This week's quiz was on mummies. Let's see how you do:

1. Who was the Prince of the Dead?
2. A dead person's soul that traveled to and from the body.
3. The body part that was put back into the body to be weighed in the afterlife.
4. The length of time it took to mummify a body.
5. A part of the body that was removed and thrown out.
6. The four body parts that were put into canopic jars.
7. Chemical used to embalm the body.
8. Magical charms tucked in the mummy wrappings.

I think I was studying 'friends' in my neighborhood in second grade social studies: fireman, policeman, postman. I sure didn't know the metal used to cover the fingernails and toenails of mummies---but I do now.

And that brings us to phonics and grammar. Apparently, the teachers already know the parents can't handle this subject so they don't ever send any homework. I think they know the sight of diagramming sentences would send us to convulsions.

Hey, can I help it if I wasn't taught to diagram a sentence until high school. I had more important things to do in second grade like four square pairings, finger painting, and whether I'd get to sit in the back of the bus that day.

Now that's how not to leave parents behind.

No Parent Left Behind

http://momnaction.blogspot.com/2008/05/no-parent-left-behind.html