schooling – A Stay At Home Dad

The boy forgot his homework today, so I helped him out by improvising some problems for him. It was just math work, double digit multplication in fact, so coming up with practice problems was easy. I’ve already done this sort of thing with him.

As a side note, I’m not sure what to think about how they are teaching him how to solve the problem. It’s easier to show than describe. Take 35×41. They have him solve 4 multiplication problems: 5×1, 5×40, 30×1 and 30×40. Then those results are added to get the answer to the original problem.

Now, it’s a perfectly valid way to go about it and I suppose the argument is that it’s easier to perform the multiplication on the broken down problem. I think it makes the addition harder but no one asked me. Typical. Plus it takes longer and I don’t think it lends itself to being done in the head- too many numbers to remember.

Regardless, the boy wasn’t overly thrilled with my giving him problems to practice. So I gave him a few extra just to be nice. He finished them without anymore comments. I checked them over and he’d made a bunch of mistakes. Amusingly enough, it was the addition step that he’d flubbed for each wrong answer. Does that count as an “I told you so” or was it too obvious?

So the boy came back and asked which ones he’d gotten wrong. I wouldn’t tell him. He wasn’t happy about that at all and several minutes later, he turned back to me and said “They’re all right.”

“So you found the wrong ones?” I asked.

“None of them are wrong. I checked them,” was his reply.

I was speechless.

I knew he had several wrong answers, yet here he was trying to create his own reality in which that wasn’t the case. Essentially, he was saying I made up his mistakes.

I was at a loss. Arguing with him would be futile, because he was going to get defensive and start yelling. I didn’t want to tell him which ones were wrong because he’s the one that needs the practice. So how to resolve this little standoff?

More than a little exasperrated, I handed him my phone with a calculator app running and told him to check his answers. Several minutes later, he’d corrected all his mistakes. When he was done, I asked him if he’d believe me the next time I told him he had some corrections to make. He chose to ignore me.

I suspect it won’t be the last time.

We did our annual town Trick-or-Treat night thing with the kids this evening. A neighboring town has all the businesses in the downtown area setup candy so kids can walk the street and get some candy. It works well for us since we don’t have a ready neighborhood to traipse around. The kids get to dress up, get some candy and satisfy their sweet tooth for a bit.

There were a couple of differences between this year’s rendition and past years. The first is that it was cold. Not bone-chilling but with temps in the low 40’s and the Sun basically hidden in the downtown area, it was a bit uncomfortable. In the past couple of years, the cold hadn’t really settled in until close to Thanksgiving.

The other difference is that when it was all done, the lass and the Wife met up with some friends to take an art class at one of the shops. The Wife had set it up awhile back. This art shop supplies all the materials, instruction and food! They went through all the steps for how to paint a cat and a pumpkin. The Wife explained how they started with a pumpkin shape, then added the cat’s head above it. The instruction continued in this way and included mixing colors as well as adding in shading and texture. By the end of the night, the lass and the Wife both had paintings that were recognizable as a cat with a pumpkin.

Which got me to thinking- the Wife voluntarily spent money to get an art lesson with the lass. So there’s some kind of market for that service. What if schools had to slim down and chose to axe the art department in an effort to focus on more core material? Does this serve as an indicator that art could continue to flourish? What if the school system is taking money away from people like this because most parents assume their kids get their fill of art at school? Sure, the Wife found this opportunity and took advantage of it but how many others don’t bother?

I doubt I’ll ever be around to see something like that given an opportunity, but it does serve as food for thought about what other disciplines this could apply to. How about gym classes? Parents could sign their kids up for gymnastics or karate or dance to satisfy a physical activity need.

Broadening our scope significantly, what if “school” was less formal and more a matter of what parents chose to educate their kids in? Perhaps governments could establish rules related to kids needing to get certain educational needs, but it would be up to the parents to figure out how to supply them? Thus, a whole industry could be born whereby knowledgeable people supply instruction in various disciplines. Ideally, in this situation, taxes could be reduced since there is no longer a physical school to maintain. Then, parents would have the spare income to spend on their kids.

The cynic in my realizes that therein lies the rub. Without taxes, the opportunity for graft is greatly reduced. Thus, this sort of arrangement would be widely panned. Still, I kind of like it.

UPDATE: Here are the two paintings. The picture has been cropped to protect the innocent…