Yet another school yet another playground
Hurray Oliver is finally four! Not that I am all too keen to say goodbye to my son's toddler time but from one thing I am surely happy to part, the very fat check that we have been writing every month in the last 10 years to the loved and loathed institution of the daycare.
Loved because I really think it did very good to my children and because the teachers are really worth more than the thin check they get. Loathed because its prices are nonsensically high.
Nobody believes me but with the money I have spent to send Oliver and Nora to daycare I would have easily been able to pay for them Oxford education. Again believe me, because I have done the math, ......many times.
To school then, brave little soldier, and "make no mistakes" I told him, "this activity will keep you busy for the next twenty years, so better enjoy it!"
It took us exactly 37 seconds to decide that Oliver would have not gone to the same school where Nora started her primary education. We were treated so horribly and we had such a terrible experience in the process that brought her to special education, that over my dead body I would have ever again sent a child of mine there. The other school in our neighborhood had exactly the same ridiculous approach to curriculum as the first one. They very candidly told us that in eight years the children are going to learn there to read to write and to do some math, they are not going to be expected to learn anything more than that.
I have more or less stopped to fight this system, I am limiting myself to chronicle it and to provide my children with additional sources of education for all the things the school doesn't teach them here.
In one aspect this school seems to be different though, the population of the schoolyard.
You might remember my previous posts about schoolyards and the ecosystem that they contain. Well the ecosystem of this school is quite interesting and definitely less despicable than the other.
Well from time to time I try to be a good mother and to gain this label one should go through a number of tasks, I thought that picking up your son from school on his first school day would be one of those tasks. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I of course duly informed the teacher that from the day after on, Oliver would be picked up by the nanny, as it should be....in my world
Loved because I really think it did very good to my children and because the teachers are really worth more than the thin check they get. Loathed because its prices are nonsensically high.
Nobody believes me but with the money I have spent to send Oliver and Nora to daycare I would have easily been able to pay for them Oxford education. Again believe me, because I have done the math, ......many times.
To school then, brave little soldier, and "make no mistakes" I told him, "this activity will keep you busy for the next twenty years, so better enjoy it!"
It took us exactly 37 seconds to decide that Oliver would have not gone to the same school where Nora started her primary education. We were treated so horribly and we had such a terrible experience in the process that brought her to special education, that over my dead body I would have ever again sent a child of mine there. The other school in our neighborhood had exactly the same ridiculous approach to curriculum as the first one. They very candidly told us that in eight years the children are going to learn there to read to write and to do some math, they are not going to be expected to learn anything more than that.
I have more or less stopped to fight this system, I am limiting myself to chronicle it and to provide my children with additional sources of education for all the things the school doesn't teach them here.
In one aspect this school seems to be different though, the population of the schoolyard.
You might remember my previous posts about schoolyards and the ecosystem that they contain. Well the ecosystem of this school is quite interesting and definitely less despicable than the other.
- First interesting aspect: by the time the bell goes off, very few adults are in the yard at all, which clearly means that most of the children will not go home, they will go to the so called "buitenschool opvang".
- Second interesting aspect: among the limited set of adults there very few are parents. Who are these people then you might ask. Very simple, nannies and grandparents.
- Last but by far not least interesting aspect, they hardly talk to each other.
Well from time to time I try to be a good mother and to gain this label one should go through a number of tasks, I thought that picking up your son from school on his first school day would be one of those tasks. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I of course duly informed the teacher that from the day after on, Oliver would be picked up by the nanny, as it should be....in my world
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