BLITHE SPIRIT Oak Park IL April 17, 1996 -- Cool it, girl . . . Puffing up the district . . . Homer dissed by Horace . . . Et tu, Sun-Times . . .

Two cents and worth it . . .

Sons first, daughters second . . .

Some parents of high-achieving girls and low-achieving sons have told the girls to cool it, so the sons don't feel so bad. So I heard recently from a psychological counsellor to whom the girls had come years later, women with big self-esteem problems. You have to wonder what's going inside such parents.

Apart from the notion that boys' achievement is more important than girls' -- something I find bizarre to the extreme -- where do they get off managing things in this fashion? I'm for parental interference. Parents are not to be detached observers where their kids are concerned. But what sort of manipulation is this? Indeed, whether it's your kids or someone else's or an adult or whoever?

It's treating people like objects, chess pieces to be moved about. What arrogance.

I'll tell you what else it is, and back to parental behavior with this: it's being too concerned. Too worried about what the morrow will bring, to call on one of Jesus's wisest sayings but also a staple of Stoic philosophy some three centuries before Jesus.

Consider the seven-year-old pilot, dead in a crash with her father and flying instructor. Tragic, but the mother had it right: the kid went in a blaze of glory, too soon but in the flush of doing what she loved to do. What a way to go.

Most say it's a waste. But do they say that of someone, man or woman, who puts in a lifetime of never daring anything?

The body is the soul's clothing, said Epictetus, the 1st and 2nd-century Greek Stoic. Death is removing that clothing. When you're alive, you don't know death, said another Stoic; when you're dead, you don't know anything. So there's no such thing as death. Chew on that one.

As for the parents who urge the smart daughter to cool it, they live and teach dishonesty with that. And they care too much what happens. Their son the sluff-off deserves their love no matter what. As grownups, parents are supposed to see beyond honor roll and graduate degree. Shrinks have too much to do, thanks to childish adults like them.

Puffing up the district . . .

The 4/17 Wednesday Journal, having decided if you've nothing good to say, don't say anything at all, said a lot about Oak Park elementary school District 97. "Every child learns -- Dist. 97 takes responsibility," on page 1, is a press release. No one is quoted who does not have an interest in making the district look good. Not a mumblin' word is said that does not tell us all is very well or on its way to becoming well.

John F., the veteran superintendent: "It [the district] wouldn't be viable [? if there were too many difficult things that kids couldn't learn. (So) we have to individualize the way we teach kids. . . . You can't assume that just because a student is in the fourth grade that he or she is understanding fourth-grade math or that he or she is reading at the fourth-grade level. That's unrealistic."

So the district "bends the walls" with "multi-age classrooms, block scheduling [which is?] and something called ‘looping,’" which is having a teacher stay with a class two years running.

This multi-age grouping sounds like holding a kid back because he couldn't get fourth-grade arithmetic. Never mind; there's always room for a new euphemism. The news-release aspect is in the Journal's not asking questions, like:

* What's the situation? Is this an emergency or something that has crept up on us? Kids not performing at grade level, that is. Are more falling behind than before? Or is it an old problem and new solution? Dig into the gosh-gee-whiz element that turns up in officialdom’s speech patterns.

* Emergency or not, how was it decided? Have teachers gotten together and voted on whether students are doing worse than before? Do test scores tell us this?

* Can the superintendent give us a graph chart showing how things have gone in recent years? Nothing elaborate, but something your average Ph.D. parent can grasp and take seriously. Then such parents can be sent into the community to explain it to the rest of us. Maybe the village goals-setter, Vision 2000, can be recruited for this important task.

Quotes also from veteran principal Paula O.: "We've discovered [how recently?] that kids learn from each other. The younger kids look to the older for help and guidance.

That's an old argument in the district. It’s been that slow kids learn from fast ones. That's why you can mix them up in a classroom and come out ahead. [Has it worked?] There was no such thing as a common denominator or need for one. Diversity would solve all problems. Now it's multi-age classrooms where it's supposed to work.

More Paula O.: “Long gone should be [but aren't] the days when all are expected to learn at the same rate. Halleluia. "We have to specify our curriculum to each child.” As long as you don’t segregate fast-learners and the not-so-fast.

This may mean putting a fifth-grader in a sixth-grade reading class or a third-grader in a second-grade math class, says the superintendent, putting himself and O'Malley on the same track, if you will pardon the expression, tracking being a dirty word.

He continues: "These are some examples of how the district is working towards a goal of making sure every child reaches his or her learning potential." [Italics added.]

These are examples? It's April. Has this been going on all year? An example would be to show us how it's working in, say, half the district's ten schools. Instead, we hear as examples only the broadest outline of a program.

Paula O. is quoted further about the importance of a proposed all-day kindergarten, which she said would give kids "more time to problem-solve and go over all our areas of curriculum." [What?] On the other hand, she favors "unrestricted play time" for kindergarten kids.

Moreover, school board member Kathy L. is for "good old-fashioned recess," as if it were under fire. "When kids are allowed to play freely [it's an issue?], their stress levels tend to be lower."

Finally, the Journal gives a nod to the district having "revamped its testing program," which is how a news release would put it. What the district did, on a split board of education vote, was drop the California Achievement Test (CAT), which for better or worse allowed comparison of this year's kids with those of years earlier.

Now that's stress reduction. Think of all those parents out there who might have gotten upset to know just how much less their kids knew. As it is, they can hear about creative solutions before they have even heard of the problems.

A gloss on the above: philosophical turnaround . . .

The Journal story lacked (a) adequate questioning of school district sources and (b) any questioning, adequate or not, of non-district sources. That's what made it a puff piece.

Asking around would have unearthed reference to the district's fantastic philosophical turnaround in its endorsement of academic achievement to the best of each child's capacity. A few years back the district's board rejected such an addition to its goals. Why? Because it would declare support for parents of gifted kids, which went against the egalitarian grain.

So this district does not embrace the goal, as Superintendent F. says above, of "making sure every child reaches his or her learning potential." Indeed it decided long ago not to do so. The latest from the district may demonstrate some worthy goal or goals, but that isn't one of them.

Even Homer nods . . .

. . . said Horace -- the Roman lyric poet speaking of the Greek epic poet -- adding, "but I do not approve." So when the esteemed Sun-Times, that journalistic survivor of survivors, does something odd, we take notice.

It happened last January, 1/31/96 to be exact, in a small story, "West Side Man Gets 90 Yrs. in Oak Park Rape" -- one of the naked city's million stories. The rapist had left his work hat at the crime scene, and that did him in. It's an awful story, brutal and repulsive.

But some flowers bloom unseen in the desert air, so the careful reader noticed that the man's work identified him as an employee of the city's "Department of Road and Control." That's how it sounded on the telephone, I'm sure, when the reporter called it in from the courthouse.

"Hello Baby, give me rewrite," is an old line from "Front Page." Baby gave him rewrite, who was in a hurry and distracted, or never heard of rodent control, and out came "road and control." Truly one of the near-great moments of Chicago journalism.

Meanwhile, the Journal editor socks it to the other half . . .

Dan's the name, and column-writing's his game. On 4/10 he admits bias against "rich people with funny names" [make that just rich people] and Chicago's North Shore. The latter is based on his having dated a girl who sailed all day while he made sausages, a long time ago. Stunned by the disparity, he dropped her and began dating "with [his] class." A true proletarian.

Meanwhile, he is irritated by the obituary of a woman who "pioneered curling on the North Shore." Chalk it up to his "petty, judgmental self," he writes. I couldn't agree more, but I'm not supposed to. Instead I am supposed to reject the thought. It's part of the game we're playing, heh-heh. Anyhow, doesn't everybody resent the curling class?

In the words of the immortal Porky Pig, "Th-th-th-that's all, folks" till next week.