Monkey SPhere

So it has been a pretty emotional several months. We are almost done with this current adventure in public education. Francis will start her new school barring major upheaval the week after next.

The day I applied for my petition transfer the principal said place based education wasn't for everyone. Obviously not, I hadn't even heard of it although I was apparently hip deep in it. I have spent the last week looking up place based education in response to a really insulting and intrusive homework policy and have come to the conclusion that place based education (which is not environmental education, and isn't what it sounds like intuitively) isn't such a bad thing and in fact encompasses many things that I do think we ought to teach people. I still don't agree with it, especially in the lower grades, because I don't think that public education is for personal gratification or even job placement, but to allow all people to participate in political life. Middle schoolers and high schoolers are probably more ready to be involved in public life than we give them credit for, but grade schoolers really ought to be learning to read and write and sit still and follow directions and any number of other skills that Foucault would label violent. Society sucks, because in order to work, we all have to find a way to think outside the monkey sphere.

Still, I am taking advantage of my monkey sphere right now, and moving Sarah Taylor out of my 150 person inner circle. I wish her peace and happiness and much much personal growth in all the insulting ways you think I am, because she is guiding the lives of many people and I don't want other families to go through the painful transitions that we have with SES.