Seriously. Don’t. Because I will start like you’ve never seen anyone start in your life.

One summer during my babysitting years I was asked by a woman to babysit her two sons and tutor the younger one. They were sweet boys, and I was quite happy to oblige. But the ‘tutor’ part got a little sticky.

I was given a list of pre-requisites for kindergarten (seriously?) and a stack of alphabet flash cards. I looked over the sheet from the school: some things on the list were along the lines of “being able to wipe your own bottom,” and I can totally get behind that because I’m sure the funding available for staffing just does not afford classrooms the ability to send a few adults to the bathroom while someone else watches over the rest of the class. Sure, maybe that’s a travesty. Maybe we need more people in the classrooms. Maybe (I’m not sold on it). But that’s a whole other can of worms.

But the other things on the list were more like, “cut a circle, square, and triangle” and “know the alphabet.” I’m still not sure if it was intended as a list of guidelines, or strict “requirements.” It’s not that these tasks are so advanced for a four year old. It’s not that I don’t think we should engage our children and, even more so, find ways to engage them that ALSO teach them useful information like how to read or how gravity works. But to punish or admonish a child that young, in this manner, for not having reached certain goals is frightening to me. What do we think this will accomplish? I would bet a whole lot that all this will get you is a kid who develops a bad taste in his mouth whenever the word “school” is uttered. And the damage that will do to him and his life is epically worse than how far behind he will be if, at the age of 4, he hasn’t yet mastered writing “p”. Trying to force-feed knowledge of any sort is so obviously less effective than teaching to ready and willing pupils that I’m not even going to go there.

So there I was, asked to drill a four year old on letters and numbers and all manner of tediously boring things for a certain amount of time each day. And he was slouched across the table from me, eyes always wandering, looking so tortured it hurt to watch.

At this point I could digress into how the creation and implementation of our Prussian-modeled (compulsory) education system was formulated as a means to create a work force of physical labor to support factories in the industrial era. Or how many of the ‘uneducated’ in the 1800s were reading books at the age of 10 that we consider too advanced or too mature for our high schoolers. Or how our schools promote values that encourage us to see the world as potentially (if we are nice enough and wait our turn) without conflict and, consequently, teach our children that it IS possible for the earth to sustain the 6 plus billion people currently on it and, at the same time, that our Hummer and wide screen TV habits have no direct correlation to people starving in the third world.

I could. But you don’t want to get me started.

Where was I?

Oh. Right.

Lest this be construed as a rant in favor of hippie dippie childrearing wherein we let the kids decide what they want, when, and how, let me assure you that I can be a quite a hard ass; manners and responsible behavior are a must.*

But, ya, I think I that a different educational model is long past due.

I don’t know that I think taking kids away from their parents, as in the Summerhill model, is quite the way to go. And I’m not laid back enough to have complete faith that my child would flourish with no requirements or parameters in the Sudbury model. Truth be told, I’m not sure, practically, exactly what I DO think would work. But I can’t in good conscience give the current system my seal of approval just because I’m not genius enough to invent the solution. I simply think there needs to be more dialogue about this, more often, across a wider spectrum of the population.

Surely allowing our children to go untamed is not what we should strive for (children do need structure, I agree), but nor is our current system. It has devolved so far from what we idealize it to be that it has become a fiscal cancer on our society. We pour endless dollars into a system that pays wages to many, many deserving and hard working individuals (and otherwise), but overall still does not attain that which it has set out to. It is a system that assumes one prescription will fit all and ignores the fact that some households raise wealthy children who can afford to value knowledge for its own sake while other households raise children who know that their little brother won’t have any food to eat if they don’t ditch to work a shift at Taco Bell (and, of course, most households likely defy these stereotypes all together). It is a system that assumes it is possible to create a curriculum that is simultaneously effective and bland enough to refrain from offending any of the more than 300 million citizens of this country. It is all at once too unrealistically ambitious and entirely ineffectual.

This is a topic I encourage everyone to think a little harder about…

*As a side note, it will be very interesting to see what my child rearing skills are like when I leave the ideals of Hypothetical Land behind and actually have a screaming 2 year old standing in front of me, won’t it?

NOTE: Most of these opinions have been formed via classes and books and discussions more than anything I can point to on the internet, but I didn’t want to only point to book titles, so much of my supporting documentation was hastily complied via haphazard google searches; academic blasphemy, I know. I’d be more than happy to discuss the things that have led me to this pontification if anyone is so interested. Just let me know.

I’m labeling this one of my ignorant tirades, but I’m just cocky enough on this front to claim that this rant actually stands on solid ground.

My dad was recently humored to point out how ridiculous the ferocity of our (the 21st century, 1st world, affluent type’s) appetite is for new gadgets. He noted the trend towards NEEDING to have the new cell phone with the new games and internet apps and email push functions, and how, interestingly, we are (apparently) willing to forgo the quality of a phone’s original function just to get more shiny features, faster. Simply put, the one thing phones were originally invented to do – i.e. allow us to speak to each other when we are not in the same place – is done TERRIBLY by all these devices. And I am not talking about network coverage – I am talking about the quality of the device itself. The reception is mediocre on a good day. And that is if the phone even executes the call when you ask it to in the first place without falling prostrate on the floor and claiming network malfunction. AND if it then also holds onto that call once it is placed and doesn’t randomly cut you off at a crucial part of the conversation and then giggle maniacally.

I do not need a fancy phone. One time several years ago, my mom and I went to trade in our old phones for free upgrades and together gasped and went bug-eyed when we found out that the VIBRATION feature was STANDARD on all the phones – even the free ones to which we were entitled! Oh joy!* The gentleman who was helping us raised his eyebrow at our reaction: this was several years into the common use of the vibrate function. My point: I’m easily impressed. I could easily do without any fancy features if the phone wasn’t a diva. I prefer my phones sans personality.

See, I had this phone that totally worked (at least as far as I can remember) for several years. One morning on my way to work, I chucked it (accidentally) on the asphalt while crossing the road and the back plate flipped off and the antenna fell out and started rolling down the hill. I chased it and won. But getting it all back together nicely wasn’t in the cards. The screen only worked if I put the right pressure on it, and even then only if the humidity and time and alignment of the stars were just right. This was a problem. I did not have another phone. In this day and age of unhealthy dependence on communication, that is scary. So I didn’t have time to do the painstaking hours of research on CNet and Consumer Reports and what have you to find the best phone. I knew a lot of people with Razrs. If everyone has them, they have to at least, WORK, right? I popped into ATT and grabbed one.

Well, I’ll cut to the chase here and tell you what you already see coming, which is that the Razr sucked monkey balls. I had one, it malfunctioned, I reported it, I received a replacement. It malfunctioned, I reported it, I received a replacement. Pattern? It malfunctioned, I reported it, and they finally conceded that it was time for a new model. These phones weren’t a little buggy; they were miscreants. All three did several or all of the following:

• Randomly turn off my alarm.
• Randomly decide not to heed an incoming call, nor give a voicemail option, nor inform me of the missed call. In other words, deny the existence of callers.
• Cut off every other phone call with a short-circuiting crackle.
• Refuse to make calls.
• And the kicker, the feature that finally drove me to take it in for a swap: deciding at random times that i was in Denver, Colorado. It was 9:00am when I checked my phone, then 8:02am the next time I checked, then 9:30, then 8:45…

On that third swap, I was (finally) utterly impressed with the customer service I received: my replacement phone could be one from any of a list of manufacturers. On the spot, with no time (again) for research, I chose LG because I had heard good things. I was given two device options, looked them up quickly while on the phone and then did an even quicker check on their SAR ratings, and picked the LG Shine. It is very shiny. I like it a lot. And for the first six months, it was great to me. But recently, it’s been getting some attitude.

It started with unbearable static. The kind where you literally cannot hear the other person. Sometimes, it just decides to emit this awful noise. If my phone rings during one of these moods, the static is broadcast through the speakers in my ringtone’s stead. Fortunately, I can get the static to go away by taking the battery out and putting it back in. Irritating, but manageable.

Then it started doing things like, after all this time with my keypad tones off, suddenly they were on. Every time I hit a key, my phone would emit a loud beep. This is not terrible in and of itself. I thought, giving it the benefit of the doubt, that maybe I had accidentally hit a button. I went into the sounds menu, and as soon as I arrived on the screen where one might highlight keypad tones and change the setting, it stopped beeping. It’s as if it suddenly realized what I was doing and thought, “Oops! Caught! Better shape up…” And that’s just creepy.

And now, it turns off when it feels like it. This means that sometimes if you call, I may not know. Moreover, sometimes my alarm doesn’t go off because my phone is taking a nap. Sure, it’s a phone, and not an alarm, but that seems like such an exceedingly easy task to carry out that I just can’t cut it any slack.

So, to get to my point, why can’t we have a phone that just WORKS? I would forgo my pretty blue back-lit keypad, my calendar application, my MediaNet, and even ::gasp:: my camera, if I could just get a phone that would make calls, receive calls, send text messages, and wake me up in the morning. Is that so much to ask? Manufacturers are so excited to produce new fancy gadgets that they throw out the old ones before working out the bugs. It seems no model makes it past the first generation. Why can’t they put some R&D into making one, just one, base model that would do the basics and be worked and worked until it was perfect. Release two, three, or ten versions of the same model and work out the kinks as you go. I’d take that any day over the fleet of high maintenance rookies we must choose among today.

*Don’t be gross. We were excited for thoroughly pure reasons.