Competition for Schools

When I was a kid, I don’t think my parents ever debated the choice of schools. If I was zoned for a particular school for my grade, that’s where I was going. No questions asked.

Things have been different for my kids and their kids. “We hear about gangs in the high schools,” my daughter says. “Drugs even in middle schools.”

“The public school we’re zoned for has terrible ratings,” my son says. Ratings? Who knew there were ratings?

Occasionally we took standardized tests in my day. I remember them as something of a mystery, never knowing when they were coming or what they were used for. My daughter worries that her son, genius that we all believe him to be, does not excel at test taking and that this may come back to haunt him some day.

Now that he’s almost ready for high school, I recall a story she told me when he was just starting kindergarten. They were visiting a magnet school, probably the one he ended up attending.

“There was only one other family on the tour,” my daughter said. “The principal was talking to us, and the other prospective student was sitting in a chair, listening attentively, chin resting on his hands like a little prince.”

“I looked around for Finn,” she said, “and he had managed to remove the cloth belt from my coat and wrapped it around his neck. Looked like he were strangling himself out of boredom.”

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “There will be plenty of time for anxiety when he’s applying for colleges.”

What I didn’t realize at the time was just how rapidly those intervening years would fly past.

If you like stories that bridge the gap between the old and the young, try my book, The Past Ever Present. In it, my dad Cliff recalls his own childhood while serving as my son Clay’s guardian on a tv set.
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The Past Ever Present: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091F3MN3R (only 99c to buy on Kindle)