Fasten your seatbelts.
And blame Sprite's Keeper. She's the one who chose education as a Spin Cycle topic.
By way of full disclosure, let me say that I am a certified teacher in the state of Michigan. I have an elementary certificate, which means I can teach K-8 self contained (which means in a place set up as an elementary school, where the kids spend 70% of their day in a homeroom), and have endorsements in math and science (meaning I am qualified to teach both of these at the middle school level).
I completed my teaching degree and certification in 2002, at the age of 39. My kids were already in school. As a matter of fact, when I taught in a fifth grade classroom as a student teacher, my son was in fifth grade in our home district. When I started teaching sixth grade as a new hire, my son was entering sixth grade.
All of this is to say that I have seen teaching from several angles, as a student, successful and not-so-successful; as a parent (this was definitely my worst role in the teaching tripod. I was awful as the parent of school-age kids - a whole post on its own); and as the classroom leader (conversely, this was my best role).
SO,I feel quite qualified to say that most of what we teach kids in American schools is an utter waste of time. Once we get past teaching kids to read and do basic math, we spend the rest of 13 years of mandatory education teaching kids how to be really good at Trivial Pursuit.
Here is a list of what I remember from K-8:
Kindergarten - I sat at the blue table, my friend Amy sat at the red table. I interrupted. A lot. Robert Sullivan ate glue.
1st grade - I learned that if you bring a bag of six Oreo cookies to school for lunch (and nothing else), Sister Coralita will yell at you. And phonics. We read charts of word families At Bat, Cat, Fat, Hat, etc.
2nd grade - Mrs. Krueger read Pippi Longstocking out loud to us, and told us that it was inappropriate to use "Xmas" instead of "Christmas".
3rd grade - I was smart enough to be in the split class, meaning Mrs. Krueger (again) could leave the third graders on their own, while she worked with the second graders. It was in this grade that I really learned how to blow off any kind of assignment, and still do just fine on the tests.
4th grade - I learned that Sister Genesia would let us watch the playoffs if we "worked" quietly. I wrote a poem that year, and was accused of having copied it from a book. The social studies nun taught us that there were three 'races' of people called caucasoid, negroid, and mongoloid. Seriously.
5th grade - I learned that it was possible to be so cold from playing in the parking lot in the winter that you could come inside, and during afternoon prayers, wet yourself without even realizing it was happening. I also learned that there are ways to humiliate students even beyond the stigma of having wet oneself in the classroom at the age of ten. I spent 3 and a half more years in this school, with this group of kids. Imagine what fun that was.
6th grade - academically, don't remember a thing. I remember Sister Claudine. My dad was impressed with her because she spoke four languages, and had escaped from Poland during World War II.
7th grade - Mrs. Allen, the science teacher, taught us the names of all the bones in the body. I still remember those. And it comes in very handy during everyday life.
8th grade - I learned that there was a person who hated the "popular kids" more than I did - Ms. Makurat (rhymes with packrat), a former nun. She made Laura O'Hagan stand up in front of the class (someone else's class, BTW, not hers) while she yelled at her for being a whore. Imagine that happening now.
Tomorrow, I tackle high school. Don't worry. It won't take long.
