- I have already been to school. For five whole days. What do you mean, five days isn’t enough? How long is this ridiculousness supposed to last? Eight more weeks? Then what? All this again three more times? How many times do I have to do all that? FOR THIRTEEN YEARS? NEARLY THREE TIMES AS LONG AS I HAVE BEEN ALIVE? I do not accept that. I did not sign up for this. No.
- School is boring. This week we coloured in a picture of Jack and Jill and we cut out a picture of Humpty Dumpty. This is what I left preschool for? What else did we do? Nothing, as far as I recall. I can’t remember. I am not at liberty to divulge that information. Your security clearance is not high enough, Mummy, if that’s even your real name.
- School is too easy. I already know everything. How to colour in? Know it. How to write my name? Know it. How to read? Well, I can read some words. Like my name. Why does that not count as knowing how to read? Reading isn’t all or nothing, you know.
- School is too hard. I don’t know the answers to any of the questions. The teacher asks hard things. I don’t know what things. Just hard things. I do know everything, just not those things.
- There’s nothing to play with in the playground. Why is it even called that? Are we supposed to play with the ground? [She has a point here. It’s a pretty concrety school. This week, her playground — and I may know this from happening to walk past the school during lunch break, every day – has strongly resembled the exercise yard in a medium-security prison for mushrooms. Everyone is wears matching clothes and broad-brimmed hats, which make it impossible to identify your friends, should you made any. The safest thing to do is keep walking slowly in a clockwise direction, not making eye contact with anyone.]
- It’s not fair. Why doesn’t Garnet have to go? Two days of preschool doesn’t count. I want him in the trenches too.
- You keep saying it’s not up to you; that it’s up to the government. But the government is not in charge of me. I am in charge of my body, as you keep reminding me, so it is my right to not take that body to school. Who is he, anyway, this government? It’s lots of people? Ladies and men? What will they do me if I don’t go to school? Oh, they won’t do anything to me, but you and Daddy might get in trouble? Well, I can’t see a problem then.
It’s been a bit of a week around here. Tonight there will be pizza for all, hooch for the grownups, and ice cream for the amazing May Blossom and Garnet, who battled bravely through five and two days, respectively, of formal education. All and all, they’re just another pair of bricks in the wall.
Oh, yes. I remember thinking those questions during my first week of Big School. Being a repressed child I don’t think I actually asked my parents at the time, but I certainly thought them. The questions, I mean. I’m glad to see that they are still relevant to the latest generation, meaning that no-one has answered them satisfactorily in the meantime.
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Mine reacted similarly – he was very underwhelmed. Apparently, they read baby books, sang baby songs, and did baby things. And to top it all off, they have to do what the teacher says!
After explaining this all to me (and my mind racing 400 steps ahead as to how I’m going to ‘fix’ the situation), his dad came home and asked how the day was and he replied ‘good. It was all good. Nothing bad’.
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I laughed so hard I had to hold my sides
Priceless
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Oh my god, one of my most vivid memories of my entire life is of the morning of my second day of school: Huh, I have to do it AGAIN?!?!?! I don’t think anything has ever shocked me as much.
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She has a point 🙂
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