How the System Failed My Son: Part Three -- Experts

Having already been to the administration in an attempt to have my son promoted when he was in 1st grade, I knew not to try that again; there was no way his 2nd grade teacher would recommend him to be skipped to 3rd grade. Not that that would have mattered, because he would have had the same teacher. I did go talk to them about having him switched to the other 2nd/3rd grade class. That the woman, his teacher, could tell me that my son was "slow" because he did things at his own pace showed a complete lack of perception on her part (see last post). And, to be honest, she had already demonstrated (and would go on to demonstrate repeatedly) her own lack of actual intelligence. I didn't want my son in her class.

What I found out was that there was no place to move him to. The other 2nd/3rd grade class was the lower level class; he was already in the advanced group. Sure, I could move him to that class if I wanted to, but it would have made the issue of him already knowing all of the material even worse.

And there was no way to advance his progress beyond where he was without support from the teacher. It always came down to teacher recommendation. From the school's perspective, that's what they had to go with, and I get that. I would have had the same kind of standard had I been in their place. Most people have unreasonable and irrational expectations.

I'm just not most people. And neither is my son.

It's like this:
When my wife was pregnant with him, we got up one morning, and her water broke. We were about two weeks away from his due date. We, of course, went to the hospital. The admitting nurse was, shall we say, skeptical that my wife was correct in her assessment of her condition, including asking my wife if possibly she had just peed on herself. My wife, having actually worked in health care for a while, was understandably insulted. The nurse was not at all contrite when it turned out that we were correct and that my wife's water had, indeed, broken.

The thing here is that the nurse was right to be skeptical. She wouldn't have asked my wife about urinating if there was not a proven need to ask women in the same condition about urinating.

So, you know, I understand that the school needed to be skeptical with parents proclaiming the brilliance of their kids. I'm sure it was something they had to deal with all the time. The problem here was the refusal to even really listen or to look at the evidence. They just dismissed me out of hand because, you know, the teacher was the "expert" and surely she would take the appropriate action if it was called for.

It's a good thing the hospital actually checked our claims and didn't resort to the same "the nurse is the expert" way of operating.

In retrospect, it probably would have been better for us, for him, if we'd put him in some other school, maybe even any other school, but he had an older brother and a younger sister in this school, and we liked the school. We figured we could tough it out. It was only 2nd grade, right?

Right?

At the beginning of his 3rd grade year, I put in another request for him to be promoted. I think that one didn't even get a response.

Things got worse, and my son started asking to not have to go to school.

After a few months, I put in another request. At some point, they actually did a review of my kid's performance, including his standardized test scores, and they wavered, but, in the end, the principal told me it was policy to go with the teacher's recommendation, and that is what they were going to have to do. He stayed in 3rd grade, and he stayed in that horrible woman's class. By the end of that year, he hated, really and truly hated, school.

[Many years later, the school would actually "invite that teacher to leave," which, while satisfying, was much, much too late to make any kind of difference for my kid.]

[I just want to add in here because I forgot to mention it earlier:
My son taught himself how to use a computer... at the age of two. In fact, we couldn't keep him off of it. His older brother, who is five years older, had a bunch of educational games, and Phillip wanted to play them, too, especially the Sesame Street one with Elmo. It's not that we had something against him using the computer; we just hadn't even considered the possibility that he could use the computer. So he figured it out on his own. At two.]

Clone Wars -- "The Gungan General" (Ep. 1.12)

-- Fail with honor rather than succeed by fraud.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

This episode is modeled after all of those World War II prison break movies and TV shows. Count Dooku, Obi-Wan, and Anakin have all been taken prisoner by a group of pirates, and they're trying to escape. The only problem is that they keep getting caught by Hondo, the pirate leader just as they're about to get away. That whole part of  the story is quite amusing, especially since Anakin and Obi-Wan are forced to work with Dooku since they are all chained together. So to speak. Not real chains, you know. Some blue glowy stuff.

On the other side of things, Jar Jar has come to bring a ransom from the Republic to get Dooku to face charges. They don't know that Anakin and Obi-Wan have also been taken prisoner. To be clear, Jar Jar was not supposed to be in charge of this mission. He was sent along because he gets sent on anything like this where they need someone whom Palpatine looks at as expendable. However, a faction of the pirates betray the Republic (and Hondo) and shoot their ship down. As a senator, Jar Jar becomes the highest ranking member of the survivors.

This is actually one of those Jar Jar story arcs that is unenjoyable, but it might be largely due to the fact that Jar Jar has a substitute voice actor for this episode, and he just sounds... well, he sounds dumb, and that's saying a lot for Jar Jar. Look, I like Jar Jar, but Ahmed Best has a particular quality to what he brings to Jar Jar that this other guy, B. J. Hughes, just didn't have. Rather than being Elmo-like, Jar Jar just seemed like he'd been kicked in the head 20 too many times.

What it boils down to is this:
Half of the episode, the escape half, was a lot of fun. Especially once Obi-Wan and Anakin found out that Jar Jar was there and were trying desperately to escape before he found out that they's been captured. However, the Jar Jar sections were probably the worst pieces of the season so far. Fortunately, there aren't many bad parts, which makes arcs like this one stand out even more.


"You reject my hospitality, refuse to wait in your cell, and, now, you're going to insult me?"