First Day of School and an Evil Plan

Newsletter 2019-08-19

The kids went back to school this week, and my wife Lola and I heard the usual spiel. The teachers all have a welcome-back speech about how fun is dead and college prep starts now. I might be paraphrasing. According to the school, Kindergarten is now as hard as first grade; first grade is as hard as fourth grade; and fourth grade is as hard as college. By that, I assume they mean a real college and not one where you can major in English to avoid all the math and science classes. Not that I did that or anything. Indiana is ramping up the pressure on elementary schools to cram more knowledge into kids’ heads earlier and earlier, and schools answered. What they offer now is less a creative learning experience and more an education bootcamp. If your kid can't already speak three languages and do long division going into kindergarten, they might as well not even show up. Time to buy my five-year-old a graphing calculator.

It’s not like my kids attend some elite private academy, either. Than…