Fribble Gets Political

I've been holding my breath on several subjects for many years, and I just have to break my silence about one of them -- the No Child Left Behind program.

I was trained to be a teacher. I never taught school except as a substitute, and I didn't do much of that. The event that turned me against substituting was having an explosive device thrown into my classroom. The less I remember about that, the better. We'll move on to topic.

I have three children, all of whom are bright, personable and good citizens. But the brightest had trouble with school. Not that he couldn't learn, but that he was way ahead in so many ways. He taught himself to read before the age of three.

He scared teachers. He scared other kids. He got picked on, sabotaged, shifted off into corners, ignored when he wanted to learn something. In many ways, he was left behind. In retrospect, I wish I could have home-schooled him, but school districts hated that idea at the time.

I think No Child Left Behind suffers from the name of the program. I think the name should have been Every Child Can Learn. Lumping all kids together into a rigid, standardized-test aimed program is as big a mistake as not helping the very bright or the handicapped to reach their individual potential.

Taking the individuality out of our teachers and their students is a huge mistake, and I'm glad I'm not involved in it.

Thinking back to the kid who tried to shatter the eardrums of all the people in my classroom, I wonder how his individuality was compromised in that classroom by his regular teacher. This is the first time I've ever asked myself that question. I'll never know. But we'll get nowhere trying to fit square pegs into round holes. We need the oval pegs, the round pegs, the eccentric pegs, because we do have holes for all of them.