We took William to the Natural History Museum on the spur of the moment today. Sorry, now it's the Museum of Science and Nature. WhatEVer. Anyway, he loved it.
"WOW! Tyrannosaurus!" he'd say. We got him identifying and pronouncing trilobytes and cephalopods, too. The fun was cut short when he tripped on some grownup's shoe and smacked his forehead into a low rail. We made a pass through the gift shop (bought a fuzzy doll for Raley) and left.
Didn't do a lick of O'Reilly work today, and I feel good about that.
We leave on Monday for New Zealand. We should probably start packing. Or at least deciding what we're going to bring. Instead, I'm writing this journal entry while Jenine registers the kids (via the web) for a local charter school. We are not registering for the school whose web page spells "strictly" as "stricly". I nearly blew a fuse today when I saw an obviously very expensive sign at the museum with "it's" instead of "its".
This school's a little dictatorial. My favourite so far is "an object that has a purpose other than jewelry cannot be warn as jewelry (i.e., animal chains or collars)". I note with a frump that that "i.e." should be "e.g." unless they're suggesting those are the only two items that may not be worn as jewelry.
Oh no wait, new favourite. " Pants may not be excessively tightââ¬âmay not show any descriptive lines of the body." There goes my goal of having my 5-year old daughter dress like a whore.
Hang on: "Clothing and jewelry must be gender appropriate". How many 6 year old boys really want to wear women's clothes? And are they going to send my daughter home if I dress her in pants?
I feel such a dork enrolling my children here, but I kinda like the idea of them being the liberal hippies at a fascist right-wing school whose principles include "Today we resemble those confused, scrofulous hippies of the late 1960s". The alternative is that we send them to some pot-smoking daycare degree mill where they fornicate and learn to jack cars.
Hmm. Bring a coed and a BMW home for Daddy, William!
--Nat
Obviously a school where Perl is high on the curriculum. Do they mind if you die your hair?
Re:Perl school.
hfb on 2002-02-17T17:51:57
They note in the code that 'only natural colours are allowed' so as long as you dye your hair a 'natural' colour one would assume that's acceptable.
The dress code seems intimidating but it's really pretty liberal and probably is just trying to keep kids from dressing like madonna, britney or little wannbe gangstahs. I mean, catholic school dress codes are a lot more stringent as they tell you what to wear too. I spent a lot of time after school scrubbing gymnasium baseboards for wearing a turtleneck [ my school was pretty liberal ] with little prints on it instead of plain white. Dress codes save you the hassle of figuring out what to wear in the morning...it's not as bad as it would seem.
Re:Perl school.
gnat on 2002-02-18T00:31:31
Yeah, I went to a public school that had a uniform. It wasn't an ordeal. All these hand-wringing limp-dick wussies who whine about their darling angel's freedom of expression being inhibited... bah. I'm not worried about the uniform or dress code, just wondering whether there's more sinister mind control desires lurking behind the dress code. Probably not, given the "teaching of democratic principles" and all that bollocks in the charter.
--Nat
Re:Perl school.
koschei on 2002-02-19T03:13:02
I thought pants were gender appropriate for either sex...Re:Perl school.
srl on 2002-02-21T15:15:49
They're generally considered so now in the US, but that hasn't always been the case. Also, there's a lot of gender-specificity about pants. Female kids who wear "too many" "boys' clothes" often get shit for being gender-inappropriate.
Personally, the thought of a grade-school formally enforcing gender apartheid gives me the creeps.
