on building an anarchist grade school system
feb 4, 2011
written by jessica murray
| "they hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool, |
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| till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules." |
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- john lennon, 1970 |
it's 6:00 PM on a wednesday evening in july and mary jane is just getting ready for her first day of grade 4. her mom works an evening shift as a waitress, so she attends classes in the evening at the local elementary school, which is open 24 hours a day - just like all elementary schools are now. while there are no schedules or set times, mary jane is expected to be at school for a total of eight hours a day, five days a week. she signs in when she arrives and signs out when her mom picks her up after work. rather than supper, this family has breakfast; mom is just thankful that she gets to see mary jane during the week as she wasn't able to see her youngest child very often at that age due to her evening shift.
mary jane has decided to spend the first half of her evening reading an english book and the second half getting a head start on her math homework. the new curriculum allows her to study these different subjects independently in the way, order and length of time that she feels comfortable with. when she's done her work, she'll bring it to the teacher and begin the next task in her curriculum list, which was presented to her when she jumped grade levels the previous week. when she was in grade three, she put the math off because she doesn't like it so much....this time she's going to stay on top of it because she knows she'll eventually have to do it correctly in order to jump to the next grade level. mary jane is a conscientious student; she's working on her third grade level since september.
the night classes are a little bit sparse, but mary jane does have a group of friends that she sees every day. some of them are still in grade three because they weren't able to keep up with mary jane, others are further along through grade four than she is. one of the kids a little further along is a boy that she likes. mary jane doesn't want to get too far behind him, so she makes sure to keep up with her schoolwork. one of the kids that's still in grade three is her best friend, ever since kindergarten. mary jane has been trying to convince her to do more homework so that she can keep up with her.
there's one boy in the class that works really, really slowly but always does a fantastic job when he finally finishes his work. the teachers always show his work to the rest of the class and comment upon the attention to detail that he demonstrates, especially on art assignments. he's been in grade three for two years and is finally just about done. some of the other kids make fun of him, but mary jane thinks he's really interesting.
there's also a group of bad kids in the corner that don't do any school work at all. one of them has been in grade two for four years! the teacher always says that whether he wants to do his homework or not is his choice but that he'll be stuck in grade two until he does, whether his father likes it or not. she also tells him that he's almost old enough to go into one of the big kids classes, and they'll make fun of him if he's only in grade two when he gets there.
sometimes, mary jane has to write tests. she doesn't write them with the other students, she writes them whenever she decides that she's ready to. the teacher says that there's a computer program that writes the tests, so there's no point in asking the older kids what the questions on them are. when she was in grade three, she had to write her last math test twice because she only had 77% the first time and she had to get 80% to pass. one of her friends had to write it three times! the teacher always tells her that it's ok if she doesn't get 80% the first or second time, it just means she has to study a bit more.
mary jane has heard her older brother talk about the days when teachers used to stand in front of the classroom and everybody had to do the same thing all at the same time, but she can barely believe it. to mary jane, teachers are just people who mark homework and answer questions about stuff. why would the teacher want to stand in front of the class and say stuff? what could she say to all of the kids that are in the class that would make sense to all of them? the old system seems really, really silly to mary jane; she's glad she's allowed to work by herself.