Private Education

I hate to say this but the longer I work in public education the more dissatisfied I am with the so-called education that is being offered. Now before teachers everywhere try to hunt me down, I am obviously not trying to say that that all teachers everywhere are bad or that it is impossible to get a good education through the public school system. I'm just saying that I believe there is clearly a problem on several fronts of public education (take your pick from poorly qualified teachers, teachers who merely go through the motions of keeping current on their qualifications, or counselors who haven't a clue or simply couldn't be bothered to do their job properly--my latest pet peeve is teachers that are more interested in being their students best friends than in teaching them). In this system it falls increasingly on parents to be in the know and be thoroughly involved in their children's education--something that should be happening even in an ideal education system, but is all the more important in a system that is failing its students.

Now, I don't have children of my own to worry about, but I do have nieces and I am worried. So, in an attempt to do my part in my nieces education I have decided to begin supplementing their education--mommy and daddy will have to do the worrying about their classroom learning. My first attempt at this took place last Wednesday with my four-year-old niece Tess. We went up to the Museum of Fine Arts to view that Andy Warhol exhibit. I thought this was a very good introduction to the Arts for a four year old since Warhol is very colorful--my niece very much appreciated his use of pink. Her favorites were the Marilyns and the Maos. I really fancied the works on Jackie and John F. Kennedy, but the highlight for me was when my niece took a hold of my hand and told me she loved me so much because I'm perfect. I think it is safe to say that we had some fun together and are both looking forward to doing something together again. Unfortunately, Tess doesn't live near me so our supplemental activities won't be entirely regular (the other nieces are only 1 so I am going to give them a couple more years before inflicting the arts on them), but it is a start that I'm rather pleased with. Sorry no pictures. I had a temporary brain freeze over Thanksgiving and hardly took any photos at all.

**small note on the museum: it was surprisingly nice and had a decent collection--I am a fan of dutch artists and was pleased to find several in the regular collection. My one real complaint is that the shop was complete rubbish. We went in hoping to find a nice Warhol postcard to remember our outing by, but there were no post cards of the exhibit at all and only 2 or 3 of the regular exhibit. Very disappointing.