Education occupies my attention again
because my middle son will enter seventh grade next month. The public schools
in Houston call their accelerated learning program Vanguard, and the first
assignment, to be completed by the first day of school, is to read two books: Rules by Cynthia Lord and Tears of a Tiger by Sharon M. Draper. Mind
you, these are assigned to kids who have already been judged "gifted." Both volumes might fairly
be described as “issue books.” Lord’s novel is about a twelve-year-old girl whose
younger brother is autistic. The Draper book involves a boy who kills his best
friend in a drunken-driving accident. Its final sentence: “The air was fragrant
with hope and possibility.” In other words, neither book was assigned because
of its literary worth, which is nearly non-existent. If the bright kids are expected to read stuff like this,
what are the dumb kids assigned? If you think I’m exaggerating the educational
worth of studying a small plot of earth, consider an early poem by Janet Lewis,
“Meadow Turf” (Poems Old and New 1918-1978):
“Goldenrod,
strawberry leaf, small
bristling
aster, all,
Loosestrife,
knife-bladed grasses,
lacing
their roots, lacing
The
life of the meadow into a deep embrace
Far
underground, and all their shoots,
wet
at the base
With
shining dew, dry-crested with sun,
Springing
out of a mould years old;
Leaves,
living and dead, whose stealing
Odors
on the cold bright air shed healing --
Oh,
heart, here is your healing, here among
The
fragrant living and dead.”
The wildflower we know as Johnny jump up, Viola tricolor, is also called heart’s
ease.
2 comments:
When I entered seventh grade a lifetime ago in 1959, there were no summer readings assigned, no students formally identified as gifted readers. I was not a serious reader, but would regularly buy the Classic Illustrated Comics versions of great novels, along the other comic books and a pack of baseball cards that included a 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 slab of bubble gum.
TJG
This entry recalled to a friend, who is an art historian, Durer's watercolor "The Great Piece of Turf" (1503). The plants that Durer painted are cock's-foot, creeping bent, smooth meadow-grass, daisy, dandelion, germander speedwell, greater plantain, hound's tongue and yarrow. These are not those of Janet Lewis's "Meadow Turf," which is a record of the growths that might be found in a Northern Michigan meadow. However, in both pieces of turf the plants might be found "lacing their roots, lacing / The life of the meadow into a deep embrace."
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