Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for October 11, 2015

Relax, Calvin, there are also good moments.

I was just thinking the same thing, 50 years later. People can be so cruel to each other.

If he thinks his days are bad now, wait until he grows up and gets a job. I mean, I swear I’ve seen my boss facepalm in exactly the same manner as Miss Wormwood whenever I turn in a bit of legal writing that she hates!

Keep an innocent smile on your face; it helps to disarm people. People do have an inborn urge to smile back.

Child-friendly? Ignorance is bliss!

I used to be a people person but people ruined that for me!

As a former teacher, I’ll state that public schools in this country, especially since NCLB, are soul crushing institutions that primarily exist to squelch individuality and prepare students to become worker-bots. I went into teaching to teach kids to become critical thinkers. This country desperately and obviously needs more critical thinkers. I left teaching because I was not allowed to teach critical thinking. It was all about test prep. At least my sons will be critical thinkers.

I briefly drove a school bus for a small rural school district, less than 200 students. The regular driver, a teacher, wrote one little girl up every day for mis-behaving. The second grader was made to sit across from the driver, in the kida who have to be watched seat. The other teachers complained about this kid, too. She was not a lovely child and didn’t seem to knuckle under and was “smart mouthed”, read outspoken.So one day I thanked her for watching and entertaining one of our “special needs students”. I told her I was proud of her and was glad she rode my bus. The smile on this kids face was huge. I complimented her on something every time I drove her bus.Trouble maker? Unruly? Horrible kid? No way. It was a delight to see the smile on this kids face when she saw I was driving her bus. She told me about things in her life that others were not aware of. She had a good home life. Her Dad helped her raise show rabbits. All her problems at school were caused by teachers. You tell a kid often enough that she is a horrible person and you get a horrible person. Her family moved away, but the last I heard of her, she l turned out fine. Naaww, you don’t wanna know how some of the teachers and their perfect kids turned out. Just a note about the teachers, the good ones generally didn’t stay but a year or two. There were three excellent teachers, those permanent kinds of teachers who seemed to be at a school forever. They tried, and did have some successes. But they were required to teach to the school mandated test.

We home schooled our daughter. She turned out fine. Wonderful in fact. Master’s, two lovely and bright kids, and a good life. May not work for everyone, but if it’s an option…..

More and more evidence for home schooling. My daughter had a medical issue that forced her to be home schooled for a year while she recovered. She loved it! She learned what she had to for tests, but also was allowed to learn things she had an interest in. She was very upset when she had to rejoin the mainstream the following year. I feel sorry for the kids today….no more music, art, band, orchestra….all things we had as students in the 60s and 70s. And now they don’t even want to teach cursive? What the hell ARE they teaching there? The citizens of tomorrow are receiving a substandard education ….it’s only a matter of a few more decades and we will fall into 3rd world country status. I’ll be dead, but I worry about my grandchildren who are elementary school age now and what is in store for them. The Finns and some other European countries have it right. So do many Asian countries. Can’t people see what’s happening?

Most teachers like the sheep. The kid that stands out is a troublemaker. If he is bored, doesn’t get it, or is too smart, it makes the teacher look bad – as it should.

To add to what I just wrote….I do not understand why they have cut music and art (not sure about gym). My stepdaughter is autistic and was not doing well in school, either, until…low and behold…we bought her a piano and she took lessons. Suddenly, it was like a key unlocking her mind. She soon began getting As (instead of Cs) in school and even discovered she had a great talent in art. None of these things would have come to fruition without the experience of music. It took that to unlock a different part of her brain that was not accessible earlier. She also came out of her shell a little more and now as a young adult, is able to enter the mainstream working world, albeit in a capacity where she doesn’t work with a group/team. Children like this have no chance in this new school environment.

My wife and I turned out fine, our two daughters and their husbands turned out fine, and the two grandchildren who are in school (one in high school and the other in middle school) are doing just fine… all in the US public school systems!

A Day in the School Life of Calvin.

xxx

I don’t get your point.

Name calling are for nabobs and barrel scrapings. Let it end.Night, “nabob” and “barrel scrapings” are names. In your inimitable English, you used them when referencing LeadingEdge and DOSQueen, in particular, and name-callers in general. Calling an accused name-caller a name is being a name-caller. You nabob, you barrel scraping. :-)

Not the croutons, Gretel. Anything but the croutons.

It’s straw to clutch at!!

……and stay six years old, Calvin.

Life is life Calvin.

Calvin’s good-/bad-day count in any given school year:0 good ones; ~157 bad ones!During the calendar year, however, things are different:Again, 0 good ones; but 365 bad ones (366, if it’s a leap year!).Boy, talk about a perfect O-fer record! Kind of reminds me of Charlie Brown’s All-Stars!

Perhaps that is why the computer and the internet are so popular!

1) They didn’t need to be admonished!2) I don’t understand the “delete” sentence.3) I merely called you what you called them. :-)

Typical life of an ADHD kid.

Unfortunately, we let our “real life” take place too much indoors.