“Home School”

Dear Friend,

Spring break provided students a period of profound introspection. A long overdue opportunity to reflect on the many positives of their respective school districts. Young scholars once prone to feigning illness in an attempt to stay home would now happily attend with any alignment. Mary is counted among those ready to go back and never complain again.

Mary’s home school masters are cruel. Corporal punishment, once the backbone of all education, has been re-instituted. Early results are promising. If nothing else, there will be no fear of wrong answers when back in the soft system provided by the county. The shame and laughter of her cohort will be a welcomed reprieve from the belt.

COVID-19 dominates the curriculum just as it does news cycles. History lessons are incorporated into hand washing. We scrub and scrub to “Ring-a-round the Rosie” and discuss the song’s tenuous Bubonic Plague origins and the parallels to today. This continues into music class as we compose modern nursery rhymes – “Circling the COVID…Six feet or expose-ed…”

Geography class is spent observing the spread of the disease around the globe, while math explains exponential growth. Social studies covers federal versus state authorities, civic responsibility, and the implicit bargain between a government and the governed in terms of voluntary abdication of universal rights in a time of crisis. We’re also learning official state birds.

Home Economics’ primary focus is on baking. But things that only I like, so as to limit the amount of sharing required. There is a secondary economic component on budgeting. I require Mary to purchase the cookies we make with an allowance that was reduced 50 percent in these uncertain times. We must all make sacrifices.

Art class provides a creative outlet and adequate time to produce and repair the surprising amount of dunce caps required for petulance. The caps come in a variety of shapes, colors, and materials. Mary’s favorite as she cries in the corner have glitter and streamers.

I missed my calling as an 1800’s boarding school headmaster,

J.S. Alvin

P.S. The intensive instruction provided to Mary leaves us no time or patience to nurture Baby James. We’ll leave his formal education to nature and hope for the best.