Journal of a Sabbatical

September 9, 1999

first things first

Today's Reading: none

Andrea's homework tonight is to copy over her version of a poem called "First Things First" in her best writing. Lizzy has to do a bunch of frequency tables and line plots for math as well as look up some vocabulary words for social studies.

As Lizzy labors over drawing the frequency tables:

Lizzy: "Did you do this?"
AJ: "Umm, yeah, it was my job."
Lizzy: "Did you have to draw all these lines and stuff?"

AJ: "I used Excel."

I try to explain the charts and graphs I had to make showing declining bug rates (whether they were declining or not), and other thrilling statistics so she can see that grownup people actually use math, but she's more worried about how her lines look and whether the chart needs to have a title (how else are you going to know what it's the frequency of?).

Andrea has learned to write her name in cursive,which she promises to show me when she has finished copying over "First Things First". This business about "best writing" is proving troublesome. Andrea is getting tired of copying this poem over again. And the word first appears too many times. She's bored with it. I tell her, keeping a straight and confident face the whole time, "Just do it and then it'll be done. The longer you draw it out, the more boring it is." Besides that, I want to see her name written in cursive. She wants to watch TV. I muster my best adult authority voice for "Not until your homework is done.

Lizzy is also taking Latin this year. Apparently Groton requires it in 6th grade. Partly I am happy they treat it as a real subject instead of an extracurricular activity which they did in middle and high school in Newton when I was a kid. (I went to Catholic school, so had Latin, but my friends in the public school could only take it as an extracurricular activity before school at 7:30 AM). Latin is enormously helpful in decoding English words and in learning the Romance languages. Nancy pointed out to me that having had Latin gives one a huge advantage in the verbal section of the SATs because you can figure out unfamiliar words from their roots and take an educated guess.

Lizzy: "Do I need to know Latin to be a teacher?"
AJ: "Umm, if you want to be a Latin teacher I suppose."
Lizzy: "What else is it good for?"
AJ: "... if you're a botanist it's helpful..." as AJ fumbles for a credible answer.

How do I explain that a little Latin (not to mention Greek, and why not through in some Old Norse) goes a long way toward high SAT scores?

One of the social studies vocabulary words is cartographer. Lizzy looks it up in the unabridged dictionary and can't find it. She tells me there's nothing between carbonic acid and cat. Hunh? I check it out and sure enough the dictionary is missing about 12 pages! I tell her a cartographer is a person who makes maps. She doesn't believe me. I guess I've lost credibility on the usefulness of Latin, so I'm not credible on social studies - even a word with Latin and Greek roots! She calls a friend to find out if that's the answer the teacher is looking for.

Kevin arrives home with pizza (are we allowed to eat pizza on a Thursday night? doesn't it have to be Friday) as Lizzy is working on her frequency tables:

Kevin: "What's your math homework?"
Lizzy: "Drawing frequency tables and line plots."
Kevin: "Sounds like you need Excel."

And Andrea finally shows me her name in cursive. I'm impressed. She's already master a skill I never did. She can write a lowercase r in cursive. Yes folks, now you know my secret, I cannot write a Palmer method lowercase r or an uppercase Q for that matter. Is that more embarrassing than admitting to liking sumo or thinking Henry Miller is an underrated writer?