Part fifth, school

On Sun­day, dad (my son-in-law) was busy with his son by writ­ing an essay about Rus­sia. The chil­dren were giv­en a whole Tal­mud with ques­tions and told to choose a coun­try. The grand­son chose Rus­sia, of course.

The ques­tions were not easy for the first grade: what con­ti­nent the coun­try is on; what’s the lan­guage, polit­i­cal sys­tem; who is the leader; what is the pop­u­la­tion, reli­gion; what does the coun­try pro­duce; what does it import and export, flo­ra and fau­na, cul­ture and tra­di­tions, in oth­er words, the entire Wikipedia table of con­tents. We were just shocked by these ques­tions. The child has stud­ied only for three months and still does not even know the half of the mean­ing of these words . I felt sor­ry for my grand­son and his dad. It was nec­es­sary to explain all these words, but the only thing Mark could think of was that he plays on his iPad on the week­ends. They com­plet­ed the “project” at the end (that’s what they call it), but the boy got the iPad tak­en away for an indef­i­nite peri­od. Dad told him that he would let him play when he for­get about the iPad’s exis­tence, so now when I recall the iPad, the young­ster says to me: “Grand­ma, be qui­et, don’t say that word!” 😁

Basis

The school my grand­son goes to is called Basis. Basis is a char­ter school (free), with its own pro­gram. They are con­sid­ered in Amer­i­ca as one of the strongest tech­ni­cal schools. There are many such schools in Ari­zona and sev­er­al oth­er states. Basis stu­dents are con­sid­ered strong, but all these schools usu­al­ly start­ed with mid­dle school, i.e. from the fifth grade. This is the first school in Phoenix since first grade. I think that they have not yet adjust­ed the study­ing pro­gram with such young children.

The school is far from their area of res­i­dence, so the grand­son rides a bus, but not a school one, it’s spe­cial­ly orga­nized by one par­ent (this is her busi­ness). The bus makes sev­er­al stops, to which par­ents dri­ve up and pick up the chil­dren. It costs $270 per month, but if you take into account the time for the road, gas and mis­align­ment with pick up time and work­ing hours, then you have to put up with payment.

The sub­jects in the first grade are math, human­i­ties (includ­ing read­ing, writ­ing, sci­ence), Man­darin, music, engi­neer­ing, art, and PE 5 times a week. They study five days a week. Dad is respon­si­ble for the human­i­ties and math­e­mat­ics, and mom is respon­si­ble for Man­darin. I only par­tic­i­pate in the CMan­darin assign­ment when they are asked to draw char­ac­ters, or if I need to check the exam­ples that he solved in the class. For the rest, I don’t have enough eng­lish knowl­edge to even read the assignment.

The edu­ca­tion pro­gram sur­pris­es me a lit­tle. They use only pen­cils and detached sheets for all sub­jects, there are nei­ther note­books nor text­books. They get assign­ment sheets, they com­plete them right away and then turn it in. They don’t both­er about any writ­ing beau­ty here. They just erase any mis­takes with elas­tic band. There are elec­tric pen­cil sharp­en­ers at the every school cor­ri­dor and class­room. Progress results in all sub­jects are summed up at the end of the week as a per­cent­age. 100 – 90% is an “A” grade. “B” is below 90 to 80%. Below 80 to 70% — “C”. “D” is from 70 to 60%, but 50% and below is “F”, fail­ure. The score varies great­ly in per­cent­ages, if you get 100% for one assign­ment, and for­got to pass the sec­ond one or mis­placed it (which some­times hap­pens with kids), then you get 50% as a week’s final grade.

There are no class meet­ings where some­one is scold­ed and some­one is praised in the pres­ence of all parents.

You can’t just go to school to meet and talk with the teacher, you have to arrange a meet­ing by e‑mail. There are no class meet­ings where some­one is scold­ed and some­one is praised in the pres­ence of all the par­ents. Every­thing is dis­cussed face to face, in per­son or by emails.

On Novem­ber 21, when my grand­son brought his “project” about Rus­sia, my daugh­ter came home from work, and the human­i­ties teacher sent an email to all par­ents thank­ing them for help­ing their chil­dren to write such a dif­fi­cult work. But she returned some projects because they felt to be writ­ten more by par­ents then chil­dren. We cau­tious­ly opened the boy’s brief­case when he returned from school. We were afraid to get the project for revi­sion, but every­thing worked out 😁. The school got a small vaca­tion start­ed Novem­ber 25, before Thanks­giv­ing and until Decem­ber 1.

Homework

There is a lot of home­work in Basis. Each kid has a school jour­nal, sim­i­lar to ours but much big­ger, they write down assign­ments and vocab­u­lary they must learn in a week. Then their home­work is eval­u­at­ed and they get per­cent­ages depend­ing on errors they’ve got. Usu­al­ly on Mon­day math­e­mat­ics and human­i­ties teach­ers dis­trib­ute a bunch of 20 – 25 sheets let­ter size with assign­ments (for each sub­ject) where kids must enter the answers. (A small cor­rec­tion: it looks like there are text­books, but they are used only at school and these home­work assign­ments are copies from these textbooks).

Return­ing date is writ­ten on a back of the page, usu­al­ly it’s the next Mon­day, so every day they have to com­plete 3 – 5 sheets in math­e­mat­ics and the same num­ber in human­i­ties. The grade per­cent­age is imme­di­ate­ly reduced if it hand­ed over not on time. They can get a sum­mer class if the final grade is bad. If the kid has bad grades in sev­er­al sub­jects, he can stay for the sec­ond year, end­ed up by tak­ing tutors or swap­ping schools. Schools vary in gen­er­al in terms of edu­ca­tion lev­el, some of them has no home­work at all.

By the way, the first Basis school was found­ed by a East­ern Euro­pean woman and her Amer­i­can hus­band, their goal was to raise the lev­el of edu­ca­tion in the coun­try. Of course, Basis is hard to study in, and there is a big per­cent­age of Indi­an, Asian and Russ­ian chil­dren. Many Amer­i­cans have already trans­ferred their kids to oth­er schools because they find Basis very dif­fi­cult. My daugh­ter says that Amer­i­cans are very fond of prais­ing their chil­dren and not over­load them much, but only Indi­ans, Asians and us: — “Study, study, study!”. Maybe this is because many Amer­i­cans already have a finan­cial foun­da­tion, and those who “moved in” have to achieve every­thing by their own.

Man­darin is a manda­to­ry sub­ject for my grand­son five times a week, and he’s get home­work only on Wednes­days, but I know that not all schools teach Man­darin. It is believed that the Chi­nese lan­guage improves the oth­er hemi­sphere of the brain, so they began to focus on it.