I apologize in advance for anyone reading this who in fact sends their children to and likes the Arizona public schools. I would just jump off this boat right now.
So, in Primary on Sunday (I am the music chorister) I thought it would be fun to teach the kids the song "Children All Over the World" All you Mormons out there know it.
"All over the world at the end of day
Heav'nly Fathers children kneel down to pray
Each saying thank you in his own special way
Saying thank you, thank you in his own special way"
"Gracias, Malo, Wir danken dir
All over the world tender voices hear.
Some say Tak, others Merci,
kansha shimasu, we thank thee"
I thought it would be a fun game to have pictures of the countries flags and have the kids guess which country the flag belonged to, with some additional hints to help of course.
One flaw to this game. It had completely escaped my mind that my Primary is filled with stupid Arizona public schooled kids. 9-12 year olds, what grade is that? 4-6 grade!
(oh did I mention the word for Thank you in the countries language was written on top of the flag) Another mention, I know these kids well, I know when they are being smart asses, these guesses were solid.
First flag
SPAIN
HOLA
...these were the guesses
1. Georgia
2. California
3. Africa
4. Australia
5. Colorado
6.Hawaii
7. Washington DC
At this point I had to stop them. I had already hinted to them that Spanish is spoken in this country, this country is famous for Bullfighting, and this country is in Europe.
I also informed them they had yet to this point actually named a.......
COUNTRY!!!!!
Then my primary kids, of which 5 out of 7 are Mexican (spanish spoken in the home), proceed to ask me what "HOLA" (they pronounced it Holla) meant. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
For the second, third, and fourth countries they might have accidentally guessed an actual country for one of those, not the correct one, but at least a country and not a city, state or Continent.
Okay the 5th country
MERCI
Your guess didn't happen to be Utah did it?
Because their guess was! Oh, and "The Middle East, they speak the "Mercy" language there don't they?"
Maybe you guessed Alaska? They did!
The best guess was Germany, since it was actually a country, that's a lot to say considering we had already seen, talked about and learned the word for Thank you in German about 5 minutes prior.
This primary makes me insane. Ive actually walked out on them before. 5 minutes into Singing time, I grabbed my bag, collected my children from their junior primary classrooms and went home. No one has had the courage to ask or confront me about that. Too bad.
What are our Arizona public school doing for 7 hours a day??? Apparently not Geography. I'm not saying these kids need to memorize all the countries names and locations (although why not?) but at least know the difference between a state, a city and a continent!
What gets me is these kids are actually smart kids, smart kids who have never been challenged a day in their lives. They are given mediocre work to complete with mediocre standards placed in front of them just to be sure that one kid who is on the lower end of the scale makes it into their sadly lowered box of standards. We are not doing these kids any favors by giving them work below their ability. Wake up, our school system has hardly changed in almost 200 years. It was established to teach the bare minimum to produce blue collar workers and its doing that same thing today.
I will get off my soapbox now, reluctantly!
Almost done...parents are the only vehicle strong enough to change this flawed school system but if you are blindly following and not questioning then change will never happen.
And one more thing...
LONDON IS NOT A COUNTRY!!!
