I was working on homework with my second grader and puzzling through some addition problems. See, they add big numbers differently then when I was a kid. No more carrying the one and such. Now they add the hundreds, add the tens, add the ones. Put them together, then you’re done. Or something like that.

Actually, I kind of like the system, it’s just a little foreign after thirty odd years of doing it another way. The thing is, at a class meeting with the teacher earlier this year, she explained the whole thing to the parents. It was a sort of warning of what to expect. I thought it was interesting. A funny Mom sitting next to me commented that she’d struggled with it when her older daughter went through second grade – FINALLY it made sense. We chuckled.

Then the bus driver Mom chimed in. She’s grizzled and weird and very trailer-y. You know what I mean, don’t even pretend you don’t. I know she is a bus driver because she tells me and everyone else at every opportunity. And there’s nothing wrong with that, until she goes into her rant about how her company is good and the drivers are well trained (she drives for a school district about 35 minutes south of us) while the company our district uses employs untrained idiots.

She goes on about how she doesn’t like letting her son ride the bus to school because the drivers don’;t know what they are doing and are piloting “death traps.” Did I mention that I thought she was the kid’s grandmother until she mentioned that she was all alone. The boy’s father is “long gone” and Granny (presumably her own mother) is around, but she can’t be doin’ no driving.

This is the woman who got into a shouting match with the principal when the school requested her son be checked by a doctor for H1N1 when he’d been in and out (mostly out) of school for three weeks with flu-like symptoms. Okay, I know the H1N1 hysteria was irritating, but even I thought it was reasonable for the school to demand a note from the kid’s doctor that it had been considered. I mean, without such confirmation, how would they even know that bus Mom is taking him to the doctor. Seriously, the kid was sick for a month. I mean…what the hell?

Look, I’m not saying people with advanced degrees are better or something. Sure, a GED might help, but…okay, that was mean. Jobs in IT or banking or education or whatever do not make you any smarter or more well-rounded, or even more hygienically sound. I know that. Nevertheless, when the teacher is explaining how they now teach math to kids, a new system developed by educators to be more useful and sensible for youngsters, I don’t think you should argue with her.

And when she explains that she will be teaching this method in school, but if the child already knows another way and uses it to get correct answers, she will accept it, I don’t think this is either necessary or appropriate as a response:

“So if my kid does it the right way, not your way, you’re not going to give him an F?”