School has started ( deflated sigh. . .)

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The red light haze of the monsoon season settles into the dusk sky as I walk through the neighborhood and even so, I find my head bowing under my hat to hide from the sun. The sensation is different this year. Last summer, I could feel flames on the breeze lick my skin as I passed through the heat waves that wavered from the concrete. Ritual rolled through my head and my feet kept time: iron, pearl, kala...

The Faery Godmother Oddlings still sit on my desk bald as babies wishing for hair. It's been a bit of a looper to get back into stride for the school cycle of the year. Most parents jump up and down for joy when school starts, I guess. I am not one of them. There are things about the educational system that disturb me including the fact that several times a couple of school authorities told me it was their job to take care of my children and that I was a part of their team. My response of course, was predictable to any one who knows me: two thousand pounds of very angry dragon landing on your head.

Common core is something that I have concerns about as well. Not for the common core itself, I can see why it would be very attractive to teachers at first blush. However I see nothing in there that will reach the lofty goals they are trying to set for our children. You can change standards all you want, but if you do not have a curriculum to attain the standards, all is for not! All that will change is the failure rate, in the completely opposite direction of where we wish to be. This will prompt our beloved puppets in puppet world to have a coronary and mess things up even further by introducing the patriot act of education. This is where we head into very dangerous territory and the insanity begins. Please remember the definition of insanity that I am using is one we are familiar with: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

So, as you can see, I am never really thrilled about sending my children to school and having to deprogram out the social bullshit and underhanded information mining done by a few teachers: example???? OK, I have one that has has repeated in two different generations. While my sister was in high school, she received a questionnaire from her teacher and asked her students to fill them out and return them. The problem was the questions were deeply personal, not just invasive to the students' personal life, but the whole family's personal dynamic. ON top of that, she was told to not tell her parents about this questionnaire. I saw that again in my daughter's class, this year. It wasn't even a frakking week in. . . just like the last time we saw this sort of questionnaire.  And just like the last time, she was advised not to show this to her parents. Good thing she has her head on right.  There are other things of course, like the biggest bullies in the schoolyard seem to be some of the adults. Seems they just want the no bullying thing in place to look good. Either that or they just don't like competition.

I don't like this. I have been told over and over that this sort of thing doesn't happen in spite of the hard evidence. I must be one hell of a witch to manifest proof like that out of thin air from my own personal delusion. Watch out! you never know what else I am capable of.

Witches are owls. That is all...