Down With the PTA

My parents were never in the PTA at Palmer Lake Elementary School. I'm sure the Korean/English language barrier was the biggest factor in their absence, or perhaps they found the PTA superfluous. I don't know what was discussed at the meetings and why these meetings took place in the first place. Since my adult life seems normal enough, I'll assume that it was no big loss that my parents weren't involved, and I'll also assume that it means my parents weren't crazy after seeing a lot of crazy parents in the news throwing tantrums about their kids' grades.

I'd think that the idea of a PTA is to parents know what's going on at school, what's expected of the kids, ways they can help, etc. That sounds useful enough, but I've realized that no matter how much "guidance" the PTA will give me, I will be a terrible parent at helping my kid excel at school. It won't be for a lack of trying, but artsy, sarcastic Ryan should not help his kids with anything outside of math.

I was in Oregon a couple of weeks ago to see my nieces and school had just started for them. My niece, Jamie (9 years old), came home and started doing a work sheet that her teacher had given her. It was a questionnaire on one sade and it was a table on the other side where she was supposed to put various subjects/tasks in three categories: like a lot, am okay with, don't like, or something in that nature. I sat at the table with her while she worked on the worksheet, intrigued, since I usually see my nieces during holidays or summer, therefore they never have any school work to worry about. So this was something new for their uncle to experience.

As far as the questionaire went, a lot of her answers were pretty stock for a 9 year-old. Person you'd like to meet: Selena Gomez (Disney Channel actress), place you'd like to visit: Florida (Disney World), etc. It surprised me that she was skipping a lot of the questions. To me, these weren't necessarily things that required a lot of thought. She wrote "I'd like to be a rich person" for the question of "What do you want be when you grow up?" and this angered my sister. My sister told her to write something like "you want to be a pet doctor", but my niece refused. I offered a bunch of more interesting options like "you want to be the head of FEMA, but you're going to do a good job", but those suggestions fell on deaf ears.

Honestly, I had no problem with my niece's answer. It's not admirable, but it's honest. It's not like she wrote "marry a rich guy", or something less than noble. My sister was telling her to lie and this made me wonder about the ethics of being a parent. I understood my sister's case because you don't want your kid to look like they have a lack of morals, but at the same time, ordering your kid to lie on homework is pretty hypocritic. Of course, as the hip 26 year old uncle, I'm merely there to play Wii games with the kids, buy them ice cream, and threaten to make the kids smell my armpits, these more important decisions are not part of my job description, though I highly doubt that I will force my kids to lie on their homework.

Not that I'm callin my sister a bad parent. She's trying to prevent her child from getting on the teacher's crap list. She's involved, she's helping, and she's trying to guide her kid towards a more fruitful goal than just being rich. It's all commendable, and perhaps it's what the PTA preaches to my sister. I just wonder if teachers can read through these answers and pin down the kids who are being fed answers from their parents. At least when I have kids, the teachers won't have any doubt, because they'll see the answer "I want to be the head of FEMA."