Too poor to start a school

But ranting is cheap.

Tomorrow I troop to Border's, with a (softly) screaming horde of 4th and 5th graders. What a perverse world: their best book access consists of a highly mediocre chain on bankruptcy's edge.

I love this age group, as they well know. The 6th-8th grade crowd, on the other hand, presently view me askance. Ain't no stink-eye like junior high. And who could blame them? Their parents are happy, their teachers are happy. Cue Ms. Bfstplk and her dark cloud to every week hector and nag, denigrate and disturb.

-- What is the posted word of the day? Look!
-- Have you talked with your parents about high school?
-- You won't test into a good college without a good high school education.
-- Challenge yourself, because your school won't.
-- Good grades don't mean that you were taught the requisite content.
-- You need to read 1984.
-- Show me Haiti on the map.
-- Comfort reading contains no SAT words.
-- You can't buy a Wii on a McDonald's wage.

It's difficult to bask in pleasure-reading, when I am terrified for them. The high-school option in their suburb is a cesspool. If they moved to Chicago, they could qualify for genuinely-fine selective-admission public schools. Of course, such admissions are predicated upon 7th grade ISAT scores, and oy the competition: kids whose elementary schools had 12,000 books, who attended summer enrichment, who heard SAT words in the crib.

And my kids?

ITEM: The following is an actual vocabulary list assigned to the honors 7th grade English class: behavior/maintain/display/clean/freight/escape/season/chimpanzee/
receive/achieve/velocity/migrate/bright/reply/prize/playwright/odor/forfeit/phase/grateful. This is the challenge posed to one of my most fanatical and fluent readers, who in fourth grade was writing her own stories, with titles like "Cerulean v. Pink."

ITEM: The Bluford Series is a loathsome product, consisting of violent, tawdry urban stories. The publisher markets the books - written at a 5th-6th grade level - for reluctant readers. A good 6th grade reader requested that I purchase some "high school" books, and then identified this series. Because that is what the high schools hand out.

The angry kids are awake, but risk school sanctions and the criminal justice system. (The brightest kid in Harvey gets threatened with detention twice a day, I think.) The happy kids don't lead with their chins, but will flush dreamily down the drain. The immigrant parents don't understand how to spot and cross the unmarked borders.

Hell.