DADWAGON

My son, as is perhaps rather common, is having a Blue’s Clues moment. Of late, a blue animated dog and a guy in a striped rugby shirt have shunted to the dustbins of history (and my living room) both Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine. Fine by me.

One rather interesting aspect of this is that I happen to know Steve, Blue the dog’s friend (dare I say Lord and master?), through a mutual friend. He’s a swell guy, and only moderately in the Bob Saget mode of former-child-programming-star. To date I haven’t mentioned to him that JP is a devoted fan, and I haven’t mentioned to JP that I have access to the MAN HIMSELF.

This weekend, though, Steve is hosting a birthday party for the child of our mutual friend, and JP and I are invited. I’m curious to see JP’s reaction: will he recognize Steve? Will he get the idea that this guy whose house he is destroying is the very same one he watches (and learns!) from on television? It becomes a question of development. Does his present level of sophistication include non-threatening television personalities jumping out from the screen and offering him cake? We’ll see.

I also am considering the impact this will have on Steve, who I don’t know all that well but I do really like. Let’s say JP goes ape shit and follows him around the house all day. Is that rude of me to let happen? Or has Steve, given his level of fameishness, gotten used to this just this sort of treatment?

Time will tell.

Here’s one lucky thing: a couple of weeks ago JP announced that for Halloween he wanted to dress up as Blue, and I bought him a costume online. Fortunately, given the present turn of events (this is a Halloween-themed, dress-up birthday party), the costume was too small, and he changed his mind to stormtrooper.

I went to the season’s first New York Public Schools Gifted and Talented information session on Monday night. Whatever I was supposed to get out of the meeting, I came away with this: the K-5 Gifted and Talented program seems like an almost complete sham, but I might still try to get my daughter into it.

Several hundred parents and a handful of coughing kids filled the downstairs auditorium at Brandeis High School for almost two hours. As theater, it was atrocious: a starched woman with librarian glasses and an Edwardian collar reading the Gifted and Talented program’s website–verbatim at times–to a simultaneously bored and anxious crowd (the last open house I went to–for pre-K–was just as stiffly presented).

But it wasn’t the lack of entertainment value that angered me about last night. It was that the speakers could make no case for why Gifted and Talented is better than general education. The Gifted and Talented program seems to be defined only by its barriers to entry: you must score in the 90th percentile or higher to get into a district-wide program, and 97th percentile or higher to get into a citywide program. The test is, for a four-year-old, an alien battery of exams that lasts up to 90 minutes, administered by a stranger without a parent in the room. They are the booklet-based OLSAT (which although cheaper to administer, is far less natural than the observation-based Stanford-Binet test that NYC used to use) and the Bracken School Readiness Assessment.

Not only that, but they made it quite clear that there were no extra resources available to G&T classrooms, and that class size would, if anything, be even larger. “People tend to think that Gifted and Talented classes are smaller,” she said. “Au contraire.” (you can tell she’s gifted coz she speaks French!) Turns out the Teachers Union specifically allows for gifted classes to be larger than general education classes.

Nor could she point to any broad curriculum differences between general education and gifted and talented. That all depends on the teacher, she said, and besides, all levels are guided by the same statewide standards (blech).

She did announce that if we had concerns with the quality of our kid’s gifted and talented instruction, we should meet with the teacher. If a few meetings didn’t resolve the issue, then we could go up the chain. Actually, what she said was, “If after a few meetings you are still not satisfied, you may request a three-way.”

A three-way with the teacher isn’t really what I had in mind, but OK: I’m sure it’s backed by the latest research.

But seriously: what is K-5 Gifted and Talented about, then? If they have no extra funding, (potentially) larger class sizes, and are defined only by the fact that the students did well on this odd little exam, then the only people the programs really serves are the parents. It’s the parents who are such vain little strivers that they would get all excited about putting their child through a testing process to get them into a program with such illusory benefits.

Viewed more dimly, G&T is most successful at allowing well-heeled parents to feel good about their choice to send their children to public schools. Gifted & Talented means they won’t have to put darling Jayden in the unwashed hordes in general education.

Meanwhile, that’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because G&T does take many of the kids of the parents who care enough about the richness of their children’s kindergarten experience to go through the test  and segregate them out of regular classrooms. It diminishes the diversity, on many levels, in both sides of the school. And to that end, it’s no less dangerous than private schools are to the presumed mission of public education in this country: free and equal education for all.

And yet.

I think I will sign my daughter up for the test. This makes me a rank hypocrite in a lot of ways. Yes, I’m curious how she’ll do at concentrating for that long (it could go either way), but I don’t need that test to tell me that I have a bright and curious child. Nor would I get too excited if she didn’t pass, because I think this OLSAT is abitrary and incredibly narrow.

But if she scores well, I also think I might enroll her in Gifted and Talented, if the schools look good. And here’s the thing: I don’t even  really know why. If I can shirk my own responsibility here for a moment, let me blame society: Like a lot of modern parents, I am strangely compelled by the idea that I should be lifting up my kids through my own effort, industriousness, and cleverness. Even when it’s just a nameplate, an empty signifier, like a Gifted Kindergarten class. We all want to be “good” parents, and good parents get their kids into Gifted and Talent. God help us all.

Once again, my quest for insight into the lives of modern fathers has led me halfway across the globe, to Chengdu, China, where I’ve been engaged in up-close observation of diaper-changing techniques, the ratio of toddlers-to-chain-smokers in area bars, and the price tags on Dong Feng brand attack strollers. Also, I’ve been eating a ton of insanely spicy food.

Sadly, however, I don’t have all that much to report about Chinese parenthood (and childhood) that will surprise you. Yes, little kids really do wear those split trousers until they’re potty-trained. Yes, the kids are antarctically bundled up against the deathly cold 68-degree weather. Yes, children respect their parents absolutely, staying close to home when asked and fearing their ultimate judgment.

Nor will it surprise you, perhaps, to learn that stay-at-home dads are a non-phenomenon here. No one I’ve met, young or old, male or female, considered it a possibility. Even my translator, a young woman with excellent job prospects and a cunning independent streak, expects to marry a guy who will make more money than her and, on some level, take care of her while she tends the kids (and works a good job, too).

Individual SAHDs may exist, but they’re far from gaining mainstream acceptance. A story in the People’s Daily from a few years back illuminates the general attitude with typical bluntness:

Sociologists have found the full-time househusband emerges in three main situations.

Firstly, if the wife is ambitious, well-paid and has good job prospects, while her husband is paid poorly and has no job prospects, it makes economic sense for the female to become the main income earner for the household. Secondly, if the wife is tired of household chores and eager to work outside the home, her husband may forfeit his job for her sake. Thirdly, if the husband can do his work at home, he may take this option as it allows him more time to take care of the family.

On the plus side, they have a great business institution here, the nongjiale. Literally translated as a “happy farmer’s house,” nongjiale are country restaurants where families while away Sundays eating good food, playing mahjongg, and letting their children run absolutely wild in the open air. Kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese with twice-cooked pork, chili oil, and cigarettes.

The one parenting issue that comes up frequently, however, is the one-child policy—mainly because I keep forgetting that it exists and that none of the people I’m meeting have siblings. Actually, to put it in such absolute terms is wrong. Some people have siblings, because of where they live or who they are, and the policy itself allows some flexibility: A man and woman who are themselves only children are allowed to have two kids. How neat!

But still, my acquaintances here have definitely romanticized the idea of siblings. They talk about how great it would be to have an older brother or younger sister, without really understanding what intra-family dynamics are like. Not that they’re necessarily bad—just fraught and messy, no matter which country you live in.

Finally, if you happen to be watching Sichuan TV in the next few days, keep an eye out for the laowai with a high level of chili tolerance. And remember that he is paid poorly and has no job prospects.