School

Today is Isa’s first day of school.

This, by no means, was a small fete.

She is going to Bayard – a prep school nearby that our cousin went to, and is very nice and seemingly in the league of better schools for Bs As. But then, what do I know? I guess they could be teaching her the Napoleonic Code and advocating fascist doctrine surreptitiously, but I don’t think so….

Most importantly, though, she is very proud of herself, and yesterday was so excited about the school uniform that after she tried it on at the store, she didn’t want to take it off. (Yes, she wears a school uniform. More on that later.)

So the search for a school in many respects became like the search for the Holy Grail. And in saying that, I admit I have seen the Da Vinci Code (movie, not the book - well, I've seen the book, but I've never picked it up) which I never intended on doing, but before I digress significantly onto a wholly different topic, I think I will just say that like the Holy Grail, the best school for Isa kept changing. Was it a kindergarten? Was it Ana’s school in Olivos? Was it her cousin’s school? Was it finding the direct descendant of Jesus Christ and hiring him (or her) as her tutor? Seemingly only Dan Brown would know….

Ana went to her cousin’s school so I’m not going to write about that. Originally we were going to look at two. The second was Ana’s alma mater (can elementary schools be alma maters?) I’m not going to dwell on why we decided not to go to Ana’s alma mater, but allow me to paint a picture.

Imagine a classroom the size of a large walk-in closet. A very large closet mind you, but still a closet. OK, that’s not fair – imagine a classroom the size of a ridiculously small room. So small you would have to move the tables every time you wanted to take out certain classroom toys. Now imagine classroom materials being toys so big you have to move the kids' tables to take them out. Now imagine far too many children for this small space so that you have to move the kids and their tables whenever you want to take out certain classroom toys. And by the way, toys? In class? So big you have to move the tables and the children to take them out?

Now imagine it’s snack time, and all the kids are eating bread and butter with juice or tea. TEA??? Yes, tea. Because I’m sure your 4 year old needs a little caffeine to get through class. After all, you have to keep moving his table around so you can take out the big toys for him (or her) to play with. (4 year-olds here do drink tea, coke, and even some coffee - though I have not seen that yet.)

Now while you are imagining the kids eating the bread and butter with tea, imagine one boy has found a toy small enough that he doesn’t have to move any tables or kids around to play with. No – he found this toy in his pants. And decided to take his pants and underwear off and stand at the table where other kids were eating their bread and butter and tea to play with his toy pretty much on the table. (For those of you who have not understood my subtlety, allow me some literary symbolism. “The boy felt free and liberated in the classroom in discovering his gender. He stroked the discovery while contemplating his deeper role in the universe.” Yeah – he had his wallabegong out on the table, and was using it for a toy.

Some people might think, oh well, not necessarily my kid, but I know of or have heard of kids taking their clothes off in public – it’s not so big a deal." And I agree, I don’t blame the kid – he’s just discovering intellectual curiosity for biology and gender roles in society. However, in this classroom that resembles a large walk-in closet, where the kids and the tables have to move so they can play with certain toys, there are 20 kids and 1 teacher and 1 assistant. This is not a city pre-occupied with ratios and statistics, but in DC when you pick a place for your pre-schooler you consider what the teacher to student ratio is to ensure your child gets enough personal attention to guarantee admission to Sidwell so that your child will go on to an Ivy League university, thus sucking all the money out of your various bank accounts and then do something foolish like take a year off and live in a foreign country to enjoy life rather then get caught up in the rat race. And you will be very upset that you paid all this money for your kid to goof off in a far away place while you are trying to rebuild your retirement plan. I mean, the gall of someone to just move to another country for a whole year without a job or a …. Ummmm – never mind.

So anyway, the teacher and her assistant had no idea that this kid had his wallabegong on the table and was using it for play dough for approximately 5 minutes. Now I know in Buenos Aires the locals tend to exaggerate. Things are never as close or as far as one says. More on that later. But in this case, it was 5 minutes. I know because for 5 minutes I was uncomfortably standing with my baby in my arms trying to ensure that my daughter was sufficiently distracted at her table by her bread, butter, and JUICE (hell no – she can’t have tea!) that she wasn’t curious about the other’s exploration into new territory.

So the teacher sends the little boy on an expedition to the bathroom with the assistant. Not 2 minutes later she offers me his chair as if it is not being used and there is no one returning to sit in that chair. Mind you, he was just sitting there naked. Yeah – I’m fine standing in the corner, but please tell me if you need me to move to take out the toys behind me.

The next school, Ana saw and really liked it. The last school was Bayard, and Ana went alone again (we learned that taking Isa to see the school is bad, because what if she likes it and we don’t? And how is she not going to like being with kids her age when she doesn’t have any friends her age yet? Oops.) Ana really liked this one, too. I really liked the stuff they sent home (hey – the other schools didn’t give us stuff!) so we went yesterday and talked to the teacher while Isa went to class. (And this class they teach things – and not how to play Shoots and Ladders.) I loved it, Ana loved it, and Isa really loved it.

Interesting aside. After we went to a café before going to get the uniform. While I was waiting for Ana and Isa, I was looking out the window watching people walk by. A 10-year old (or 9, or 11, or a 22 year old with stunted growth from all the people smoking around him) was walking down the sidewalk with a soccer ball and no school uniform. Since all the kids wear school uniforms (even public schools), I was curious what he was doing at noon out of uniform. He was dressed pretty scruffy, and while he waits for the light to change, puts the ball down and starts juggling. Then he flips the ball in the air behind him, over his head, and catches it on his foot smoothly. The 10 year old kid pulled a bicycle on the street corner waiting for the light to change. And that, my friends, is why Argentina will win the World Cup on July 9.

Now, as I mentioned all children wear school uniforms, so we went off to the store where the uniforms are sold. When Isa is in first grade she will wear the traditional plaid skirt, shirt, etc. that everyone instantly recognizes as a school-girl uniform. For now, she wears sweats with a shirt and the school logo. There’s also a smock, but the sweats are easier because she has no choice what to wear underneath, and I’m sure you can imagine how seriously Isa takes the morning ritual of deciding what to wear. (“But this shirt isn’t the right shade of pink – I want a dark pink shirt and light pink pants today.”)

Pop culture will occasionally depict women in school girl uniforms (key word here being women – as if the woman in question is 26 but still in the 10^th grade) in a provocative manner. I do not have my head buried in the sand, and I know that there are men (and possibly women) who find the whole Brittany Spears in a school girl uniform sexy. Personally, I always thought it was a little peculiar that someone would find a child’s outfit sexy. It would, however, appear to be a component of our conventional wisdom that if Brittany Spears wore a school girl uniform, Lindsay Lohan a nurse’s uniform, and Jessica Simpson wore a maid’s uniform, you would have three women demonstrating the success of the women’s lib movement as American men apparently find it attractive that women are contributing to the economic success of the US of A by studying hard, taking care of our health needs, and, um, being employed in people’s homes. However, when you go and buy your 4 year old daughter her school uniform, and you see on the rack the uniforms she could be wearing for the next 14 years, I believe it may impact one’s perspective on if the school girl uniform is sexy. I’m told that when my daughter is 18, I will have a similar outlook on magazines like Maxim. I’ll probably have the same thought when she works as a maid to pay for nursing school.

And no. I won't be posting any pictures of Isa in her new uniform.