Discover

The family trip is a curious practice, and perhaps what makes them most curious is their name.  We often refer to them as vacations.  They are not.  Vacations are calm, relaxing and peaceful.  I have been on very few vacations. Family trips are more like expeditions.  They are often adventures, excursions, or, as I now refer to them with my own family, Discovery Events.

            A couple months ago, we went on our own Discovery Event to Colorado.  Along with another couple and their two young boys, we travelled west to visit an old friend.  He and his family own a set of cabins about thirty minutes south of Golden, alongside a mountain stream gurgling through a winding stretch of wilderness known as Deer Creek Canyon. 

            One discovery that we made early on was that, contrary to popular imagination, the western pioneers’ greatest accomplishment was not surviving the weather, wild animals, or hostile natives.  Their true claim to greatness was remembering to put their smaller children back in the wagon after their first pit stop.  How did our ancestors survive without portable DVRs and prepackaged snacks?  We made it, though, eventually.  We found the cabins inviting and serene, with both of our kids still very much in the backseat. 

On our first full day after our arrival, we also discovered that if you’re going to have your kids stand in line for an hour, there had better be a rainbow flavored Ferris wheel at the end of it. 

Coors brewery tour?  Not so much.  By the time we had made it to the actual tasting room, our son was so delirious from a hunger-exasperated boredom that he was throwing bags of Cheetos across the floor instead of eating them.  Needless to say, the look on most people’s faces was the same look that many of you most likely have on your face right now, the look that asks the question, “What kind of space age idiot voluntarily brings a three-year-old into a beer factory?”

Point taken.

The next day proved better, or, at least, less messy.  Throughout our planning, we had insisted to our children, “Hey, in Colorado, you’ll get to climb a mountain.”

And we did.  Our Colorado friend and impromptu tour guide suggested we summit Mt. Evans, which is actually taller than Pike’s Peak but generally less crowded  Perhaps more importantly for our sake, Mt. Evans can also boast the highest paved road in the United States, which meant that we did not, technically, climb most of it with our feet.  We drove to the summit, where we could then trek the final 200 or so switchback yards to the very top.  Today’s discovery?  Non-Incan children do not perform well at 14,265 feet above sea level, which, considering personal experience, I should have already known.

Our three-year-old son, in fact, when we told him we were going to climb to the top, collapsed to the ground and began throwing a HATT, a High Altitude Temper Tantrum, which is just like a normal temper tantrum except a little slower due to oxygen deprivation.

“Listen,” I told him, “You’ve been saying you want to climb a mountain for months.  So this is the mountain.  Let’s go.”

 I put him on my shoulders and began our ascent with my wife and daughter already ahead.  We climbed at a pretty good clip, for about ten yards. 

“OK,” I wheezed.  “You’re gonna’ have to walk awhile now.  I’ll carry you a bit, but you’re gonna’ have to do some climbing, too.”

So we climbed and climbed, and close to a half hour later we reached the top.  Mt. Evans is not the tallest mountain in Colorado, but it is the tallest mountain within sight.  Despite the whimpering by all party members, the view was worth the struggle. 

We made other discoveries during our trip, of course.  Back at the cabins, we panned for gold and found none.  We hiked and met many dogs, but, despite warning signs, no bears, mountain lions, or even rattlesnakes. 

Down by Colorado Springs, we climbed amongst the giant red pebbles in the Garden of the Gods.  Up in Idaho Springs, we dined on mountain pizza and found it fully suitable to our Midwestern tastes.  At night we told stories around the campfire about ornery little children snatched up by giant condors because they forced their weary parents to carry them on their shoulders.  In the morning we listened to hummingbirds argue while Deer Creek trickled in the background.

We saw dinosaur footprints and a human leg bone.  Within the statues lining the streets of Golden, we saw the energy and creativity of humanity.  Within the boulders punching from the earth, we saw the strength and patience of God.

Anticipating a muggy midsummer homecoming, we were pleasantly surprised to find cool weather upon our return.  Curiously enough, the first evenings back in Illinois felt a lot like Colorado.

A couple days after unpacking, the kids and I hunted lightning bugs in our backyard.  The giant corn field that hugs up to our property had enveloped the entire neighborhood with the scent of its own survival.  I smirked when I considered that we saw no lightning bugs in Colorado.  We smelled no corn.  A silly thought, perhaps, but it was a reminder that we were home, and that was nice.

To return to an undisturbed home is one of the best parts of traveling, because it is only in that moment we can truly appreciate the luxury of a washing machine, a refrigerator with our own food, a closet full of our own clothes. After traveling, it is at home where we often discover what we went looking for in the first place:  peace, rest, relaxation. 

A vacation.

Weigh In

Pigs do not like to be weighed.  This is not an assumption, but an eye-witness account.  In our younger years my brother and I, along with our 4-H friends, spent many county fair days surrounded by unimpressed swine living out their retirement in the spacious Fayette County hog barn.  We showed these pigs and eventually sold them, but before this transaction occurred they had to be weighed.  Although some hogs did march calmly up into the scale, most of them did not.

The procedure was fairly straightforward.  We would block off the pens leading to the scale, which was basically a narrow cage with a wobbly floor.  We would then open up our pen and let the pigs out, moving them down the aisle, blocking their retreat with gates as we inched closer to the goal. 

Finally, when it came their turn, we would carouse the hogs toward the scale.  As mentioned, some pigs would walk right in, but most of them threw a fit.  Most of them tried to back away from the machine and squealed like, well, you know.  

 Regardless, none of our pigs ever avoided being weighed.  No pig was left behind unmeasured, and all the pigs my brother and I ever raised—and “raised” is a term I use quite loosely, being as the pigs were purchased after they were at least eight weeks old and then sold a few months later—succeeded in eventually being eaten.

Now, this column is not actually going to be about pigs, but it is going to be about a measurement of sorts.  Pigs and the weighing of them is often used as an analogy to describe excessive student testing.  To paraphrase the simile, “Testing a student to help them learn is like weighing a pig to help them gain weight.  It doesn’t work and it annoys the pig.” 

This is a reasonable analogy, I guess, but I’m not particularly fond of it.  For one thing, students should not be compared to pigs.  Pigs are nice and all, and some make decent pets, but ultimately pigs are livestock.  Students, on the other hand, are our future.  How we treat our students now will be reflected later.

Secondly, I don’t like the analogy because, as most teachers will tell you, it is not really accurate.  Good testing actually can help a student learn.  A well-written test can be a lesson in and of itself.  It can teach the student and also guide the instructor in making future curriculum choices.  Granted, tests often do annoy the student and they can be a pain to grade, but that’s not a good enough reason not to use them.

The problem with testing, however, is that teachers are not the only ones giving the tests anymore.  As many people already know, standardized testing plays an increasingly heavy part in the drama we call the school year. 

Originally, standardized tests were used to influence student placement.  In my humble opinion, this practice, in and of itself, is morally flawed, because it suggests that a young person’s value as a learner can be measured on the basis of how they perform on one battery of tests over the course of a few days.  That is wrong.  It is a small wonder so many people have such negative memories of school when many of them were told at a tragically young age, “You’re below average.”

To further aggravate the problem, though, standardized tests are increasingly being used by the federal and state governments to influence fiscal policy.  They are being used to influence professional retention.  While even the hardest among us would have a difficult time taking “away” resources from a below average student, this is almost precisely what often takes place to “below average” schools. 

Fortunately, this pendulum could be about to swing the other way.  Increasingly throughout the United States, concerned citizen groups made up of both parents and educators have banded together in an attempt to convince state and federal legislators to decrease mandated, high-stakes, standardized testing.   According to a recent NEA Today article, protests against standardized testing have taken place in a number of states, including Colorado, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kansas. 

Another bright spot is happening in Congress, of all places.  Representative Christopher Gibson, a Republican from New York, introduced a bill earlier this spring that would significantly decrease the amount of federally mandated tests students are required to take throughout their academic career.  To emphasize the point that this is not a regional or partisan issue, as of right now this bill has over a dozen co-sponsors—eight Democrats, six Republicans— from eleven different states, including Texas, California, New Jersey, Arizona, and Ohio.

Unfortunately, Illinois is not on that list, but it could be.  We have legislators that would most likely be eager to come on board if they knew their constituents were interested.  After all, what’s nice about public education is also what can be the most frustrating:  it’s public.  We own it.  It’s ours.  At the end of the day, we either get the schools we want or we get the schools we can tolerate, wobbly scales and all.