School musings, and another anecdote

*mutters* I must not rant about my employers in public places. I must not rant about my employers in public places. I must not rant about my employers in public places....*cough*

So, I'll restrain myself to a rant about the curriculum. Harcourt makes me want to scream. We're on Week 17 of the program (according to school schedules, not the saturday academy, that's only been going for 8 weeks), and the teacher script (who FOLLOWS teacher scripts? I ask you) is still trying to get me to say things like "The name of this letter is B. Say the name with me. Hold up different cards showing same letter This is upper case B. This is lower case b. What is the name of this letter?"
The script never changes, as far as I can tell. I'd think by week 17 the kids would be so tired of it that they'd be throwing things at the wall. Not to mention that I really feel like the kids should be able to recognize and name ALL the letters by mid-November. ugh.

So on to the anecdote. Our current "project," to run over 3 weeks, is on "careers." Five year olds, of course, have never heard the word, so I had to explain it -- as a job, what grown ups do for a living. We were supposed to get the kids to list off as many careers as they could, so I asked my girls "What do some grownups that you know do?" As always, without missing a beat, C (of "you want punishment" fame), responded "...smoke?" She then, once I had clarified my meaning, went into a five-minute ramble about how they worked for the water department, except if they didn't do a good job they got fired, and then they couldn't work there anymore, and then they had to look somewhere else until someone told them they could come work for them, and then they better do a good job so they wouldn't get fired again, and... (there were multiple repetitions and "ums" involved.) I had to cut her off at this point to get back to the issue at hand, but man, you gotta wonder what these kids are seeing.