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No Can Do!
A Mom's Defiance Against School Craft Projects By Karin Kasdin
I'm finishing up third grade for the fourth time and I'm afraid I haven't done very well. Oh, I've mastered my multiplication tables and I can spell the heck out of common action verbs, but my dinosaur diorama looked no better than the one I made by myself 37 years ago before parenting became the most competitive sport in America.
Thirty-seven years ago all of the dinosaur dioramas were made out of materials scraped together from the average home: toothpicks and string and swatches of fabric cut from clothing too soiled for the Sisterhood Next-to-New Sale. Recently, I learned through the humiliating experience of creating the worst diorama in the class, that you can buy kits that will turn your diorama into the Jurassic Park movie set. There are stores that actually sell arts and crafts supplies. More unbelievable than that -- there are stores that sell arts and crafts supplies only! Most unbelievable of all, the stores that sell arts and crafts supplies only are thriving! I don't get it.
Truthfully, it is not for me to get. Others may not understand why I choose to spend whole days stringing words together instead of colored beads. To each his own passion. The problem is, if my third grader son, Zack, hands in a report dotted with words such as "prevalence" or "plethora," he'll get nailed for not doing his own work. On the other hand, if Zack's little friend Tyler, whose father is a rocket scientist (really), wheels a hand-crafted launching pad into the classroom, upon which sits a perfectly scaled down model of the space shuttle made out of marzipan (Tyler's mother is a caterer), little Tyler will be made to feel pretty darn big.
Elementary school has never been a sanctuary for the arts and crafts impaired. Those of us whose hands are strictly ornamental, or whose skills rest in other arenas, lose sleep, esteem and on lucky days even pounds, obsessing over long-term assignments that require the use of glitter and glue.
