Tom's first day of 4th Grade began today at Hazelbrook PS. Reluctant as he seemed to be to go to school, he looked relaxed when I picked him up from the Moosh this afternoon and he buzzed with chatter for a solid 45 minutes thereafter. Modern kids have a menu of ambit claims that need to be met when it comes to their new class - that it has to contain at least one significant friend, that the teacher is fun and slightly flexible in the enactment of The Rules and so forth.

As best I remember, my cohort just turned up, were allocated a teacher and classroom and got on with it. I didn't discuss preferences with my parents. But then again, I was in streamed classes until 6th grade, when a radical sixties experiment descended upon us. Mixed ability classes. From that day onward until the end of the year, my world of relative pronouns was turned upside down. And for who, whom, whose, which and that the bell tolls!

Schools are nicer places for kids to be these days. Freed from much of the pomposity, caning and petty vindictiveness of a plurality of former educators, there is much to like about modern schools. The downside is a new regime of testing and an overloaded curriculum, one that does not bode well of creating lifelong learners.

I love to learn and yearn

"To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."