The Passive American.

[lostnfound]

An eloquent http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3128796">thread now in GD bemoans the current state: "Another “dogs with stars and elected ponies’ show” today, all with straight faces. Another bunch of multi-millionaires commenting on it, all with straight faces...Who believes those who say they believe? Who says the truth without calculating the risk to their jobs, to their way of life?" It got me to thinking once again about The Passive American.

The Passive American. Witness the evolution of American childhood and see how our behavior is being shaped like rats in a cage. See the passive way we spend our youth. Notice the lessons that each will learn: you will be forced to sit in a classroom for 12 years or more -- do not speak up, do not complain -- and will be spoonfed content not of your own choosing at 45 minute intervals, told what to work on and when, stripped of your free will except in the most narrow places imaginable (free to write "on any topic of your choosing"), wildness and farm chores stripped from your life -- no building of forts, no creeks for catching minnows, no time for learning carpentry or weaving or the making of useful things by your parents' side.

Stop now, skeptical reader, and consider that the elites shaping the schools a century ago wanted to control 'indiscriminate fraternization' -- among the poor, among the immigrants. Consider that perhaps some of the immigrants who rioted over the imposition of compulsory school were not know-nothing anti-intellectuals, but people who knew what the powers were actually up to.

Fascism gets established in part through factory schools. That which is unique is suppressed, a ranking and a hierarchy established, the dangan is written.

During these 12 years, you will NOT be given increased freedom and responsibility -- you will not be given the reins, you will not be entrusted with care of the farm. You will be subjected to basically the same routines over and over, and held captive by the same threats. Even though you make progress in the skills you are told to learn, you aren't mixed with younger or older kids, so you may not notice your own mastery, because what matters is the grades. You will be constantly judged and ranked, not on whether you eventually master a subject at your own pace, but on whether you master it as fast as the fastest in your particular age group -- in your "production lot", we might say. Since you will be constantly judged relative to that same group, you are likely to continue to get the same grades -- A's at the top of the heap, D's and F's at the bottom -- which will help you to "know your place", to get accustomed to the bottom rung, or become accustomed to feeling "special" and "entitled" on the top rung.

All experience with anything other than paperwork and bookwork will be greatly curtailed or minimized. Exercise of a strong will basically be forbidden during this long confinement. Give up the childish desire to build real things, from now on, nearly all of your accomplishments are to be contained on an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. Are you prepared for a job in corporate America yet?

Ask yourself: was this behavioral regimen designed to create consumers and employees or producers and citizens? Self-sufficient, or living "on the grid"?

You may say to yourself 'But childhood has been like this for a hundred years!' Yes. But if our father's fathers grew up with an independent livelihood on a farm or as a cobbler or a waggon-maker or blacksmith, didn't our fathers get handed those values, albeit in a diluted fashion? How far back do you have to go to find independent livelihoods, or childhoods built more of family or hard work or experiences in wild nature, than of sitting as passive recipients of a mandated curriculum, spending no time unsupervised?

If you want to understand the Passive American, look at his Passive Childhood.

Gatto's list in The Underground History of American Education of 15 ways NOT to raise a whole child -- we liberals aren't likely to agree with all of them, but it is definitely food for thought. Read it if you want to consider HOW we are all shaped to accept our corporatist lives, subservient to 'the system'.

Remove children from the business of the world until time has passed for them to learn how to self-teach.
Age-grade them so that past and future both are muted and become irrelevant.
Take all religion out of their lives except the hidden civil religion of appetite, and positive/negative reinforcement schedules.
Remove all significant functions from home and family life except its role as dormitory and casual companionship. Make parents unpaid agents of the State; recruit them into partnerships to monitor the conformity of children to an official agenda.
Keep children under surveillance every minute from dawn to dusk. Give no private space or time. Fill time with collective activities. Record behavior quantitatively.
Addict the young to machinery and electronic displays. Teach that these are desirable to recreation and learning both.
Use designed games and commercial entertainment to teach preplanned habits, attitudes, and language usage.
Pair the selling of merchandise with attractive females in their prime childbearing years so that the valences of lovemaking and mothering can be transferred intact to the goods vended.
Remove as much private ritual as possible from young lives, such as the rituals of food preparation and family dining.
Keep both parents employed with the business of strangers. Discourage independent livelihoods with low start-up costs. Make labor for others and outside obligations first priority, self-development second.
Grade, evaluate, and assess children constantly and publicly. Begin early. Make sure everyone knows his or her rank.
Honor the highly graded. Keep grading and real world accomplishment as strictly separate as possible so that a false meritocracy, dependent on the support of authority to continue, is created. Push the most independent kids to the margin; do not tolerate real argument.
Forbid the efficient transmission of useful knowledge, such as how to build a house, repair a car, make a dress.
Reward dependency in many forms. Call it "teamwork."
Establish visually degraded group environments called "schools" and arrange mass movements through these environments at regular intervals. Encourage a level of fluctuating noise (aperiodic negative reinforcement) so that concentration, habits of civil discourse, and intellectual investigation are gradually extinguished from the behavioral repertoire.

Zinn recommends it. So do I.

[midnight]

1. Interesting.

[Echo In Light]

2. Indoctrination = thought control

[treestar]

3. Consumers and employees

That's for sure. There is little consciousness of entrepreneurship and making one's own way. So many are dependent on the corporations to give them jobs. It doesn't even occur to them to think of just competiting with their employer. Or to look at the laws that have developed to make that harder.

[Echo In Light]

4. The term Wage Slave comes to mind

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/new_slavery.htm

[lostnfound]

6. Incapacitated by enforced passivity; willpower and independence atrophied.

19th century American kids were exhorted in their primers to be resourceful and brave, to value their independence.

Kids are big consumers long before they have their own jobs, too. They are "Born to Buy", according to an interesting book by Juliet Schorr, because of the onslaught intense advertising.

Is there any similar onslaught to encourage them to be producers? The capitalists of 1900 were worried about "overproduction".

[warren pease]

8. Making ones own way is discouraged in more subtle too, e.g., employment-based medical coverage

I think that's one of the key sub-texts that gets overlooked in the broader argument over the movement to kill the current for-profit model and replace it with some version of a single-payer, universal-access system instead.

NOTE: Caution... long-winded screed follows. Read at your own risk. Do not drive or operate heavy machinery for an hour after reading.

And here's an example of the price this system exacts from people who avoid corporate jobs in favor of the alleged joys
of long hours, constant hustling for more work, dunning glassy eyed AP department automatons for overdue payments, wondering if anticipated receipts are going to meet the monthly debt load, and generally living lives of relative independence from corporate meddling but with that illusive freedom always tempered by continuous and total financial insecurity.

My wife and I are both 57, work for ourselves and have for about 25 and 15 years, respectively. We both have those dreaded pre-existing medical conditions (and who doesn't by the time they hit middle age, unless you've lived your life exclusively in a bubble), and are therefore absolutely uninsurable through the alleged free market. The conventional insurers literally won't take our money on any terms whatsoever.

Oregon has this public/private partnership high-risk pool where people like us can get coverage at prices that make atheists see gawd. To even qualify, you have to be denied a policy by three conventional insurance carriers -- which we were in polite by unambiguous terms.

So here's a rough breakdown of the expenses associated with the high-risk pool we're "fortunate" to have. This year, premiums will total $14,088 for the two of us, and it's a 100 percent certainty that they'll increase in 2009.

Prescriptions are reasonable as long as you're using generics. If there are no generic equivalents, brand name drugs are either $50 or $70 per scrip.

Then there's deductibles, copays and random payments to cover the difference between the "negotiated settlement" that the insurance cheapskates paid out and what the doc actually billed for services. Sometimes that gap is a few bucks; sometimes its a hundred or so. Occasionally, it's considerably more.

So, assuming we continue to consume medical services and pharmaceuticals at the same rates as we have for the past five or so years, we'll probably spend between $18K and $20K this year on medical-related stuff -- including premiums. And mind you, we're pretty healthy for the most part.

There is no vision care or dental coverage available at any price under this program or anywhere else, since needing glasses is a preexisting condition, and so are cavities, peritonitis, poor jaw alignment and so forth. So in theory you can see an eye doctor as long as you don't need to see one, or just pay out-of-pocket. You can also, in theory, see a dentist as long as there's absolutely nothing wrong with your teeth, or just pay out-of-pocket.

The link between dental health and overall health is well-established (google any combination of "dental disease US deaths annual"), as is the fact the that symptoms of many serious diseases or chronic medical problems occur first in the mouth (diabetes, cardiovascular, obesity, osteoporosis). But apparently those aren't good enough reasons to include dental work in the same medical insurance policy. And it's these apparently illogical and idiotic restrictions that lead to an understanding of the fundamental nature of the for-profit medical model.

Thing is, it's not really medical insurance; it's protection money paid to an organized crime syndicate to keep them from stealing our house, cars, bank accounts and anything else that isn't fused to the earth's core should something serious (i.e., expensive and requiring hospitalization) happen to either of us.

Medical insurance has nothing whatsoever to do with health care except in the twisted minds of Friedman/Chicago School libertarian fanatics and free market zealots. Break that nonsensical, artificial link, dump the idea of for-profit medicine entirely, replace it with single-payer universal-access and spread the risk over the entire population in the form of a modest, progressive tax. I'd be willing to bet a pretty good sum that no matter what we'd end up paying in taxes to fund such a system, it's going to be considerably less than that estimated $18K - $20K we'll piss away on premiums and overpriced drugs this year.

So that's my personal tale of life in the land of the medically fucked. Here's what an actual smart guy has to say on the subject of health benefits as social control mechanisms used by corporations to increase the level of insecurity their employees have to live with.

THE EFFECTS OF MARKET-DRIVEN CARE

The real effects of market-driven health care on people's lives suggest that the primary corporate motive for imposing this type of health care system is to allow employers to have more control over their labor force.

What are the results of market-driven health care? First, market-driven health care makes people feel insecure about their prospects for receiving health care when they need it. Second, it destroys the trust that patients once had in their doctors by making doctors "gatekeepers'' whose role is often to block access to care. Third, by making health care a commodity to be bought and sold like any other, it expands the growing economic inequality in the United States to include health inequality. Fourth, it pits health professionals against each other in competing physician groups and hospitals. These are four classic methods of social control: make people feel too insecure to challenge those in power, destroy people's trust in one another, make them more unequal, pit them against each other.

Even before the rise of market-driven health care, corporations relied on the insecurity of health care to control workers. For decades, large employers (and some regressive labor unions) have preferred to link health benefits to employment, knowing it gave them more control over their employees. According to a New York Times/CBS poll in 1991, 32 percent of workers did not quit jobs they disliked because they were afraid of losing their health benefits. In June, 1998 General Motors threatened to deny medical benefits to striking workers in Flint, Michigan in order to pressure them back to work. Raytheon actually did cancel health insurance for striking workers in Massachusetts in August 2000, to force them back to work. Additionally, making health benefits depend on independent agreements between employer and employees in thousands of different companies gives employers the upper hand by preventing employees from acting as a single nation-wide block. This is why American corporations don't want the situation in Europe, where wages and benefits such as health care, vacation, and maternity benefits are negotiated on a country-wide basis between representatives of labor, the government and corporations.

In other words, a scared employee -- thrown to the wolves as an overwhelmed individual rather than as a member of a union or some other organized counter-weight to full corporate totalitarianism -- is the perfect wage/debt slave and will do whatever he/she is told to avoid increasing their already suffocating levels of uncertainty and insecurity.

Just one more way the American dream works to enrich the piggies, control the (disappearing) middle class, exploit the working classes and keep the elites wallowing in their hard-earned dividend checks.

It's like there's a couple million Scrooge McDucks out there somewhere, sequestered in giant mansions left over from the Gilded Age and protected by armed security staff and two dozen crazed Dobermans. And they spend some time each day in large, fully provisioned bunkers and vaults with foot-thick steel walls and fresh air generators and purified water systems and food for 10 years, burrowing and crawling in and around and through giant piles of folding money as tall as Iowa haystacks, with bags of solid gold coins liberated from wrecked Spanish galleons and Dutch coastal traders on built-in display racks over to one side.

Paperwork attesting to massive wealth -- stocks and bonds and T-bills and statements from hedge funds and suicide notes from former associates -- piled to the ceiling on the opposite wall. At this point, a beautiful young consort should quietly enter the vault, remove her clothing and join this piggie in his monument to himself. But I'm not writing porn here; I'm supposed to be railing against the US for-profit health care system and the damage it does to everyone who doesn't happen to be insanely rich.

Off track again. You should have stopped reading several paragraphs ago (or maybe you did, clever reader).


wp

[Echo In Light]

10. Always enjoy your posts, Warren!

:toast:

[warren pease]

11. Thanks, Echo. Likewise. Too early for a beer, though... n/t

[nashville_brook]

13. wow, that hits a nerve. you are so right -- those "premiums" are extortions.

because the threat exactly is that they will take away the house, etc. i neve thought of it like that.

[lostnfound]

14. All correct, I agree.

And I would add that the infinite number of ways that this screws up individual lives is horrible.

[Subdivisions]

19. Brilliant! Five Stars. I'd suggest you tell it to Congress but...well, you know. n/t

[Serial Mom]

5. Just what the "owners" want.... non-thinking spenders!

I seem to be able to state Carlin is right on so many posts lately...

watch this and understand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4SSvVbhLw

[jobendorfer]

7. thought experiment

I have to preface this with a confession: I've never lived in France.
But France is a 1st world country, it has a post-modern economy (if that's the right word), and a system of universal, compulsory education.
I suspect that (as is the case here), the majority of French citizens work for hire and aren't self-employed.

And from what I can see on the news, when the government does something most of the people don't like ...
They don't just protest. They shut the country down. They bring it to its knees.
Traffic blockades. Nationwide strikes. Chaos.
Not a response that is passive by any definition of that term!

And yet its citizens are subjected (in childhood and adulthood) to most if not all of the forces listed by Gatto.
Not saying Gatto is wrong, or that he doesn't have a point. I place a very high value on individuation, and see well enough that our education system is rooted in mass production thinking of the late 1800s. But ...

Fellow DUers, and particularly anyone who has lived in France: why do their citizens so frequently "man the barricades", while ours, passively accept the status quo?
What accounts for the difference?


J.

[lostnfound]

22. Perhaps the French Revolution?

It's an important question, and I don't know an answer. Further, I haven't lived in France but since no one else has attempted to reply, I'll give it a go.

It's a psychological answer which may be worth absolutely nothing but here goes: The American Revolution is seen as rebelling against the Evil Others -- overthrowing the BRITISH, the outsiders. (Indeed, the fact that the American-revolutionary was a rebel or a "freedom fighter" is widely ignored today; you can actually hear them described as 'defenders of our country'.)

The French Revolution overthrew a FRENCH government, so perhaps the French people have always had to face that their own population could be held down by some of their "own kind" -- or more specifically by the elites of their own kind. The class element CANNOT be ignored, and the struggle for freedom in France was identical with the struggle of the masses against a group of elites or against authority.


French culture and French schools traditionally emphasize history, philosophy, and challenging intellectual thought, which develop depth in the intellect; while our system seems concerned with 'school-to-work' or preparation for "the workplace".

[lastliberalintexas]

23. That's an intersting take on things

I've only visited France, unfortunately I have never lived there for any length of time, so I am not qualified to answer the question myself. But you have posited a rather interesting theory, about the idea that they rebelled against their own and thus have better vigilance.


I do suspect that a great deal of it has to do with the lack of education here in America though. Every European I have ever met has been appalled at the level of schooling here, that their "high school" basically the equivalent of 2 or 3 years of college here. Even those from former Communist block countries, by the way. How correct they are or whether their observations are through biased lenses, I don't know.

[lostnfound]

26. We have a lot of schooling but often not a lot of education.

Gatto's other book is called "dumbing us down".
Most of my friends say that their children are overwhelmed with busy work and underchallenged.
I see it already in my own son. The curriculum 'spirals' - repeats content over and over - and I'm told by a 5th grade parent that her son is frustrated and bored that he's stuck learning the same 4 basic operations over and over. He's a solid A student, but even for the 'weaker' students, I'm not sure that more of the same is really what they need. The emphasis on tests with NCLB has clearly exacerbated the problem.

[Selatius]

9. When I saw the phrase "The Passive American," I immediately thought, "The Good German." n/t

[Prophet 451]

12. I have two problems with this

Firstly, and this one is mainly trifling, is the allegation of the removal of religion. The USA is the single most religious society in the Western world (with the possible exception of Vatican City). Unless you have visited both the USA and other parts of the western world, one cannot fully appreciate how incredibly religious the US is in comparison.

Secondly, and more importantly, the skills praised and described as desireable all fit into a very specific, very Anglo-American template. The disdain for teamwork especially, is an extremely Anglo-American viewpoint. In the US, that comes from the myth of the "rugged individualist". The skills praised are all physical skills, the games described are all physical games. This strikes me as similar to the old-fashioned view that it wasn't work unless it gave you callouses. In reality, there was never a time when all children were given such an upbringing. People have always self-selected into different labour groups. Of the few professions which are truly universal and truly as old as civilisation, the physical making of things is featured but so are barbers, brewers and undertakers (and prostitutes but I'm not sure where they'd fit in). Where is the praise for mental skills or creativity? Bards have made a living from both for the entirety of human history.

Essentially, this strikes me as assuming that a particular skillset and a particular mythology is "the way people ought to be". Public schools are a mess, no-one's doubting that but it strikes me that lauding such an antiquated and very, very narrow set of skills is looking in precisely the wrong direction.

[lostnfound]

15. Let genius, ordinary genius, lead us where it may.

The problem isn't mental vs physical work (although I do think that in childhood, experiencing life through the senses and through manipulating concrete things, and also having contact with nature, is an essential part of becoming human), but in my opinion there is a lack of balance or robustness in today's childhood; and a lack of individual choice also in the academic subject matter.

An 8 year old with an intense interest in learning geometry will likely have to wait at least 6 years before he or she is allowed to study geometry; a better system is to strike while the iron is hot, and use that interest as a strong wind to let him move swiftly through to his desired objective. Our forefathers taught themselves a great deal, often at young ages.

Let kids select and test INTO the classes that they are interested in. Right now they are brushed along from year to year with a common broom, basically with no regard for their interest or individual speed of learning.

I put a high value on freedom. What freedom do people have in school? Why can't schools be more like public libraries -- available for people who want to teach themselves something, but not completely regimented and authoritarian? The answer has to do with who is in control.

The two specifics that you mention, about religion and teamwork, were exactly the ones that bothered me; and I agree with your point on cultural aspects of teamwork, and I admire cultures with more of a sense of community and collaboration greatly.

[Prophet 451]

28. Agreed on much of this

I'd love to see schools be more like libraries. Obviously, you couldn't be entirely freeform, you'd need to have some kind of structure (if only because basic reading is a pre-req for everythign mental and basic maths is a pre-req for most physical skills), however minimal but the current, almost prison-like, state of schools is vastly more than is actually needed.

Example: I was always passionate about history. I didn't get to study it until I was fourteen and spent two years studying the interwar years, the bit I was least interested it (in Britain, it's impossible to reach teen years without knowing the basics).

Of course, to reform schools, you'd have to pump in a load of money and the US (and UK) seems determined to do schools on the cheap.

[dysfunctional press]

30. bullshit.

"An 8 year old with an intense interest in learning geometry will likely have to wait at least 6 years before he or she is allowed to study geometry"

that's utter bullshit, especially now that many many kids have access to computers and books.
there's NOTHING to stop a child from seeking out information on geometry outside school, if that's what they're interested in.

why aren't schools more like libraries? because children NEED the structure. the VAST majority of 8 year olds are not prepared to make life decisions about what direction their future will take, otherwise we'd be knee-deep in cowboys, firemen and circus performers.

i don't have too many problems with the current system, except that class-sizes should definitely be smaller, teachers should constantly be having their skills updated AND tested, and rather than a 3-month summer vacation, the school year should be year-round, with one or two week breaks between terms. and the school day should be at least a bit longer.

[lostnfound]

36. What stops him now

from studying what he likes is time. We wake up at 6:30, eat breakfast, rush to school, home at 4 pm, do homework, dinner, piano practice, bath, book and bed by 8 pm. Usually has an hour in the evenings of free time, and I think he fully deserves and needs that time to be outdoors kicking a ball around or a little tennis etc. I completely disagree that the school day should be longer. And as far as summer, we are looking forward to summer when we will have more time to explore different worlds -- summer is admittedly a time when he could and will pursue his own academic interests.

My friend who is a top-notch Montessori teacher for ages 3-6 describes 2 former students who left her class for a year for a traditional public school kindergarden and then came back for a summer: "I couldn't figure out what had happened!! When they left, they had initiative and curiosity, and if they finished an activity they knew to go get another activity to work on. Now, they will just stand there doing nothing, and wait for someone to tell them what to do. Even the 4 year olds in my class know what to do with themselves... But when these kids came back, it was as if they have forgotten everything of how to work on their own."

Of course children need structure, and they all need the basics. But some attention to noticing their own legitimate interests and letting them pursue some of those interests would pay off in developing self-confidence and self-direction. Better than filling every kid's head in the class with the same basic memorized stuff. Especially when they are young and establishing their identity, self-concept, etc. "Know thyself" is a life-long process.

[dysfunctional press]

37. there's always the weekends, then...

he can do problems and proofs to his heart's content.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

16. K&R n/t

[Subdivisions]

17. I've been doing alot of thinking along these lines lately, The more

evil I see coming from our government and authorities, the more obvious the things you have pointed out become.

It's all part of a perpertual motion machine so that now no one even realizes that we are being manipulated from the moment we become old enough to begin having individual thoughts. Then, we are placed in a sterilized environment where we molded into "good citizens".

Fixing it would be revolutionary on a universal scale. And impossible.

[lostnfound]

18. Yes, you've got it. "Sterilized environment".

The school system doesn't seem sterile in a common sense, as it's full of ordinary problems. But it ends up being able to produce Alphas, Betas, Deltas and Epsilons that are somewhat predictable or seem to fit into types.

And the intrusions into the lives of individuals keep growing.

Fixing it on a universal scale would be revolutionary. And impossible.
Fixing it on an individual scale is challenging. Are there ways to make it easier for individuals to follow alternate paths?

[Elspeth]

20. Exactly

Kick

[Subdivisions]

21. "Are there ways to make it easier for individuals to follow alternate paths?"

Short of surviving an asteroid strike, no.

[Juche]

24. recommended n/t

[Renwiick]

25. Passive American through your eyes,,Americans hungry for hope through mine.

A lot of words you speak. Too many words.

[Echo In Light]

27. At times I think George Carlin sums up America's situations best: "Fuck Hope!"

...not always, but sometimes.

[raebrek]

29. and still we see more and more of it.

First there was preschool and now there is pre-preschool. Get those children out of the house and into a controlled environment as soon as possible so that they have less contact with their parents. I know that I have read somewhere that they are considering making these pre pre-schools mandatory and paid for by the government. What do they think they are doing?

Raebrek!!!

[Echo In Light]

31. The sickness of power seeks to make everything/one in its own image. Uniformity = sickness complete

That way it isn't threatened by dissenting positions, and it "wins" when no on opposes - or directs the opposition in an articulate manner i.e. isn't deflected through the usual collective indifference/de-politicization. In part this is what I believe has become of the dem party: the move to the center {"moderate"} is an appeasement to the right wing pathology, a strategic way of lessening that dissenting position; what better way than to do so in a trickle form that simultaneously ensures the continuation of skewed perceptions to the contrary!

A diseased corporate culture holds great sway over impressionable minds/spirits: conform or reap the "consequences." Much of this mindset is created sans direct instruction/verbiage, and is established via 24/7 examples in what's considered the normal daily round of life. This likewise explains the vehement denials of such indoctrination, much how, say, alcoholics, early on, often can't acknowledge the existence of a problem.

[raebrek]

32. If we elect the government

and the government controls the public schools then does not that make us at fault?

Raebrek!!!

[Echo In Light]

33. In a representative democracy, the govt acts on behalf of the citizenry {technically}

So, yes ... but of course it's not always so easily defined.

[tavalon]

34. So, I agree with the awfulness of school as practiced

I just wonder why it didn't work on some of us? It destroys most people but not all people.

[lostnfound]

35. To different extents

There are so many variables. The strength of the impression or values given to you by your own parents -- my dad was old enough to have been raising a family in the Depression, he had his own small business when I was growing up, and my grandparents included independent farmers. But even so, although I was left with the ability to think, I do not think I have his bravery to strike out on my own. There are a thousand reasons NOT to act, aren't there?

I see my own son full of ideas and curiosity going into first grade, and coming out of it, so much of his initiative has been squelched, because he is already seeing that grades count, so do just enough to get a good grade, but not your very best; or thinking he is stupid if he doesn't know the spelling words.. Some of the things that he is very good at -- absorbing context, asking deep questions that made his kindergarden teacher think, problem solving -- have been left to atrophy for the whole year. His first assignment of the year was the one he did his best work on, something really exceptional. The drills he does every evening have left him uncaring about quality and just wanting to rush through it. He has a mind of his own ("Let's do an experiment with such-and-such" or "Let's build a house out of these tubes" or he would sit down and draw a rainforest and look up the layers of the rainforest on google, all for the fun of it), and seems resentful of being forced to drill in the evenings after being told what to do all day.