Just
got home from a mini-vacation visiting Beautiful Daughter in Scottsdale
(Arizona in the summer! It's a really dry heat!)--and a respite from All Things
Internet, which is good for the soul. And the very first blog I read upon
returning was the irresistible guilty pleasure of It's Not All Flowers
and Sausages starring Mrs. Mimi. I adore Mrs. Mimi, because she
represents truth and the American way in education--and because no other blogger
makes me laugh out loud with every post, like she does. Or at least, no other
bloggers make me belly-laugh intentionally,
as opposed to the sarcastic snorting engendered by many Serious Policy World
reads.

Mrs.
Mimi's posts are generally full of cute kids, au naturale, and screwed-up power-hungry
adults--just like the real world. This one was about a field trip where the big
yellow bus drove past a Calvin Klein billboard--let your imagination create any
smoldering male zipper-down image--and got stuck in traffic in front of a semi-naked
Lady GaGa covering the side of a building.  Mrs. Mimi points out that all the interesting
facts and images planted in her kiddos' minds during the field trip are now eclipsed
by this sleaziness at the lowest pandering denominator. Sleaziness that's a constant
in their lives, by the way, unlike trips to the museum which occur rarely. Her
kids laugh and hoot at Lady GaGa, because they think that's what they're
supposed to do.

Sometimes,
the carefully planned lessons, carefully chosen books, and carefully spoken
words at school are just not even close to enough, to counterbalance the powerful attraction of our vulgar, ADD world.

And
that's a shame--because forays into the real world are often the juiciest
opportunities for real learning. In spite of the possibility (OK, the
certainty) that things will go wrong, getting out of Dodge has always been my
favorite learning strategy. I have taken 135 8th graders into a smoky dive of a
jazz club on Rush Street in Chicago (at noon, with the bartender slinging
frozen pizza and pitchers of coke), to watch the house band play a blues set
then offer my best drummer the opportunity to sit in on "Summertime."
We played a concert for old men in wheelchairs at a Veteran's Home in St.
Louis, and another on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, as jets flew overhead.
We've seen symphony orchestras in seven different cities, and at least as many
musicals. Preparing the kids for a field trip is much more than raising money
and laying down rules for the bus--it's curriculum.

Here's
an exciting field trip destination: Cleveland. Cleveland actually does
rock--and it was far less expensive than New York or Washington D.C.. The
centerpiece of our visit to Cleveland was a day at the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame, one of my favorite places on earth. It was a hard sell to get the kids to
agree to Cleveland (their first choice was New Orleans), but the opportunity
for unlimited time wallowing in Rock and Roll finally clinched the deal. I went
on a visit, solo, a few weeks before taking the 8th graders, to scope out new
exhibits and give them a recommended day plan of activities. There was a list
of must-sees--Mystery Train, a short film on the roots of rhythm and blues, and
the exhibit on Motown. And there was also a traveling exhibit on sex and drugs
in the rock culture, featuring lots of nasty language, bare skin and the
occasional corpse.

While
I may have let my personal children see the exhibit, with some prior
information and lecturing from Mom, I knew it was not my prerogative to let
other parents' 8th graders see the presentation. So I told the students that it
was there, it was inappropriate, and they could see everything else. Then I
posted rotating parent sentries at the theatre door. A few kids approached and
were checked by the chaperons, but most didn't even try. There were plenty of
other things to see and do. It was a fabulous day.

Before
leaving Cleveland the next day, we visited the zoo, an activity we added at the
last minute to give kids a chance to release some energy before the long bus
ride home. Cleveland has a world-class zoo, with an amazing Rain Forest. It was
in the Rain Forest, at the orangutan exhibit, that I came around the corner and
found half my students watching two orangutans very publicly expressing their desire to make more orangutans. One of the
chaperoning dads--a minister--turned to me and said, "And here we were
worried about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

And
so it goes.