Interpreter of Violence

A friend keeps telling me about the varied and creative book reports her eleven-year-old son is assigned at a Jewish private school here in Miami. Their enrollment has been low these last couple of years, so she's always trying to pitch me the school. Simon would love it--small classrooms and all this creativity. She's told me that every three weeks her son has to put together a book report, usually on a Caldcott or Newberry winner at a fifth grade reading level. And yet, the reality is her son rarely has to write a book report--most of the assignments involve making a mobile about the characters, or a diorama, or a lap-book, or decorating a paper bag and then filling it with cardboard pictures of all the characters with descriptions written on the back. Her son rarely completes these creative assignment on his own. My friend helps him every step of the way after she goes out and purchases whatever art supplies are needed to put them together. Sometimes these reports eat up most of her weekend.

"You should see these projects, Claudia. They are so incredibly cute," she says to me.

We haven't done any cute and creative book reports this year. Every week Simon writes a composition on an American president. At this point in the year, they've been running 3-5 paragraphs, a full page. Last summer, when the evaluator came to review Simon's portfolio and I told her my plans for this year--lots of history and weekly reports on the presidents--she said to me: "Think about varying the writing assignments a lot. Make them fun. Don't have him doing the same thing over and over." Then she walked down the driveway toward her car, turned and waved: "Remember: variation. See you next year."

The academic year is almost up, and the paper production in this home, although extensive, has been anything but varied, or creative, or child-centered . I've asked of Simon that he do a drawing of each president--that's about as creative as it's gotten. Furthermore, we haven't been reading any grade-level Caldecott and Newberry winners because in years past, Simon either read them to me, or I read them to him, and in this manner we've read many, if not most. Fact is, the substance of the learning in this home hasn't leaned toward the innocent for quite a while.

Instead, Simon has been reading history: American history, world history, and presidential biographies. For every couple of historical achievements there seem to be a handful of bloody disasters, some of which topple forests of people, whole cities, oceans of life. For fiction and non-fiction, Simon has read books like War Horse by Micheal Morpurgo, a popular children's novel in Britain, which tells the story of the million horses that died during World War I from the perspective of a horse--that book made quite an impression on both of us. He also read a book about Pompei, another about Vietnam, and The Story of Slavery, and books like The Mozart Question, also by Morpurgo, which is set in Venice and deals with Holocaust survivors. Moreover, Simon has made his way through a handful of abridged Dickens novels, all of which provide a disturbing mix of villainy, generosity, poverty, monstrosity, murder, betrayal, utter indifference to the suffering of others.

I don't think I would get a job teaching at that Jewish private school.

These literary choices are only partially my doing. Many years ago, when my younger sister was living in London, she turned me on to the British Usborne Young Reading Series. Whenever she came to visit, she would bring a couple of Usborne readers for Simon. By the time Simon progressed to level three, the subjects had turned deadly serious: the Crusades, pirates, slavery, gladiators, Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust, the Samurai, Vietnam, the abridged Bleak House. Still, they're always an interesting read. Simon can plow through them in two days, and they provide a week's worth of conversation and research.

The literary choices are very much Simon's. They reflect his interests. Last week, he asked me if I could help him find a book on the Crimean War because from an audio book he'd learned about Florence Nightingale. We're reading about Woodrow Wilson this week. Simon wants pictures of World War I, a whole book's worth. He wants to learn more about poison gas.

"Those soldiers went blind, Mom. That stuff was horrible."

I say: "You know Simon, after that war people decided that war was truly a terrible thing. It's hard to believe, but countries don't go to war as easily as they did before World War I."

As the words leave my mouth, I'm not sure any of this is true, or that I actually believe it. But they seem the right words to say to my young son. These last months I've realized I'm not the purveyor of cute projects--of which I've done my share when Simon was younger--but something I never expected to become when I began homeschooling Simon: I am an interpreter of violence. My job day in day out is to make sure all that loss of life has meaning.

Which brings me back to writing the same-old-same-old report on a president every week. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't worry at times that I'm doing the wrong thing. Maybe a mobile or two should be hanging from Simon's ceiling. Facetiously, I think, he could make one of the many heads chopped off during the French Revolution, which we studied a few weeks ago. Red tissue paper could trail from their necks. Silliness aside, I think I'm doing the right thing.

The writing goal for this year was to learn how to put a report together, how you organize your information and then say what you have to say in a coherent narration. It has taken eight month of doing the same thing over and over. The presidents change every week. The facts change. But the format remains the same. "Please write me a report about William McKinley," I said to Simon last week, and three days later he handed me such a thing. Last fall, stumped by how hard this was for Simon, I made a detailed worksheet for each one of these reports, breaking the assignment down sentence by sentence. Repetition leads to mastery. I'm not so sure cute projects are as effective.

A final word about repetition. So much of what is discussed in our home is carnage. For years, we couldn't get Simon to converse with us at dinner--he'd just sit there and shovel in his food. And then one evening he looked up and said: "Who was worse, Dad? Hitler or Genghis Khan?" Last week the conversation was about the story of Passover, how the Egyptians wanted to destroy the Jewish race. That conversation led to talk of Easter, which my mother and siblings celebrate (I was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism when I married George.) We talked of how Jesus wasn't the only one crucified. I reminded Simon that the Romans managed the outer edges of their empire with brutality, lining roads with crucifixions and leaving them there to rot as a warning. That same week we talked of the Crimean War and what army hospitals were like before Florence Nightingale came along. This led to taking a book about the Civil War off the shelf and looking at the pictures of field hospitals. I told him that they are so much better now, that soldiers survive the most devastating wounds.

"Mom, I don't want to be a soldier," Simon said.

Reminded constantly by my son of the fragility of life, all I know to do is to practice repetition, reassuring repetitive rituals. Meals, schooling, library, chores, play-dates, chess, piano, sailing, movie night, a big lunch on Sunday, come Monday ditto all over. The days and weeks are predictable, stable, peaceful, same-old-same-old. Somehow all that repetition adds up to safety, or so I tell myself.