One of the things I remember most fondly from my youth was a discussion that I had with my Dad when I was about 10 or 11. In previous summers we had been to Yorktown and Jamestown. We had been to Washington D.C. and Gettysburg. My parents made sure to introduce my sisters and I to our nation’s history and its foundations. I thought we had a pretty good grasp on what made us who we were.

So there I found myself in my parent’s kitchen one sunny afternoon waiting with a plan for my Dad to arrive home from work. For the life of me, I cannot remember what the issue was but there had been a great injustice in the Crimmins’ household. My sisters and I probably wanted to go to Fat Boy for dinner or something as pedestrian. We had voted and being that there were four votes in the affirmative and my Mom was the lone dissenting vote, we won. At least until Dad got home.

There he was, coming through the door in his Army uniform, looking every bit as serious as he could be. No doubt already tipped off by my Mom. We, my sisters and I, knew this was our moment. We would announce to him that we had voted and that we had won.

Hard stop.

My Dad let us have our moment. He let us make our case. We stated emphatically that we lived in a democracy and we had taken a vote and these were the results. After all we had seen the Capitol. We had seen where our Republic began. We knew we could not be stopped.

Then he gave us a powerful parenting lesson that I am sure he had plotted for quite some time.

My Dad spoke the words that I have remembered to this day. He said, “You are right. We do live in a sort of democracy, but within the four walls of this house we live in a dictatorship and your Mother and I are the dictators.” Those 30-odd words crushed our dreams and our spirits and came rushing back to me this week with regards to one of my own sons.

Just before the Christmas break, Brunswick High School announced that the midterm exams, which were to take place after break, would be optional. If the student was satisfied with the grade they had so far in the class they could choose not to take the test or prepare the presentation or do whatever the teacher had in mind.

For my son, who had very good grades to this point, he had already decided that he would not be taking the midterms because he was happy with his grades. And so it came to be that day, during a break from work and his schooling for lunch, we had a discussion. He was about to learn the same lesson that I learned 35 years ago.

I mentioned to him that I had just received an email about the midterms being optional. His immediate response, without so much as a breath, was that he would not be taking them. When I asked him why he told me that he did not want to lower his grades by taking a chance. I interpreted that to be he did not want to do the work.

As I told him that he would be taking the exams he looked at me like I had three heads and I am sure chalked up my absurd pronouncement to it being close to Christmas.

So we fast forward to this past Monday. As my son came home from his arduous three and a half hours at school he cautiously walked into my office and said, “…about the midterms, the teachers need to know by tomorrow that we are skipping them.” Here was my moment.

I told him that he would be taking the midterms for his classes and he immediately shrunk. “But why?” he questioned. “None of my other friends are taking them” he said. He went on to give me the stats of who was taking the exams in each of his classes. There were a handful in each class who would be joining him in taking the exams. The best one was when he stated incredulously that he would be the only person out of 55 students taking the midterm for chorus.

Clearly, nobody knows the trouble he’s seen.

As I sat there I explained to him that taking a test and measuring oneself against a standard was a powerful tool. It provides a sense of what you have retained and what you know. Not to mention in this crazy Covid era, taking a midterm is another way to occupy a student’s time instead of days filled with Youtube videos and gaming systems. By taking a test you might actually remember something important rather than the name of a social media influencer.

Ultimately, in true parent fashion, I said to my son, “You are taking the midterms because I said so.” It may not have been as poetic or as well thought out as my Dad four decades ago but I think it got the point across. Now let’s hope that he does not tank his grade by taking a midterm.

Jonathan Crimmins can be contacted at j_crimmins@hotmail.com.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.