I can’t remember now who it was (I know @sinesalvatorem has been talking about school lately, but I think it was before that) who was talking about the overly large grip the school system has on society, and gave the example of how “what grade are you in?” is often used instead of “how old are you?”. I was thinking this morning* about that, about my own attempts to navigate the dreaded “what grade are you in” question as a homeschooled child.
At first, when I was very young, I would just freeze in confusion. I had no idea what they wanted from me.
Eventually I learned it was a weirdly convoluted way of asking for my age. I didn’t think in grades, I thought in years. Sometimes, if I could remember the age–>grade translation algorithm well enough (it was hard to keep straight even at the best of times), I would translate for them. Other times I would try to cut to the point and give them my age in years. (Occasionally I’d get persistent people who would keep asking for a grade after being told an age. Usually I tried to explain that that’s not generally a meaningful question when you’re homeschooled**, either in that abstract way or–if I could remember the grade levels involved–saying things like “well, my math and history textbooks are designed for Xth grade, my spelling workbook for Zth grade, my writing textbook for Wth grade…”)
This all got worse after I moved to Canada, because it turns out that by Canadian standards I was born on a different side of the school birthday cutoff. While homeschooled grade levels are, as I said earlier, generally flexible, my parents had taken the lead of the American school system and started me on a kindergarten program at the same time I would have started public kindergarten, shortly before I turned six. While the grade levels of my textbooks soon diversified according to my abilities, there was a rough trajectory based on this starting point. In Canada, the birthday cutoff is in December instead of September, and a Canadian kindergarten would have wanted me shortly before I turned five.
There was no simple translation anymore, not even at the best of times. If I told them my grade, they would think of me as younger than I was. If I told them my age, they would think of me as older than I was. If I told them both, they would think to themselves “ah, she was held back a grade”, lower their estimation of my intelligence, and view me through that lens.
In an attempt to avoid all of these outcomes, I started to use longer explanations more often. For a couple of years in my mid-teens, the explanations began with “I lost count at 9th grade”, because frankly I had. I didn’t bother trying to get a grip on it again; what would it help if I were going to have to do the whole explanation anyway?
When I joined Girl Guides, soon after moving, I was placed by grade. I was placed according to the grade I was “actually in”, not the grade I “would have been in” if I’d been raised in Canada. I was a year older than people expected of me, and it tripped them up, especially in my last year after I reached age of majority.
(”You forgot the ‘parent or guardian signature’ bit on this form.”
“I’m eighteen. I am my guardian.”
“Oh, right.”)
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This sort of thing seems to be a common problem across a lot of people whose lives are weird in some way. Somebody asks you what they think is a simple question, expecting a simple answer, and you’re like “oh god, do I lie? do I say something technically true but highly misleading? do I dodge the question? do I give a short answer with lots of implied weirdness*** that raises more questions than it solves? do I launch into an explanation of why [it’s not a meaningful question]/[it’s more complicated than that]?”
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*An hour before waking-up time, goddammit brain.
**Sometimes you get homeschoolers who try to be very rigid and follow a strict grade system, but most of them loosen up before long and the ones who don’t are considered kind of weird.
***Example: “I’m on vacation between Xth and Yth grades,” says a child in October.
“ This sort of thing seems to be a common problem across a lot of people whose lives are weird in some way. Somebody asks you what they think is a simple question, expecting a simple answer, and you’re like “oh god, do I lie? do I say something technically true but highly misleading? do I dodge the question? do I give a short answer with lots of implied weirdness*** that raises more questions than it solves? do I launch into an explanation of why [it’s not a meaningful question]/[it’s more complicated than that]?” ”
aka brin summarizes MY ENTIRE LIFE ;P
OH MY GOD!!! so I feel this on a deep emotional level!!! Like I’ve been homeschooled my whole life and while I managed to keep track of my grade (because of church Sunday school) I eventually just started saying something along the lines of “well so age wise I’m a (insert grade here) but actual school wise I’m like (insert higher grade level here) in (this or that subject) and (whole other grade level) in (this or that subject)
As I reached high school I started just going by my hs grade because while I was doing entirely college level stuff I just started giving people the answer they were looking for (i.e. How many years into the awkward adult limbo stage are you?) it’s always confused teachers that I’ve worked with a lot who don’t have a grasp on how weird and wobbly homeschooling is compared with how structured “normal school” is.
*fistbump*
High school grades are even worse because they also have names. Like, “freshman” means 9th grade and “senior” means 12th grade, okay sure I guess, but I could never keep “sophomore” and “junior” straight. (Unless I actively had Wikipedia open in front of me, but unfortunately you’re usually not allowed to do that in offline conversations.) In high school, even on those occasions I couldn’t dodge the grade question, I tried very hard to go by number and avoid dealing with those damned confusing names.
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ngl, I was thinking of you when I wrote that bit
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