Activities and Shiteous Kids

I didn’t realize that mean kids really do sprout early. My daughter attends school at a very small enclave in the Hollywood Hills where the tiny school is divided into a “gifted” magnet and a “home school.” The magnet was put in to service kids in the poor parts of LA back in the day, before charter schools and at a time when this school didn’t have enough kids. The magnet, twenty years later, draws many kids from all over LA, many of them not disadvantaged in the least. It also draws from its own pool in the Hollywood Hills, a neighborhood that is supposed to have a good home school. The savvy parents “get their kids into the magnet” and those who don’t take their chances. Most of the teachers at this school are exceptional. But there are some who aren’t. And thus, it can be risky. At least in the magnet the lessons are for “advanced” students. It’s quite disgusting when the big picture is revealed — and my kid is as smart, if not smarter, than many of the kids in the magnet (though some are really really bright) and yet isn’t getting the advantages of the other kids because there are no checks and balances in the “home school.” At. all. I could go on but I won’t. I started this merely to say that the most difficult thing to stomach at this is school is the attitude by some of the less evolved children to act as though they are somehow better because they were “selected” for the magnet. In truth, it is a matter of points, mainly.

So, my daughter acted in this school’s first school play. And she was one of the only “home school” kids who auditioned and stayed in it. Well, yesterday they had their cast party; some of the kids referred to it as the wrap party! That’s Hollywood for you. And they were like, “4th grade magnet at this table! Only 4th grade magnet!!” And that was most of the cast. They were signing sons and acting otherwise elitist and smug. The others sat around looking sort of sick and sad. So, being the unstoppable busy body that I refrained from smooshing a pizza slice in their smug faces but I did say that what they were doing was mostly wrong and that they were hurting the other kids’ feelings. Believe me, I could have said more but I might have gotten tossed off campus. I will eagerly await the moment they leave this ridiculous school and go to one where the playing field is leveled. Rude awakening coming atcha!

Embittered today but only slightly.