I knew that my kids would one day call me stupid. But I thought that day would come around junior high, not in first grade. I expected to retain my omniscience through elementary school.

Now I hear from my 6-year old son, “You don't know, mom. You're not The Teacher.”

Knowledge is power, and power is exhilarating. I know this. So I shouldn't be taken aback at the cocksure, authoritative way with which he points to the night sky and says, “Look, Mom. That's the Big Dip.”

Nor should I argue with him when he comes home and tells me that the Great Wall of China can be seen from space. It's a highly successful urban legend, but untrue. Ask NASA.

And so he and I are gridlocked in a fierce academic debate. “It's visible from space.” “Is not.” “Is too.” “Is not.” “Is too.” “Is not.”

He makes a final, dazzling repartee: “You don't know. You're not The Teacher.”

He doesn't realize it, but he's just hooked his elbow into my craw in a most nettlesome way. Beneath layers of brain-dead maternity smolders a flame of academic pride – a memory, not quite dead, of my own education. I was an obnoxious student – overzealous, ambitious, competitive – but I loved school, its challenges and achievements. And amid the estrogen-induced haze of the last eight years, wherein I've birthed four boys, I've tried, during lucid moments, to fan that flame by remaining alert and literate.

So I can't ignore his remark like I should. He's cut me where it hurts. I feel compelled to prove to him – and to The Teacher – that I'm not as dumb as they think.

But we speak different languages. Pedagogy has changed much in one generation. I remember my mother groaning about my “New Math” homework, and thinking she must have grown up during the Ice Age. Now I understand.

I supervise his homework – worksheets with paragraphs of text, and he's to circle the “naming words.” What is the goal here, I wonder? To identify entire sentence subjects, or just the nouns? Are we considering pronouns? I opt to include the pronouns.

“No no no!” he screams. “That's not a naming word!”

“It is, too. It replaces the name of the person and forms the subject of the sentence.”

“But it's not a name.”

“Precisely, that's the point of a pronoun.”

“But it's not a name and I'm only supposed to circle the naming words.”

Is he right? I may be setting him up to get answers wrong, if pronouns weren't what they intended. So I attach a note: “Mrs. Jones, I wasn't sure if the intent of this assignment was to capture both nouns and pronouns, or just nouns. We included both, as they can both be the subjects of sentences. Can you explain to me the intent of this exercise?”

We had the same problem with “describing words.” Does that mean adjectives, or all modifiers? Adverbs describe. So again I attach a note to the teacher.

I fear that my notes are pinned to the wall of the teachers' lounge with darts.

Pedagogical Philistine I may be, but I don't think the grammatical terms we've used for centuries should be watered down. Instead of simplifying, it confuses things. Things like parents. Will Susie land an editorial job with the New York Times with her ‘naming' and ‘describing' words?

My second grader brings home a math workbook. Again, the approach is very different, emphasizing patterns, estimations, logic and word problems. This is probably valuable. But again, I send in notes. If he's going to get wrong marks, I can't let the teacher think it's because I don't know math. I went to engineering school, for crying out loud.

A word problem: “Andy has 10 balls. Six are blue. How many are red?”

Necessitating: “Dear Mrs. Smith: This question is ambiguous. More information is needed. Two of the balls could be green. The editors of this workbook need to be held to higher standards of accuracy and clarity.”

Her reply: “The answer is four.” Unspoken answer: “Everyone else got it, you fussy uptight nitwit.”

What am I out to prove? That I can outsmart the second-grade math curriculum? Has it really come to that?

I need to find a better outlet for my pent-up zeal. It appears I'm still seeking to impress the teacher, by proxy, through my kids.

My son is wrong when he looks to the sky to find the Big Dip. He should look to the kitchen sink where she's usually standing.

© 2005, Julianna Berry.