How you know it's Spring--DC Style

I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog yet, but there is a tiny elementary school down the street from our apartment. I will not be sending my children there.

I'm sure it's a fine school--the parents who drop their kids off in their BMWs certainly look like they could have had their pick of places to educate their children, and they picked this one. But in my opinion, this is a very sad, sad elementary school. Not because the children who go there are "underprivileged" in the normal sense of the word--just the opposite. But these children are definitely deprived of something.

These kids walk to school every day on the concrete streets, dodging homeless people and pigeons, or else they are dropped off with the dry cleaning on their parents' way to work. These kids will never know the fun of handclap games played with Christi S. as they are shuttled into town on the big yellow bus. These kids will never have "field day" with shaving cream fights and kickball. These kids will never spend an entire recess camped out behind the school hunting for four-leaf clovers while plotting the next I Love Dusty T. Club. Instead, these kids will learn that trees are born in little fenced plots that crop up every five-or-so cement squares, and that the (imported) dirt they are planted in exists solely to serve as a dog-toilet. They will learn to modify their playground games so that they fit orderly into a 1/8 an acre space. And while these kids will have available to them every worldly opportunity--theatre, art, ethnic food, culture at their fingertips--at recess, these children will go outside and play on astroturf. Astroturf! This ra-ra city school can't even give these poor cement-grown children decent dirt and grass to play on outside.

The elementary school does at least make an effort to educate these kids a little bit about the seasons, however. Although the astroturf stays a vibrant green throughout the year, at springtime the teachers "plant" "flowers" in the "flowerbeds" that surround the fenced-in playground. So the kids at least get some plastic flowers to go with their plastic grass in the Spring. Ankur took a picture of one of these flowers on his way home from school the other day, so that I could share it with you.

Happy DC Springtime!