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Jewish World Review Feb.15 2005 / 6 Adar I, 5765 No tutoring in the tub By Lenore Skenazy
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Want to get your teenager out of the bathroom fast? Of course you do. So run out and buy the new SAT Vocabulary Shower Curtain.
That's right, I'm talking about a $15 clear vinyl curtain covered with big words, dictionary definitions and eventually — if your kid is a normal, well-adjusted student who lives for anything other than A's — tear-salted soapsuds that spell out, "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" Naturally, that is not how entrepreneur Kevin Tung sees this curtain of his. No, he says his goal is "simple, stress-free learning."
And just how stress-free is it to take a shower with Stanley Kaplan standing (metaphorically) next to you? It ain't. But in this overachieving cramfest we call the 21st century, time is a-wasting! Crank up the Mozart and crack open the books!
Tung, who calls his company Intuitive Learning (tilcoweb.com), is aiming to make sure not one moment slips by without some extra tutoring.
"Our whole concept," he says, "is to take basic household items and put education topics on them."
Basic items like, say, cereal bowls? That kind of thing?
Exactly! "A student can be eating breakfast and at the bottom of his bowl are geometry shapes and equations," enthuses Tung, who is already at work on just such an item. "If a student stares at that bowl every day for 365 days, they're bound to understand what an isosceles triangle is."
Unless, of course, by Day 23 that student has smashed the bowl, packed his bags and left a note: "Gone to make things from sticks. Back in a decade."
Now listen — I, too, want the best for my kids. I want them to love to read and get good grades and graduate college and earn a living and get married and have grandchildren soon, because I had my own kids so late and I'm getting old and . . . what was I saying? Oh yes, like most parents, I, too, want my kids to ace those SATs.
But not if it means turning life into one unending homework session. I mean, what's next? Flash card toilet paper? Undies embossed with epic poems? Alphabet soup in Latin, Greek and hieroglyphics? I'd joke about plush toys teaching phonics, but those are already hugely successful!
The idea behind all these items is that kids are vessels to be filled, and the ones stuffed fullest win. But that's assuming that kids should be stuffed full of test prep. They shouldn't.
Stuffing kids full of cookie-baking works for me. Skating, doodling, dancing — those are all good kid-stuffers, as is time in the tub with bubbles, not words like "bombastic," "bellicose" and "bulbous."
Tung says he did "very well" on his SATs — so well that he got into Columbia. But what is he doing now? Peddling shower curtains.
Let that be a lesson.
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