Darwinian? REALLY?

As many of you know, I have nannied for baby genius (now child genius) Lex for almost three years of his four years of life. I love him. Sometimes I think this is my shot at parenthood.

Other times, not so much.

Today was one of those days.

Lex is naughty. He is as socially underdeveloped as he is intellectually overdeveloped. (Yes, he does algebra now and is reading at a 5th grade level. He also speaks some Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Greek and Arabic due to his schooling at the International School of Minnesota. This has inspired him to make up his own alphabet which he calls "Silly Canadian speak" known in his actual language as "Suklanterninowenowe"...I can only imagine this is how Tolkein started Elvish.)

Anyway, yesterday he went on a rampage at kindegarten camp and destroyed a bunch of "block-creations" his classmates made. He wouldn't apologize to the teacher and so I took him home and we talked about it and he agreed to apologize today. He was ready. He fundamentally understood why it was a mean thing to do.

We walked in today and found Ms. Lindsay and I said, "Lex has something to say to you." I nudged him a little and he finally says, "I'm sorry I broke the block creations but my dad says school is Darwinian and sometimes it's okay to break stuff." Both of our jaws drop. I ask Lex what Darwinian means. As if reading a dictionary he promptly says, "Survival of the fittest!" I ask him what survival of the fittest means. Silence.

Rage. I feel rage. His father is training him to disrespect and belittle teachers. How is a 4 year old going to respond to being told it's okay to break stuff by his dad? How is a teacher going to be able to trump a parent's advice while still having to control a room of 12 other 4 year olds at the same time? How is a teacher going to deal with some little robot regurgitating a parent's lame scientific excise for why their kid is a little jerk sometimes? This is ridiculous.

I inform Lex that his dad is wrong and reminded him that when I was around, I was in charge. I told him that in fact, school was intended to be Utopian and not Darwinian and that I would explain that to his dad today. (Big words tend to impress Lex into your way of thinking as a general rule.) We tried the apology again. It went better. We then went around to the other kids whose feelings and creations he had hurt and apologized to them as well.

As I was leaving, his teachers thanked me for staying to handle that situation. As I was leaving, Ms. Lindsay said to me, "His dad sure isn't helping him make any friends, is he?"

I came home and wrote an e-mail that, while it wasn't as strongly worded in defense of teachers everywhere as I had originally wanted to, still got the point across.

In this Darwinian experiment, let's hope that ethics and love trump elitist tendencies as the "fittest." Let's hope even harder that I still have a job tomorrow...