Up a Tree without a Paddle

Look! Up in the Tree! It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! It’s a… It’s a Child?

On the Stanford Early School Achievement Test appeared the following question: five year-old students were shown three pictures, a kitten in a tree, a snake in a tree, and a child in a tree. The children were asked, “Which of the these would cause you to call 911”?

Sandra, mother of an adorable five-year-old posed this question to our running buddies over breakfast one early morning last week. You may wish to take some time to consider whether a kitten in a tree, a snake in a tree, or a child in a tree would compel you to call 911 before reading ahead. Take all the time you need. I’ll wait right here.

Ready? Put your pencils down. Our discussion begins with my buddy, Tim, a man of rare discernment despite over 30 years as a professional fire fighter. Tim felt strongly that the kitten in the tree was the correct answer. “That’s what people always call us for, a cat in a tree” he said. Scratching his head he went on, “Of course, sometimes we wished they wouldn’t. If we have actual fires to put out, for example.”

Yet Tim was mistaken-sadly mistaken. Grossly mistaken. Horribly mistaken. Here he was, a college graduate with over a hundred men under his command, yet he was no smarter than a first grader.

Feeling equal parts sorry for Tim-poor thudpucker–and certain of the validity of her insight, Lorna spoke up next. “I see a snake in a tree I am calling 911 before you can say, ‘Oh, shit! Look at that snake in the tree!’”

Sandra shook her head again.

And a hush fell over the assembled sweaty breakfasters.

Because products of Miami public schools that many of us are, even we could tell that if a kitten in a tree is the wrong answer and the snake in the tree is the wrong answer then the child in the tree must be the right answer.After a stunned silence, Tim spoke. “So, it’s come to this. Children are supposed to suckle on screens, stay indoors in front of the TV. A child in a tree is wrong.” Tim paused. “I’m glad my kids are grown,” he said.

Standardized tests don’t harm children; wrong answers do.

Where did we go so very wrong? Can it possibly be the case that a child in a tree is now so unlikely as to merit an emergency call? It is probably just as well that 911, which was first used in 1968 but did not become well known until the 70s, was not around when I was a kid. To the best of my recollection my friends and I lived almost exclusively in trees exiting infrequently to forage for sandwiches or find more rotting boards to bring up into said trees to build what could charitably have been called “forts” but were in actuality a collection of surfaces with bent and broken nails sticking out of them at dangerous angles. When we got tired of the trees we would walk down to the bay and swim out to the barrier islands to look for sea urchins. Sometimes we would find broken beer bottles, sometimes we would get tetanus shots. That we never actually drowned when swimming back from what is now an island covered with multi-story condominiums is a poor argument for allowing 12 year-old kids to play unattended. But there is something to be said for going outdoors in an unstructured way.

What do your kids do when you’re not around? Is their every moment accounted for? After soccer practice do they go to piano practice?

Have you, as loving parents, scheduled a little boredom for the kids? If necessity is the mother of invention then a lazy afternoon outdoors might be the answer to many of our children’s questions. For example, I’ll give you odds that, left to their own devices, your children could come up with more sensible test questions that the ones currently found on the Stanford Early School Achievement Test.