I went to pick The Dormouse up from preschool the other day and she was outside playing with friends. Since she doesn't often get that chance at home, I let her play for a few minutes more and wandered around the classroom while I was waiting for her. It's kind of fun, really, to see all the lesson plans on the walls in the form of kids' artwork. There's generally a parent communication board (a flip chart) for parents to read in the corner of the room explaining what they've worked on that day that says something to the effect of "Today we learned about the letter E. We talked about gardens and sang a song about elephants."

This particular day, the parent communication board said, "Today we learned about our brains. We learned that different parts of the brain do different things. We talked about what foods are healthy for our bodies. The children enjoyed coloring pictures of the brain and learning the names of the areas of the brain."

And then, I KID YOU NOT, multiple pages of the following black and white diagram were posted over and over on the wall, with the different parts of the brain having been colored in as follows by four-year-old hands:



Since when does a four-year-old need to know about Wernicke's area? Or the premotor cortex? Isn't that a little esoteric for preschool??? And it wasn't like they just colored it for fun... the names, the lines pointing from the name of the part, and the part of the brain were all colored the same color as that part of the brain - they'd clearly been instructed which area was which. Does a preschooler even know what short term memory IS, much less what area of the brain inside their heads that they've never seen is responsible for said short term memory?

I'm wondering how I received such a lacking education since I was deprived of learning about Wernicke's area until I was in college. I hope this means she'll grow up to pursue a career like Brain Surgeon, or something equally specialized, which garners her a lot of money and that she'll use that money to take care of me in my old age... as a thank you for providing her with such an excellent preschool education. Because next year? It's all public school for you, kid!