Rat Race and some rants

What with the swine flu and a teacher succumbing to it, in Tiny's school, the school was closed for couple of weeks. The exams postponed after the Dussehra holidays. All in all the kids had a gala time, with a month off, rainy dull days and with TV channels like POGO and Cartoon Network. But then days like this are way too less. I let them enjoy the times and did not demand too much of study time from Tiny.

For the exam she was supposed to write 5 colors and we had revised spellings for red, blue, green, black and white the previous night. Surprises galore, she comes back writing her own set yellow, blue,orange, pink, brown. No, I am not upset as long as she gets her spellings right. The singular, plural, opposites, addition, subtraction.. I was just hoping for the exam week to end soon. It did and both were relieved to see each other smiling.

Then comes the next nightmare, the new school admissions. This time of the year starts the application process and screening. I am told that the nursery admission for Little would be based on observation tests and for Tiny would be a test on Math and English skills. To top it all, parents are supposed to be interviewed with questions like:
1) We prefer stay at home moms, how could you as a working mom spend time coaching the kid?
Am i ready ...? Not yet.

The sarcasm does not end here, every school application requires you to fill in the position and salary of both the father and mother.
On another note, I was the one who was pushy in sending the Little to a montessori so that he gets sometime away from home say for 3 hours at the least. I have seen many parents who do not really want to send the kids under 3 to a play school either due to financial shortcomings or because they do have a full time family support and do not see the need. But the application forms for the above said schools need to know which montessori the kid goes to, not only that the contact nos of the same. I heard that they call back and do a check and if they get a good feedback, they do not interview the kid. I just gasped at the fact that may be we are preparing the kids for a job interview right from age 2-3 what with all reference checks.

And some of these schools are so net savvy that they SMS the parents after the school bus reaches the previous stop and also accept applications/assignments online.
There is more to RAT RACE and we just keep running...