The following two words should strike cold terror into the heart of any normal product of the American education system: shoebox diorama. How many times as kids were we confronted with the challenge of building an insanely complex tableau out of toothpicks, cardboard, and Play Doh, all in the confines of an old sneaker box from Thom McAn? What is it about teachers and shoebox dioramas? I used to wonder if maybe my teachers were sadists who enjoyed torturing children by setting impossibly high standards of arts and craftiness. Now, thanks to my husband's eight year-old, I know the truth. Teachers aren't out to make life tough for kids. Teachers are out to make life tough for parents. I know this because my husband and I are currently doing very well in Miss Spell's second grade class. Oh, sure, we're not technically enrolled - Eric is - but we know perfectly well who all those assigned projects that come home every couple of weeks in his backpack are for. They're for us.

Due Monday: using sugar cubes, cotton swabs, and Elmer's glue, build a scale model of the Lincoln Memorial. Neatness counts! Write about the monument. For extra credit, include a drawing of Abraham Lincoln on colored construction paper, with two paragraphs about his life. Due Monday: using three different colors of modeling clay, shape the Atlantic seabed. Using your hands, push the ends of your seabed toward the center. This is undersea seismic activity. Write down your observations. Neatness counts! For extra credit, write two paragraphs explaining a tidal wave. Due Monday: cut out twelve pictures of different kinds of food from magazines. Arrange into the food pyramid, labeling each of your choices. Neatness counts! Write one paragraph describing your favorite foods. Glue your finished pyramid to poster board, cut it out, and attach a twelve-inch loop of yarn to the back. (Ask mom or dad for help with the scissors!)

Not everyone has an eight year-old kid. But everyone's been an eight year-old kid. If you recall, it's mighty hard when you're that age to trade an afternoon of riding your bike in the sunshine for one spent snipping photos of zucchini. It sounds neat to build something out of sugar cubes, but after twenty minutes of careful stacking and gluing, it seems just as neat to flick the cat on the head with your pencil. Plus, writing two paragraphs about anything can be as daunting as completing a Master's thesis. And when you're a kid, you're very focused on justice. Justice dictates that you've done enough schoolwork Monday through Friday, making it cruel and unfair to spend the whole weekend with Abraham Lincoln. Remember feeling this way? I do, and I swear, kids today have it worse. There is no way in the wide world that I brought these kinds of labor-intensive school projects home. I'm absolutely certain of this, because had parental involvement to this degree been a requirement of my graduating elementary school, my parents would still be walking me to the bus every morning. I'd never have gotten past the sixth grade.

My mom and dad believed wholeheartedly in education. They'd have enrolled us in year-round school if such things were available back then. My mom used to cry at the start of summer vacation, and it tore her up to see us miss a day for any reason, whether it be illness or Thanksgiving. Cynics might suggest that she just couldn't stand having us around the house all day, but I prefer to think of her as rabidly pro-learning. When it came to homework, though, we were on our own. Mom would stir her tea, light up a Pall Mall, lean back in her chair and remind us that she had finished grade school with honors, and as a favorite of the nuns, no less. It would be wrong, she'd add, for her to cheat us out of the thrill of learning for ourselves about long division, or sentence diagramming, or how the Hoover Dam was built. She, of course, knew all these things and more, but like the Sphinx, maintained a mysterious silence. It was no use asking my dad for help either. He didn't seem to quite believe that we were his problem, and frankly hoped that we would soon find some other place to live and make noise. He spent much of our childhood asking my mom why we were still awake, or if there was any other place we could go where we'd not be bothering him. One simply didn't approach such a person and ask for assistance with something as trivial as schoolwork. We muddled through on our own, though there were consequences. For example, the fire department held a fire safety poster contest every year. No Lynch child ever won. Science fairs were grim, as we rotated the moldy bread and salt crystal experiments between us. No blue ribbons for the Lynch kids. Any project involving clay, plaster of paris, or papier-mache was sure to result in a sorry-looking glob of goop. As for the dreaded shoebox diorama, ours were pathetic. Not because we were lazy and made no effort, but because we slaved away at them despite a complete lack of talent. It showed in the results. By the third grade, I knew that the prize-winning kids were getting help from their parents. There was just no way that Kimberly DiBernadinis could have built the Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks all by herself. But when I complained to my mom about the unfairness of it all, and demanded to know why she wasn't helping with my homework, she merely assured me that this sort of thing would catch up with Kimberly and kids like her, whereas I would be a competent, self-sufficient adult someday. Who wants to hear that crap at age nine? I wanted to win a prize, or have my project hung in the school hallway. I wanted to be a star.

When Eric first started bringing complicated projects home, we didn't know how to handle it. Were we allowed to be helping him? Were we supposed to be helping him? Late at night, we'd read the assignments aloud to one another, marveling at the enormity of what was required. Build what out of what? What do you mean, write six stories about the Civil War? Using how many different colors of construction paper? He has to make up a skit? This is second grade? My memories of second grade are more of Alfred Delfino laughing till milk shot out of his nose during lunch, than they are of secession or states rights. But Eric's obviously getting a stellar education, and now, so are we. After two or three hours spent researching the Battle at Gettysburg, and looking at pictures of cannons and soldiers, and talking about the North and the South, and laying out all of the colored pencils and paper and rulers and print-outs of maps and summaries, the temptation to simply dictate what he should write was nearly overwhelming. We resisted, though barely. He, like many eight year-old boys, wanted to draw six pictures of cannons and guns, and write about those. I nearly caved in out of sheer exhaustion, but his dad held firm. By Sunday night, we had coaxed, encouraged and cheered him on to a fine finished product, all drawn in full color with neatly written paragraphs and good spelling. We felt like we'd marched into battle ourselves. His dad carefully strung the whole thing together with yarn, as specified. That night -- and the next morning -- I couldn't resist going back to look at it, over and over again. We felt such a sense of accomplishment and pride. When Eric's project was hung in the hall, emblazoned with an A+, you'd have thought that Mark and I were awarded the Nobel. We were that thrilled.

Upon reflection, I see the wisdom of assigning work that forces parents to be very involved. It's an opportunity to be hands-on in a child's schooling, and to have real input in teaching the child how to learn. It's a good way to show a kid where and how to find the answers to their questions, how to break a project down into manageable parts, and how to budget their time and resources. I think that where it used to be an extra advantage to have parents who were willing to roll up their sleeves and help out, now it's a necessity. I find myself wondering how kids who don't have able or caring adults in their lives manage to keep up. Step parenting will open your eyes to a whole new world of experiences and feelings, but I never dreamed that it would mean re-doing grades kindergarten through twelve. I'm already a nervous wreck over the square roots and algebra to come, though I'm feeling pretty cocky about social studies. My husband can't wait till we get to geometry and chemistry. One thing's for sure: school will be very different for us this time around -- and not just because we've already done it once before. This time, we get to talk in class, chew all the gum we want, and have make-out parties that are much, much more fun. Best of all, if we keep our grades up, and my penmanship improves, Eric might even take us to Disney World.