It Keeps Coming Back Around

So John and I were driving away from his physical therapy appointment and he said "Jeez. Thats' a lot of pressure".
What?
"That he said he wants to see that much range of motion by Wednesday."
I shrugged.
"not that big a deal?"
 Well, honestly, (maybe this is the Lucius part of me) I don't put that much stock in other people's expectations of me.
"Oh my god. We so need to get that kid in a different school."

 How many degrees of separation between John's physical therapy and all our concerns about our kids' education? Two.

I don't remember elementary school being any sort of problem for me, but it may have still been a different education process back then. It all changed in middle school. Expectations were very different. I didn't make it all the way through high school in the public school system. I finished high school only by being at a small private theatre arts school with a very progressive academic program. And I didn't look once, let alone twice, at colleges. I moved to New York City, having been accepted at The Strasberg Institute. Then I used my tuition down payment money as a down payment on an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Very few people in my life ever even think about wheather or not I went to college.When they discover I didn't, they are usually surprised. My education was a very personal, experiential process.

John's education was much more traditional. He doesn't rememebr it fondly. He had trouble fitting in to the teachers' mold for a good student. He did do well in college. A teacher at our boys' school, upon hearing some of the trouble John had in school, asked "Is that what you want for your boys?". 
Well frankly, John is one of the most stable, happy, personally successful,  people I know. If my boys grow up to be just like their dad, then they have done very well for themselves. They don't need to have done all their homework and excelled on all the tests to be good people and find their way in life successfully.

I would like for school to be a place where they can discover themselves, learn what they are passionate about and get the life skills to follow that passion. Right now it is a system that they hate. They don't want to go. They are not performing at the level expected of them. They resist it all. Lucius downright refuses to do much of the work asked of him, just refuses.

He is totally unmotivated by others' expectaions of him.

and there we are, back at the conversation in the car.