HS Comments on the Fly

Yes, another young driver has been loosed on an unsuspecting public.

She passed her driving test!

I can now stop desperately trying to figure out if we had covered everything. I was obsessing.

Here’s the big secret of our success: Do a lot of practice driving in the neighborhood where the driving tests are usually given. Being familiar with the streets you’ll be driving on during the test is a real advantage. We even practiced driving in and out of the DMV parking lot, etc.

I found John Taylor Gatto’s discussion of driver training as it applies to education in general rather timely. This bit demonstrates Gatto’s unswerving (good pun, eh?) clarity:

Notice how quickly people learn to drive well. Early failure is efficiently corrected, usually self-corrected, because the terrific motivation of staying alive and in one piece steers driving improvement.

Yes, I feel like my life has become overrun with driver training. Actually I think that being gone from the home for 4-5 hours every day is too unnerving. I’m not getting my usual work and play done, and I’m all off kilter. I miss my walk with the dogs, our read alouds, and our lunchtime movie. Plus I’m not getting any time in on my update of my Latin/Greek roots book or a few other projects that I should be making headway on.

Our textbook for driver training: Drive Right. Recommended.

My daughter is still working on learning to drive. We spent about three hours yesterday out on the road and working on parallel parking.

Parallel parking. Is it even necessary these days? My husband says that he parallel parks fairly often, but I don’t. I couldn’t tell you the last time I parallel parked. (Well, except for yesterday while demonstrating my great parking talent to my daughter.) I avoid parallel parking. It’s an anachronism. No. It’s worse than that because it’s never been truly necessary, not even a long time ago. So, yeah, I guess I have been boycotting parallel parking for some time. I will continue to do so. I call on you to join me.

Hey, I do have some hair left. I’ve not torn it all out. My daughter is driving well. However, traffic is a nightmare. If we had a decent bus system, we might be able to put this whole thing off until later. We’ve tried using it, but the buses are too infrequent, running at one hour intervals. But back to the traffic. Turning left out onto the boulevard in front of the driver testing facility is nearly impossible. There needs to be a light there.

My daughter has called all her friends, who have already taken their driving tests, and has learned these valuable tips:

• breathe in and out at a stop sign before continuing on
• put the car in park when you finish parallel parking
• don’t drive 25 in a 35 mph zone
• don’t pull out into a regulated intersection and wait while turning left

She’s a fine driver. I’m only worried about her passing the driving part of the test. Rumor has it that those who administer the driving test can be capricious. My son passed easily and with enough errors that you’d think he should have been flunked. To me, that makes no sense because we’ve heard stories of terrifyingly picky testers. So my daughter is preparing for the worst.