Spaced Out

My 6-year-old son -- a first-grader -- is learning more in school than I remember learning at his age. Thanks to the California Distinguished School he attends, he knows all the continents on the planet, he produces art that’s suitable for framing, and he can do math that I couldn’t do in high school. Before winter break, he and his classmates each had to do an oral presentation in front of the class where they were graded on eye contact, hand gestures, the use of visual aids and the memorization of at least four lines of dialogue. My son’s gonna be smarter than me within the year, which is fine. But I worry he doesn’t have a chance to be a kid, that academics are consuming his life. He assured me, however, that he gets plenty of time to play. A couple weeks ago while at recess, he said, he and some friends put a man into space.