I was watching 'How do they do that' on YouTube with Jasmine a few weeks ago. Down the right hand of the screen was a list of videos and one caught my eye: Square watermelons grown in Japan. Apparently, Japanese watermelon growers were thinking about profit margins and efficiencies and decided that square watermelons would be much more economical to stock - they'll stack nicely on a shelf.
When I was watching the video I was so impressed, until they got to the end of the video. It turns out that these square watermelons are no good at all for eating - the growing process renders them inedible, mainly because they have to harvest them before they are ripe, or they explode!
It made me think about Jasmine. Children come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with personalities and characters that vary hugely. Schools try to cater for children as individuals, but at the end of the day, they have to deliver a curriculum to children in classes of 30. If they don't get through the curriculum, the children won't be ready to learn the next year's curriculum, etc.
I started to wonder if Jasmine was being grown into a 'square watermelon'. A square watermelon can only be grown by squashing the natural shape out of the developing fruit. By restricting it's growth in one direction and forcing it to grow in another. Some children, some fruits, will cope well with this. Take Isla - our youngest. She'll spread in whatever direction is available. She'll fill every bit of space she's allocated. She'll make the most of every moment. She's resilient and headstrong - like Japanese knot weed!
Jasmine is like a tender flower that will perhaps grow a little in any soil, but won't thrive unless the conditions are just right. She wasn't thriving and in fact, she was just surviving. I wondered if she would survive the growing process, or if she'd explode?
