Wherein I Mourn the Death of Common Sense, and Admit to my Fogeyness
Mamacita says: I hate to think I’m turning into a fogey, or, even worse, am already there, but it seems to me that people are getting more and more ignorant by the minute. It doesn’t seem as though they’re doing it accidentally, or against their will, either; it seems as if they’re happy being ignorant and don’t intend to do anything about it. It’s willful.
I do have a few questions for these people and for those piss poor teachers who enable them, however. Here we go:
How can you understand the present and make sure the future is viable if you don’t know anything about the past? Education is all about connections!
How can you understand people, things, times, and everything else if you don’t read? Whether you’re holding an actual book in your hands and turning the paper pages with a moistened finger, or holding an actual book in your hands and turning the on-screen pages with a swipe of a (hopefully) dry finger, people who read know more and understand more and have more schema to bring to the table and are therefore more able to make connections between and among all kinds of diverse things which makes them smarter and more capable of surviving when the bomb drops and we’re all living in caves and fending off radiation burns, keloid scars, and the “grasshoppers” among us who never saw it coming, didn’t believe it if they DID see it coming, and figured they’d just mooch off the rest of us if it did come. Nonreaders have only one world in which to live, and how sad is that? It’s all about the connections!
What kind of person am I? I am apparently a mean, selfish git who thinks people need to bone up* on everything they can get their hands on so they will be at least somewhat prepared even for the unthinkable, or for a long airplane trip, or a debate. Or Jeopardy. Or to justify their existence. . . . .
Because, you know, there may come a time – and our lights here have been flickering on and off in this storm for an hour or so, just tonight – when we don’t HAVE access to Google, and those who don’t believe in memorizing or learning facts or making connections, etc, will find themselves clueless in a world that requires actual knowledge, not just some kind of simple willful ignorance that honestly believes a keyboard and a monitor will answer any questions they might have as they skip through life empty-headed.
These people claim that imagination and creativity will take the place of knowledge, but they don’t understand that imagination and creativity, without knowledge, have nothing to work with. Wings are best when there are also roots to count on, and vice versa. One without the other is pretty bland, boring, and sad. And useless.
I’m a computer fanatic/geek/nerd myself, you know. I am also imaginative, whimsical, and flighty to the point of absurdity. But I have also accumulated, and continue to accumulate, enough schema that I can apply it to life in general and understand that to be one-sided, or even merely two-sided, isn’t enough. In order to get the most out of life, we need to be multi-faceted. To be otherwise is to render oneself pretty much useless, boring, outdated, and, not to mince any more words, pathetic.
L.M. Montgomery, who is one of my favorite authors, summed it up beautifully in A Tangled Web:
“Why,Mother? What can you say against him?”
“There’s nothing in him,” said Mrs Howard feebly. She thought it rather a poor reason, not realizing that she was actually uttering the most serious indictment in the world.
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There is so much wonder and whimsy out there, and so many awesome things waiting to be found out by us, and everybody can have a shot at them. Why do so many people choose not to even try? And what good are such people, anyway?
The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car… a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little. — Ben Sweetland
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The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. — Eden Philpotts
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* Heh, she said “bone.”
How To Tell Good Parents from Bad. Etc.
Mamacita says: I think our school are too big. Large corporations sounded good on paper; they meant all students would have access to the big laboratories, the college courses, the winning basketball teams, etc. Those things are true. For some students, they are perfect.
But ultimately, I think what large school corporations have done is eliminate neighborhood camaraderie and family time. Who has time to sit down to a family dinner in the evening any more? We’re too busy driving our kids back and forth to the school. Why don’t the kids walk? Because the school is thirty-six miles away.
It isn’t only fast food that makes our children fat; it’s riding everywhere because the schools are too far from the neighborhoods.
It used to be that almost every neighborhood had a school within walking distance. Now, even children who live across the street from their school must ride the bus because of insurance prohibitions against pedestrian students.
School function after hours? Even if their parents worked, students used to be able to walk to school for choir practice, ball games, etc. Not now. Some kids live a good hour’s drive from their school. And some kids who live across the street from a school aren’t allowed to go there because of busing (one of the stupider ideas of our time); they are forced instead to go to school a good long drive away.
A child whose parents are unable or unwilling to drive him/her to school in the evening will not be able to participate in the things that make school fun, such as choir, plays, programs, sports, band, etc. ( am still sickened by the father who refused to drive his son to the ratio station’s big spelling bee playoff because he wanted to watch a ball game and, dammit, he’d worked all day and was tired. His son had to forfeit because he had a lazy father. (Whenever I see this man out in public, even now, years later, the loathing almost blinds me. Also, I didn’t vote for him or anyone else in his political party that or any other year. Yes, this is ridiculous, but I don’t want to be associated with this man or anyone else who is associated with him. He’s a bad, bad father; therefore, nothing else he says or does means anything to me. Everyone and everything he touches is as worthless and bad as he is, by association.) (Don’t ever piss me off.)
Why aren’t there very many members of the marching band any more? Because too many parents aren’t willing or able to take their child all the way back to school in the evening, or spend (sometimes) hours waiting in parking lots for the band bus to bring them back from an out-of-town function.
And while it is very, very true that many parents just aren’t able, for whatever reason (and some of the reasons are good ones) to spend that many hours on the road to school and back, it is also true that many parents just don’t care enough about their child to put forth the effort. They’re tired, and they wanna watch football, dammit, and the kid has no business in the band anyway, or anything else that bothers me after work. Dammit again, and where’s my beer.
Sure they’re tired. I was tired, but I spent what amounts to years, sitting in the van, waiting for a bus. Why? Because I LOVED my kids and that’s part of parenting. I took mine, and I took many of their friends whose parents didn’t love them as much as I loved mine, and I’m not taking back that statement.
(Those parents whose work schedule or health didn’t permit such things are an exception.) (Those parents who chose tv and personal relaxation over their child should be dragged out into the streets and shot, and their children given to GOOD parents.)
Ahem. The point is, more kids would be in better shape physically, and be able to participate in more activities, if they still had a neighborhood school they were allowed to attend. People would know each other, and neighborhoods would be closer and friendlier, and parents would be able to let their kids play outdoors more because they would know that most parents in the area would be on the lookout for pervs and accidents and kids behaving badly.
My kids are grown up now, but whenever I see one of those parents who chose not to participate in his/her child’s growing-up years, who chose not to sit in the gym and watch them play, or sing, or act, I still want to wring their disgusting necks. Ironically, most of these same parents miraculously found both time and money for sports and games.
My solutions? Some of you won’t like them.
Get rid of the huge consolidations. Bring back small neighborhood schools, with small class sizes and teachers who are allowed to TEACH, not just bring more money to a district by force-feeding children and banking on what’s puked back out.
How about making people pass IQ and EI tests before permitting them to reproduce? (Just kidding, so don’t go all PC on me.)
Okay then. These two things should take care of everything: Decent Intelligent Administrators Who Care More About Students Than About Politics, and Parents Who Care More About Their Children Than About Their Own Personal Comfort And Habits.
I haven’t found any of the first, and very few of the second, yet. Have any of you?
Roast Beef, Grilled Cheese, & Traditions
Mamacita asks: Where do these family traditions get started?
Remember that anecdote about the young bride whose husband asked her why she cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan?
She told him she did it that way because her mother always did it that way.
So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.
At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.
His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?
“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”
When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.
Both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich unless it is made with Velveeta.
Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!
When my son visits, he often requests grilled cheese sandwiches the minute he enters the house. When he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”
He’s an adult now, but he still wants his grilled cheese sandwiches flattened with the spatula. Why? Because that’s how his mother always made them.
When he gets married, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?
Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.
(Rerun. You’re not crazy. At least, not on this account.)
