Back to School !

Holy Crap.

I was up at four a.m. I think I slept a grand total of three hours. I got a drive with my neighbour who dropped me off at the Irving. I picked up a coffee and paid the rude grumpy, girl behind the counter. I ask myself, why to rude people work in the service industry? I say people get another job! I just wish I could get the nerve to say it out loud to them!

I didn't have to wait too long for a ride and a very nice truck driver stopped. He said he'd spent the last 22 years in Israel and was originally from Russia. He said he didn't like the Summer weather all the time in Israel. I thought on that a minute and about prying the icicles from my arse.

Well I have fifteen days within the month left to finish school.

We had our in progress critique today for Open Media and I got some good ideas regarding my final project which involves my late husband's writing and my long hand journals that span from 1972 up to the present. Someone suggested I scan them both. Good idea!

Good thing I got my painting done over the weekend, it's due on Thursday.

On a totally unrelated topic, I hate house work.

There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse. ~Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, 1968

School

I hated school, not learning, but the way public school approached teaching and how memorizing was more important than whether or not you learned anything that would be practical to your life. It was more about regurgitating what you memorized for an exam and if you forgot it immediately after, it made little difference to anyone.Reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator, that was the goal. There was never any sense of the individual being nurtured or encouraged.

I heard a man on C.B.C radio, the program, Ideas. His name was John Taylor Gatto. He taught 25 years in the New York public school system and he was an awarded teacher of the year, for New York State. He explains it all very well how the school system works, or doesn't work. He has written a book entitled, Dumbing Us Down. He talks about the seven lessons that are taught in schools generally.

1.Confusion

2.Class position

3.Indifference

4.Emotional dependency

5.Intellectual dependency

6.Provisional self-esteem

7.One can't hide

If you are interested in his web site it is www.johntaylorgatto.com It clarifys it all for me.