Graduation exercises have been completed. The last day of school for the 2007 – 2008 school year was this week. Can you remember that feeling of release when you were 9 years old and you walked out of the classroom in late May? You knew you had nearly three months free. Free from math homework. Free from book reports. Free from sitting next to that guy who thinks it is brilliant comedy to burp the theme to Gilligan’s Island, frequently.
With the fragmentation of society the school experience is one of the few things shared by most everyone. Not that everyone’s experience is the same. As long as there have been schools, there have been outcasts and cool people, brains and “academically challenged”, as well as athletes and picked-on-by-athletes.
I have this vision of Athens in 400 BC. Socrates is sitting with a bunch of young, Greek, would-be philosophers. He asks the students to work through a logic problem. If all Greeks wear togas and togas are a sign of high intellect then..?
Brain: All Greeks are intelligent.
Academically Challenged: The Aegean Sea…no, wait… twelve!
Cool Guy: Want to come over and see my Grecian urns?
Jock: I hold the Athenian records for discus, javelin and an Oracle of Delphi defying long jump.
Anti-Jock: My toga chafes something awful.
Outcast: Greeks are stupid, togas are stupid, and you’re stupid. I’m moving to Persia and raising cats.
I am willing to bet not only do all readers recognize the types mentioned above, but most can put actual names from his/her school days with each bit of dialogue.
As a student, a teacher, and an administrator I have spent more than thirty-five years in schools and classrooms. (Suddenly, I feel the need to weep, but at least I can diagram that sentence.) Schools in America are truly one of the last places on earth where all different kinds of people mix together. Sure there are cliques of people who gravitate towards each other in school, but when we get out into the world it is much easier to get more and more insulated within certain types and groups. When was the last time you spent quality moments with a person with whom you would have shared, giving or receiving, a wedgie? I’m not talking about the incredibly annoying guy at the convenience store checkout buying eight different varieties of lottery tickets and changing his mind between the cheapest brand of cigarettes and the next to cheapest brand. It would be so very satisfying to reach over and grab a fistful of the Fruit of the Loom waistband easily accessible because the pants he’s wearing are sagging well below the equator exposing the prime meridian. This is not quality time. It’s just a chance encounter slowing you down as you dig a few Kruggerands from your safety deposit box to buy enough gas to get to Cimarron.
Schools are not just places for cliques and stereotypes. They are so much more, but since I write a humor column I am going to talk about things which make me giggle.
As is often the case with school these days we have some big banners in the hallways with words of wisdom for the kids. My personal favorite reads: “Stand up for what is right even if you stand alone.” That by itself is a fine sentiment. The funny bit is instead of being attributed to some philosopher or world leader it is simply attributed to “Anonymous”. It is hard to take the guy seriously about standing alone if he won’t even own up to the quote.
There is another banner which just makes me shake my head and smirk at the irony. It reads: Character is what you do when no one else is watching. It is the only banner in the building which has been vandalized.
I was walking down the hall the other day looking at a bunch of cool posters created by students. They were all showing images and explaining things about American history. One poster also showed the importance of proof-reading. The title emblazoned across the top was: The French and Idian War. This brings to mind a bunch of French soldiers fighting tooth and nail with a group of people in strict Freudian analysis attempting to get a handle on their most instinctual and base urges. The French are left wondering exactly how to combat the Idians who are either stuck to the couch describing Salvador Dali-esque dreams or eating massive quantities of doughnuts looking at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.
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1 comment:
1) "(Suddenly, I feel the need to weep, but at least I can diagram that sentence.)"
I believe that this parenthetical sentence is the pith, the core, the essence of your entire blog.
2) Sorry to disagree, but everyone knows that the French are actually the only culture in the West which is allied with the Id. And more power to them, I say.
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