Rambling Mannish
Imagine you walk into a room. Imagine that, having walked into this room, your first thought is "where was the net?" That is right, you just found yourself in the middle of the 1990s...but wait; that cannot be right. The young gentleman over there looks just like one of the people from class...history class!!! As I am walking over to see why wardrobe sent him in skinny jeans, I see a group of individuals that I know to be incapable of comprehending history, and who would have no hope of navigating it. I breathed a minor sigh of relief. Something weird was going on, but at least I was in the right time.
The room was crowded and more people pressed in with every second. Tempers were already flaring at the lack of seating, which made me glad to find a comfortable seated in the second row. Still trying to understand what was going on, I turned to the wise old crones next to me to see if they had any valuable information. They chatted with me rather amiably and explained that teachers were showing up in force.
Aha. It clicked.
The big--really big--hair, of a primarily up-do variety; the near criminal inattention to dress; the effeminate males, with reedy, simpering, voices; the tight jeans on men, though not like skinny jeans, which do not cling to certain regions of anatomy so tightly as to leave little to an already horrified imagination; and the smug superiority that permeated the air; it all pointed to something I should have guessed: teachers, a lot of them.
The ladies next to me continued to chat with me and we got on pretty well...until I dropped the bomb that I was homeschooled, at which point the temperature from that quarter got really, really, chilly. Think, "do not make eye-contact or respond to him in full sentences" chilly.
It seemed that I was probably in for a quiet wait until the proceedings began, then Paul Lagemann showed up, introduced me to Brian Bosma, and sat with me for a good part of the show, at least until he left for his other event. His advent and comments did nothing to improve my neighbors views on me, and they did not verbally acknowledge me when I thanked them for allowing me to sit with them.
As we neared the beginning of the meeting the natives were getting really restless. A one even stormed out yelling about the lack of seating, still more were discussing the untruth of Mr. Bosma's opening speech, before it was delivered, naturally.
During the course of Bosma's speech there was general hooting, tittering, and a couple moments where a particularly large delegation from the teachers union drowned him out in unified shouts. Things got much more civilized as the proceedings moved on, but the room never lost its tension. Loud interruptions were pretty regular, all questions from self-identified public school teachers were delivered in an accusatory tone, and often sounded less like questions than the denunciations in the Stalinist show trials I have been reading.
That said, the representatives were cool under fire and managed to keep things pretty light. There was a gentleman, (who, oddly, looked rather like the frilled lizard from the Rescuers Down Under), several rows behind me--with whom Paul is acquainted, and who is, Paul assured me, the biggest asshole in Fort Wayne--began listing some very questionable practices that would be introduced by this bill. The Speaker, however, came prepared and was able to give the actual wording, which was, oddly, nothing like what the other gentleman would have had us imagine. The Speaker managed this with good humor and treated the whole thing as if it were an understandable mistake based on common hearsay...He gave it a nice spin despite the fact that the gentleman in question was well up to date on this bill and knew that he was characterizing it poorly, if not lying outright.
The general tone of the meeting was simple. If you say that schools could be doing better, you are saying that teachers are not trying, which is untrue. The vast majority of teachers always give their utmost every day and evaluations are an insult. Not only that, but teachers are professionals and deserve to be payed like doctors and lawyers. Give teachers more money. Also, charter schools are predatory institutions, founded for the sole purpose of wresting funds away from the other public schools, and they do not have the same noble, selfless, interest in the children that the proper, union monopolized, public schools do. One teacher, who looked like Angel Marie from the cabin fever scene of Muppet Treasure Island, advocated some form of legislation that would force parents to take an interest in the education of their children.
I reflect, in retrospect, on the fact there has been so much grief over the public schools forcing failing students to "homeschool" in order to bring up their averages and obtain incentives.
There are school teachers that I know and appreciate, one of my beloved grandmothers was a school teacher, but I find these excellent individuals to be an exception. There is a certain self-aggrandizing sanctimony that has found its way into that profession, and an homage to a one size fits all educational style that irks me. And when they get into a really big group, they just feed off of each other. If someone fails to learn under their program, it is not their fault, it is the fault of the child and the parents. Never mind that people learn differently and at different paces. I shudder to think where I would be if I had remained in that system. My whole creative process is unorthodox and begins with a long walk, which is definitely not part of the program.
The room would not accept that there were innovations which they had not yet attempted. When the speaker said that charter schools would lead to greater innovation, there were angry shouts of "you are saying that we don't innovate" and other variations on the same. Anytime Bosma tried to speak up and clarify that he was not saying that public school teachers never innovate, merely that current bureaucratic mechanisms restrict any real freedom on that front, he was shouted down with more of the same.
The bright side in all of this was that I got to rub elbows with a bunch of lobbyists and enjoy the looks on my professors faces as various pieces of policy were discussed. Good stuff.
I came out of this with raw skin on the right side of my face, which I began rubbing part of the way through the event, and a brighter outlook on the whole system of government. There were two productive voices from the audience, and both called to attention things of which the speaker was not previously aware, one of which was a bit of unintended consequences in the recent tax laws, which the speaker was very genuinely concerned about (trust me, there were times when you knew he wasn't as concerned as he said).
The system works! And if you can brave men in 501s that are 501 sizes too small, you too can change the world.
The room was crowded and more people pressed in with every second. Tempers were already flaring at the lack of seating, which made me glad to find a comfortable seated in the second row. Still trying to understand what was going on, I turned to the wise old crones next to me to see if they had any valuable information. They chatted with me rather amiably and explained that teachers were showing up in force.
Aha. It clicked.
The big--really big--hair, of a primarily up-do variety; the near criminal inattention to dress; the effeminate males, with reedy, simpering, voices; the tight jeans on men, though not like skinny jeans, which do not cling to certain regions of anatomy so tightly as to leave little to an already horrified imagination; and the smug superiority that permeated the air; it all pointed to something I should have guessed: teachers, a lot of them.
The ladies next to me continued to chat with me and we got on pretty well...until I dropped the bomb that I was homeschooled, at which point the temperature from that quarter got really, really, chilly. Think, "do not make eye-contact or respond to him in full sentences" chilly.
It seemed that I was probably in for a quiet wait until the proceedings began, then Paul Lagemann showed up, introduced me to Brian Bosma, and sat with me for a good part of the show, at least until he left for his other event. His advent and comments did nothing to improve my neighbors views on me, and they did not verbally acknowledge me when I thanked them for allowing me to sit with them.
As we neared the beginning of the meeting the natives were getting really restless. A one even stormed out yelling about the lack of seating, still more were discussing the untruth of Mr. Bosma's opening speech, before it was delivered, naturally.
During the course of Bosma's speech there was general hooting, tittering, and a couple moments where a particularly large delegation from the teachers union drowned him out in unified shouts. Things got much more civilized as the proceedings moved on, but the room never lost its tension. Loud interruptions were pretty regular, all questions from self-identified public school teachers were delivered in an accusatory tone, and often sounded less like questions than the denunciations in the Stalinist show trials I have been reading.
That said, the representatives were cool under fire and managed to keep things pretty light. There was a gentleman, (who, oddly, looked rather like the frilled lizard from the Rescuers Down Under), several rows behind me--with whom Paul is acquainted, and who is, Paul assured me, the biggest asshole in Fort Wayne--began listing some very questionable practices that would be introduced by this bill. The Speaker, however, came prepared and was able to give the actual wording, which was, oddly, nothing like what the other gentleman would have had us imagine. The Speaker managed this with good humor and treated the whole thing as if it were an understandable mistake based on common hearsay...He gave it a nice spin despite the fact that the gentleman in question was well up to date on this bill and knew that he was characterizing it poorly, if not lying outright.
The general tone of the meeting was simple. If you say that schools could be doing better, you are saying that teachers are not trying, which is untrue. The vast majority of teachers always give their utmost every day and evaluations are an insult. Not only that, but teachers are professionals and deserve to be payed like doctors and lawyers. Give teachers more money. Also, charter schools are predatory institutions, founded for the sole purpose of wresting funds away from the other public schools, and they do not have the same noble, selfless, interest in the children that the proper, union monopolized, public schools do. One teacher, who looked like Angel Marie from the cabin fever scene of Muppet Treasure Island, advocated some form of legislation that would force parents to take an interest in the education of their children.
I reflect, in retrospect, on the fact there has been so much grief over the public schools forcing failing students to "homeschool" in order to bring up their averages and obtain incentives.
There are school teachers that I know and appreciate, one of my beloved grandmothers was a school teacher, but I find these excellent individuals to be an exception. There is a certain self-aggrandizing sanctimony that has found its way into that profession, and an homage to a one size fits all educational style that irks me. And when they get into a really big group, they just feed off of each other. If someone fails to learn under their program, it is not their fault, it is the fault of the child and the parents. Never mind that people learn differently and at different paces. I shudder to think where I would be if I had remained in that system. My whole creative process is unorthodox and begins with a long walk, which is definitely not part of the program.
The room would not accept that there were innovations which they had not yet attempted. When the speaker said that charter schools would lead to greater innovation, there were angry shouts of "you are saying that we don't innovate" and other variations on the same. Anytime Bosma tried to speak up and clarify that he was not saying that public school teachers never innovate, merely that current bureaucratic mechanisms restrict any real freedom on that front, he was shouted down with more of the same.
The bright side in all of this was that I got to rub elbows with a bunch of lobbyists and enjoy the looks on my professors faces as various pieces of policy were discussed. Good stuff.
I came out of this with raw skin on the right side of my face, which I began rubbing part of the way through the event, and a brighter outlook on the whole system of government. There were two productive voices from the audience, and both called to attention things of which the speaker was not previously aware, one of which was a bit of unintended consequences in the recent tax laws, which the speaker was very genuinely concerned about (trust me, there were times when you knew he wasn't as concerned as he said).
The system works! And if you can brave men in 501s that are 501 sizes too small, you too can change the world.
"...if you can brave men in 501s that are 501 sizes too small..."
ReplyDeleteNice.
I haven't read better character sketching in a long, long time. Highly entertaining.
ReplyDelete