Part 2: Where’s the Library?

The hyperbolical account of my private-school teaching job: Part 2

One afternoon, before my optimism had waned and long after good sense had taken its leave, I asked permission to take my students to the local library where we could gather and conduct research for our history reports, and was met with the response that surely they would only use the opportunity to misbehave. In spite of the many, many similar statements I had overheard or received in my time here, I was dubmfounded. What kind of a response does one give to such a presumption? I was then asked: Haven’t they already been to the library? As though one visit in a child’s educational lifetime was sufficient. Her next query was: What could they need at the library that they couldn’t find online?

No. Library trip permission denied. Better to let them use the Internet. I had no words, but if I had, they would have been of the rational variety and therefore foreign to my principal. How could a trip to the library be a waste of time? And when is preference for the Internet over real, bound books ever really given? I thought I was in the Twilight Zone and I left the principal’s office with a minor migraine brought on by illogical and insupportable educational beliefs.

The students had, however, not long before this denied request, been encouraged to attend the field trip to Microsoft in Redmond. It was a field trip that had been discussed with the Math and Science teachers but that had (strangely enough) not reached the ears or email inboxes of the English/History and Logic teachers–that is, my husband and myself.  It seems we were somehow responsible for this oversight, and instead of an apology for the lack in communication were told we needed to be more flexible. It was, after all, Microsoft. One must show due respect. Even students who had no intention whatever of working there were bundled into the van and taken away. I was left subbing for the science teacher and my husband had wasted an afternoon prepping for a class he did not need to teach.

It was clear that reading, language, literature, or appreciation for any of these subjecs had not really the top priority and were, furthermore, culturally passé. STEM was the big thing now, and Engineering and Math were about to break out and make winners of us all. Art, though a cornerstone of classical learning, was relegated to an elective for the junior high or high school and was given the same credence, or even less credence than the before-school coding class. The sciences, including STEM, were the sexy subjects, and therefore got more air time and attention. Literature, on the other hand, held a certain degree of danger, possessed too much free thought, perhaps, to be given its due and given its head.

My subjects: writing, reading, discussion, were all crammed into one 50-minute period a day which was often borne into by delayed lunches, student council, or a variety of ‘pull-out’ reasons. Math, on the other hand, was never cancelled, even on half-days and was given a full hour to show it our allegiance. Anyone who was late to math had to have a good reason; anyone late to English (or History) was probably helping change a lightbulb and was summarily excused.

What it means to the Institution

This morning John and I began over coffee what started out as a discussion about my life as a teacher and ended (if discussions of this nature ever end) as one that questioned the motives of institutional education. What responsibilities do school administrators have toward their staff? What guidance must we and dare we give our teachers, young and old? Who decides whether papers should be stapled to the hallway walls and who decides when it is time to give new room assignments?

All of this was on my mind when I found Jon Crispin and the Willard Suitcases Project via NPR.  The project is manifold, and from the contents of the suitcases he photographs, many questions and many beauties arise.  He is most obviously captivated by  his art and craft and also by the people with whom he is working–living and gone, both.  What I found so stirring in his blog were the realities unmentioned but clearly present: Who were these people? And, more pressingly, Why were they admitted to the Willard Asylum?

We have a need in our infinite humanity to institutionalize.  We order, we organize, we keep zoological records, and we overdo it time and time again.  Adam’s first task was to name the animals–a creative project given him by God.  And for his naming and his categorization we have order and contrast and something altogether pleasing to the earth.  But man is by no means content to stop there.  We find order and we find it good, and then we go ballistic, drawing lines and squaring edges and removing what is on the other side or in the corner.  Perhaps it is IN our nature to go to extremes, but it should not be OF our nature to remain there.

It is useful to think about all that has been lost in streamlining and mainstreaming and…institutionalizing our lives.  I am reading a book right now called Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford–food for many a future post, I believe–and find that my thoughts are not unique.  And gratefully do I find this true.

We’ve Discovered an Abbey!!

I am sure that, should I want to, I could go back onto Netflix (it IS still called that, right?) and determine the day that my husband (I love him–I love you, John!) and I “discovered” Downton Abbey.

But what would be the joy in that?  Because, apparently, it existed before we discovered it (difficult to imagine, but we give it a marginal shot).  Seems that it was even in our “queue”, though who knows how it got there.  Mice?  Munchkins?  Pish.  Could even have been the Beeb.  But I digress.  No, Downton Abbey is now “our” little show and anyone who professes to have “known” about it before we got to it–I beg your pardon, but our world didn’t exist before then.

So, now you see my point, I’m wondering why it took us so long to stumble upon them, those Crawleys and Granthams (is that the way they spell those?  It’s just terribly difficult to determine from speech only, and often v. v. proper speech, at that), those below stairs and those beyond the walls of Downton.  Where the heck had we been?  I mean, we read the Internet, for goodness’ sake, and we peruse Facebook every so often.  We even sit down to respectable dinners with cloth napkins and no MSG and still!  Not a hint of it.  Nothing drove us in the direction of gorgeously talented Hugh Bonneville and wickedly snide Woman Who Plays O’Brien until lo!  In the midst of a lull in Pedro Bay activity (30 hours of silence, commence now), we threw caution to the wind and–tried Netflix!!

To understand the gravity of that statement, not to mention the fact our experiment worked (!!!) you must understand distance.  Pedro Bay is so remote that we don’t even have a store.  No paved roads, about a dozen total miles of those unpaved roads, more pieces of heavy machinery than actual cars, and more than not, no cell service.  It is an hour’s flight via small plane from Anchorage.  But we do have Internet!  Well, WE don’t, not exactly, but it does exist up  here and the one place we’re lucky it exists, is the library.  And the library is within sight of our house. And when the weather is particularly cooperative and the satellite link outage isn’t out, we can communicate with the outside world RIGHT FROM OUR LIVING ROOM!!

Exactly.

So all this talk about Season 2 and hype hype hype simply must stop.  John and I are just getting started and we don’t want any of you hoity-tots to spoil it for us.  We’ve got this Abbey thing perfectly under control and no question. Understand?

So.  Who’s recording all of these on DVR?