queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2002-02-01 12:01 am
queerbychoice) wrote2002-02-01 12:01 am
Cat Poop Cookies and the State of Our Educational System
Anyone who hasn't read An Open Letter To Superintendent Grimmel by Robert Alter should definitely read it. This kind of thing is the reason I've lost my former conviction that I wanted to have kids. I'm not sure I could handle being so much responsible for the tragedy of a kid being, inevitably, socialized into the disgusting culture that is our own.
I forwarded it to my friend Megan, who is a fifth grade teacher and therefore stands accused by it. I never had a single elementary teacher ever who, looking back, I approve of at all. But I like to think that Megan is better. Not that I'd really know; I haven't seen her teach.
I bought myself a chair today. An office-style ergonomically correct $40 chair with adjustable height and such. The idea is to use it with my desk that I got free from work last year (they had an extra desk which for some reason they didn't want anymore, so they sent a mass email saying "anybody want a desk?" and I was the first to write back "yes" so I got the desk) and which has been sitting around unused for the past year since I never got around to buying a chair the right height for it. My current typing arrangement involves a tiny short easy-chair and a weird short little wooden computer stand. It's not really that bad but the desk would allow me a lot more desk space to work with. So anyway, I bought a chair. Then I called Megan and told her that I bought a chair, and that I hadn't put it together yet, it was still in pieces in a big cardboard box.
Megan: When you put things together, do you read the instructions?
Me: Yeah, I usually do.
Megan: Oh, I don't. I just look at the parts and explore how they might fit together.
Me: And then after a few minutes fiddling around with the chair-making kit, voila! You've created a desk!
Megan: A desk would be cool. I wouldn't mind a desk.
Me: Well, it would be interesting if you could really make a desk out of a chair-making kit.
Megan: But you could!
Me: No, my chair-making kit has parts that are quite distinctly shaped like a chair seat and a chair back.
Megan: But you could make a kind of desk . . .
Me: A modern art interpretation of a desk!
But I did read the instructions, and followed them, and created a chair instead. Even though Robert Alter would certainly prefer Megan's approach.
And Megan and I decided to go out to dinner tomorrow evening, though where on earth we'll eat is anybody's guess since there's not a single food category that either one of us likes which the other one doesn't abhor. A few years ago we went on a road trip to San Diego together for two weeks, and when attempting to eat together, we more than once resorted to finding to restaurants next door to one another that both had outdoor eating areas so we could get our food separately and still manage to eat together.
Which reminds me, I've gotten a surprising number of responses to my potato candy recipe, though Morgan is the only respondent who's actually eaten potato candy, and all the people who've never eaten it have the arrogance to assume they wouldn't like it. Well, if you like any candy bearing the Reese's label I assure you that you'd like potato candy: it doesn't taste like potatoes in the least, silly. You can't judge a candy by a list of its ingredients on paper.
But anyway, since candy recipes apparently get a big response, I can't resist mentioning that Andre recently linked to a recipe for cat poop cookies which has to be seen to be believed.
I forwarded it to my friend Megan, who is a fifth grade teacher and therefore stands accused by it. I never had a single elementary teacher ever who, looking back, I approve of at all. But I like to think that Megan is better. Not that I'd really know; I haven't seen her teach.
I bought myself a chair today. An office-style ergonomically correct $40 chair with adjustable height and such. The idea is to use it with my desk that I got free from work last year (they had an extra desk which for some reason they didn't want anymore, so they sent a mass email saying "anybody want a desk?" and I was the first to write back "yes" so I got the desk) and which has been sitting around unused for the past year since I never got around to buying a chair the right height for it. My current typing arrangement involves a tiny short easy-chair and a weird short little wooden computer stand. It's not really that bad but the desk would allow me a lot more desk space to work with. So anyway, I bought a chair. Then I called Megan and told her that I bought a chair, and that I hadn't put it together yet, it was still in pieces in a big cardboard box.
Megan: When you put things together, do you read the instructions?
Me: Yeah, I usually do.
Megan: Oh, I don't. I just look at the parts and explore how they might fit together.
Me: And then after a few minutes fiddling around with the chair-making kit, voila! You've created a desk!
Megan: A desk would be cool. I wouldn't mind a desk.
Me: Well, it would be interesting if you could really make a desk out of a chair-making kit.
Megan: But you could!
Me: No, my chair-making kit has parts that are quite distinctly shaped like a chair seat and a chair back.
Megan: But you could make a kind of desk . . .
Me: A modern art interpretation of a desk!
But I did read the instructions, and followed them, and created a chair instead. Even though Robert Alter would certainly prefer Megan's approach.
And Megan and I decided to go out to dinner tomorrow evening, though where on earth we'll eat is anybody's guess since there's not a single food category that either one of us likes which the other one doesn't abhor. A few years ago we went on a road trip to San Diego together for two weeks, and when attempting to eat together, we more than once resorted to finding to restaurants next door to one another that both had outdoor eating areas so we could get our food separately and still manage to eat together.
Which reminds me, I've gotten a surprising number of responses to my potato candy recipe, though Morgan is the only respondent who's actually eaten potato candy, and all the people who've never eaten it have the arrogance to assume they wouldn't like it. Well, if you like any candy bearing the Reese's label I assure you that you'd like potato candy: it doesn't taste like potatoes in the least, silly. You can't judge a candy by a list of its ingredients on paper.
But anyway, since candy recipes apparently get a big response, I can't resist mentioning that Andre recently linked to a recipe for cat poop cookies which has to be seen to be believed.
no subject
"The purpose of schools is not only to educate but to prepare kids for life, in a way only being around other kids and adults and learning that actually sticking fingers in oneself in public is not socially acceptable. Nor is it particularly hygenic."
It's no more unhygienic than kids sucking their thumbs in public. The vagina is a highly acidic environment very unconducive to germ growth; it's really rather safer, in fact, to stick your fingers in your vagina than to stick them in your mouth. Admittedly it would be unhygienic if kids started sticking their fingers into other kids' vaginas and into their own and mixing their body fluids together (although actually, since kids don't have any vaginal fluids to be mixed, it would really be a lot safer for them than for adults - it would probably be impossible for them to spread AIDS to each other that way); but then, it would also be very unhygienic if kids started sucking other kids' thumbs just after the other kids had sucked them and mixing their saliva together. Point being: kids don't usually suck other kids' thumbs. You tell them it's unhygienic to do that and they don't do it. And especially since kids aren't generally under the influence of raging adult passions, I think that any nightmares you might be having of kindergarten kids suddenly organizing mass orgies upon being corrupted by the likes of Greta are not terribly realistic. Kids who are allowed to put their fingers in their mouths and vaginas are not thereby made incapable of learning that putting them into other people's mouths and vaginas is not such a good idea.
The purpose of the article was to point out that our society wouldn't have the rules and taboos that it has if schools didn't inculcate them in everyone. If Greta's entire generation, or a majority of it, were home-schooled, with all different individual notions of how to behave and where it is or isn't appropriate to put one's fingers in public, then society as a whole would have to learn to accommodate much greater differences and varieties in personal behavior, and that would be extremely beneficial to those who are currently made miserable by society's continually trying to force them into ever more restrictive behavioral norms, gender roles and other nonsense.
(continued)
Re:
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