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FUCK!
18 years ago
So goddamn lazy can't bring myself to do anything hell even playing a videogame would be an accomplishment goddamnit.
I was taking a shower today, when for no particular reason, it suddenly occurred to me how weird school was back in 2nd grade. I always considered it normal, but there was some weird mystical new-age teaching bullshit going on. There was like, four classes in this one hypercube-shaped room, and we rotated around for different assignments, like some kind of proto highschool thing. There was a "reading pit" in the center of the room that connected the four areas, and above that was a little are where we sometimes watched EDUTASTIC laserdisc movies.
Anyway! I hated it. In theory, it was awesome. There were art classes, creative writing classes, scavenger hunts, robots, all kinds of weird metaphysical shit. But the two teachers I can recall were extremely anal and oldschool. My primary teacher would tell us to sit down and shut up while she quietly read us a story, while all the other classes in the pod were having shouting parties or something. Most of my memories of 2nd grade involve me sitting quietly at my desk, doing something stupid like measuring a clay snake while the other classes were bouncing off the ceiling.
One event that really sticks out in my mind was the creative writing class. I think we had this once a week, and my class rotated to another teacher for it. He was a tall, lanky dude with a beard, and was surprisingly strict for looking like stereotypical personification of the '60s. Normally, we were encouraged to write whatever we wanted, and the illustrate it with our crude, childish drawings. But during the first class, he decided we couldn't handle that, so instead he told us to write about a unicorn. Now see, I was looking FORWARD to this class, to writing about whatever the hell I wanted, so I was crushed when I discovered I had strict limits. So I said FUCK THIS and instead wrote a story about a whale who got sucked down a drain in the bottom of the ocean and ended up in a municipal pool. I was severely chastised for this grave offense, and had to have an after-school conference with my primary teacher about the importance of following orders from authority figures.
Why do I mention this? I dunno. I needed to write something.
I was taking a shower today, when for no particular reason, it suddenly occurred to me how weird school was back in 2nd grade. I always considered it normal, but there was some weird mystical new-age teaching bullshit going on. There was like, four classes in this one hypercube-shaped room, and we rotated around for different assignments, like some kind of proto highschool thing. There was a "reading pit" in the center of the room that connected the four areas, and above that was a little are where we sometimes watched EDUTASTIC laserdisc movies.
Anyway! I hated it. In theory, it was awesome. There were art classes, creative writing classes, scavenger hunts, robots, all kinds of weird metaphysical shit. But the two teachers I can recall were extremely anal and oldschool. My primary teacher would tell us to sit down and shut up while she quietly read us a story, while all the other classes in the pod were having shouting parties or something. Most of my memories of 2nd grade involve me sitting quietly at my desk, doing something stupid like measuring a clay snake while the other classes were bouncing off the ceiling.
One event that really sticks out in my mind was the creative writing class. I think we had this once a week, and my class rotated to another teacher for it. He was a tall, lanky dude with a beard, and was surprisingly strict for looking like stereotypical personification of the '60s. Normally, we were encouraged to write whatever we wanted, and the illustrate it with our crude, childish drawings. But during the first class, he decided we couldn't handle that, so instead he told us to write about a unicorn. Now see, I was looking FORWARD to this class, to writing about whatever the hell I wanted, so I was crushed when I discovered I had strict limits. So I said FUCK THIS and instead wrote a story about a whale who got sucked down a drain in the bottom of the ocean and ended up in a municipal pool. I was severely chastised for this grave offense, and had to have an after-school conference with my primary teacher about the importance of following orders from authority figures.
Why do I mention this? I dunno. I needed to write something.
The rules back then sucked, but it was more fun bending them than breaking them. I actually got a teacher who tried to crush me, who I ended up getting sent to a review board of the PTA because I stayed calm while she got increasingly insane. :D
I shouldn't be so proud, but she was a witch who tried to crush people, so I considered it a victory.
FUCK I hated school. I was a fat kid with asthma, so I'm obviously not mature enough to handle the medication I've been using since I was five! Can't have DRUGS on campus now, can we!? But hey! Just because I'm suffocating throughout the entire day doesn't mean I can be excused from P.E. or the forced marches around the sports track that are part of the mandatory "Discovery Club"!
At least it's over, and you survived, and you've got friends who give a shit about ya when yer having a bad day. <3
*I survived, mostly, by being able to completely disconnect, and scare the fuck out of people by seeming completely unassociated with anything, but able to make startling true revalations.. :D
'course I was the only one that ever drew 'furries' so that could've added to the disconnection >.>;
To take your example: I would have done something like write a story about a whale named "Unicorn", and then point out to the teacher, quite reasonably, that they didn't specify we had to write about the fantastic animal known as "unicorn", only about a unicorn, which is clearly what I did.
Then I would get in trouble for being a smart-ass. This confused me to no end.
"Shut up, you. You can only be creative inside this tiny box I made. Now get in there!"
I once had an art teacher tell me the sky was never green. And I said, I know. I'm drawing the sky green anyway. And he was all like, but the sky is never green. He didn't get me.
I've had two kinds of writing teachers, and two kinds of art teachers. I had the kind of teacher that wanted to do everything by the book, and would insist that after we've learned everything there is to learn about art or writing then we can start developing a style of our own, and not a second before. Then I had the fun kind of teacher that would let us do whatever we wanted, but never necessarily taught us anything. I only had one writing teacher and one art teacher that was the perfect balance.
I also had one art teacher that could, on a chalk board, make a photorealistic crosshatched sketch of a man playing with a discus, in the ten minutes before class. But what did he paint? Circles and triangles in a variety of pastel colors. He could draw any goddamn thing he wanted but his shows were full of circles and triangles. Fucking minimalists.
Anyway. Uhm. Oh! Right. I eventually enrolled in an actual art school when I was a teenager. They kind of leaned towards the "Learn it by the book first", but I didn't mind. In fact, I preferred that method. You learn actual techniques, and it's not like you can't develop a style on your own time. I've always been one to learn the rules before finding ways to break them.
.... Maybe that's my problem. Hmm.
*ducks*
Damn them! DAMN THEM ALL! So many years of my life ... wasted!
Retarded, actually. The concept of not having walls is kindof cool...your classrooms are completely modular--you can change them however you want, because everything moves! Heating and cooling is perhaps less complicated (although I think it winds up more expensive). But what's the reality? It's a pain in the ass to constantly rearrange the room designs, and students need the structure of regular class areas. The noise from one class area spills into the next, and so forth, and if you're easily distracted...well, whatever the teacher next door is teaching might be more interesting, and you can watch their whole lesson!
At one point, they called each region of class areas for a grade level a "pod" but that was given up by the time I left there. I actually stopped by last year, some 12 years later, to discover that they had put in a bunch of partial walls to create some semblance of normal classrooms. At least a little noise is blocked, and for the kids, you can't really see what the other classes are up to.
Oh! We had a rotation thing, too, but it was just regular subjects. It was a big school, with 4 teachers per grade...all taught Spelling/Language Arts, and then depending on grade, they either all taught math and either social studies or science, or two taught math, one taught science, and one taught social studies. We didn't have any kind of creative writing, tho.
Now I teach in an elementary school, but we have walls, which is nice. I think a lot of "traditional" methods are on the way back in. And I think it's a good idea.
I still think it's kind of a cool idea in retrospect ... maybe if you started kids out in a more rigid structure, and then moved them into a pod system later, when they were older? I probably would've loved it when I was a teenager, if prior experience hadn't already soured me on the idea. But no, I suppose later schooling is more focused on hard study than exploring the world around you, or whatever. Hmm.
I haven't been back there since. The strange, rotundular building is still there, but I've no idea if they've ever reworked the interior.
The high school was worse, actually...some parts were definitely open space orginally, but they put up these 7/8ths height dividers, which didn't block all of the sound, but blocked too much of the air, so that some rooms had no ventilation, and others had too much. After I left, they slowly installed doors, mainly to prevent students from jumping into the classrooms when walking by during classes, or to keep fights from spilling in. That school was kindof a stupid place.
Or you could have just been bored out of your mind. I'm no psychology major. :P
god bless america's crappy education system <:3
... Oh. I keep forgetting you don't know what it's like here.
Then again, I don't think it would have had a positive effect on me. As a child I had a major need for structure and discipline, something that would warp/change all the time would have probaly put me in a state of deep depression.
If such a thing were to be introduced again nowadays (by some weird, unexplainable, government decision) I would like to see it.
And I recognize myself in drawing something completely diffrent then what I was told to.
Like how I would always, ALWAYS draw with a pen, rather then a pencil. Making gigantic, man-slaughting robots or war and battlefields instead of cute and fuzzy animals the teachers commanded.
Nowadays, I like both. :O
I don't really recall any of the art classes I took in 2nd grade, so they must have been fairly uneventful. Though I do recall drawing death rays, tornadoes and all manner of stick figures being slaughtered mercilessly in my spare time at school. Nobody really cared. I suppose nowadays that would be a one-way ticket to a psychologist.
Lots of kids have a obsession with war and battles and stuff. Probably just a sign they have a rather uneventful life maybe. :P
WHO SAW IT COMING?!
XD
I ever drew this... to then throw it away. It was so badly drawn anyway that anyone seeing it would not understand it. >_>
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