This
was my outing with Suzanne, who I haven’t seen for some time, so there was a
lot of catching up. My contribution was
based on life in the real world; Suzanne’s was to do with education. I love listening to people talk about
education and teaching (not, by any means the same thing) because of my
practical distance from it. My only
concern is with the children of the UK becoming tax paying citizens and
therefore helping to fund my pension.
The kids around the world can do as they please; they are nothing to do
with me, O Vienna!
This
is not absolutely true obviously. How
can a teacher of umpteen years experience say such things? I do understand that what happens in the rest
of the world effects what happens in the UK and therefore has a direct
influence on my pension. But it is hard
to sympathise with the pampered youth of today without thinking of the indirect
taxation they pay as they spend their parents’ money. The more the merrier, say I!
Suzanne
and I talked non-stop, often at the same time and, to be fair to the pair of
us, we ranged far and wide in our topics – though, also to be fair, it the
topics did tend to come back to teaching more often than not. But that is something that you have to accept
if you talk to a teacher – education is life and life is teaching. It is simple and unassailable and has to be
accepted because that is how it is.
It
was difficult to hide my delight in various instances of schadenfreude that
were offered by Suzanne’s descriptions of life in the school. O the joy of not being there to act like my
curmudgeonly self. Victor Meldrew has
nothing on me when I get going about the inadequacy of management in Education!
If
that sort of revenge were not enough, I also gave Suzanne a copy of the poems
that I have written as part of the course.
These were presented in a booklet, the scars of which production are
still with me. The booklet was wittily
entitled “Poems, of course” and she will have to read them and give me some
sort of feedback. My friendship comes at
a price!
As
Irene will find when she comes to lunch on Saturday. She too will have a copy of the booklet and
that will wipe the smile off her face!
Meanwhile
the days pass and the latest mark will be revealed – and my strategy for the
remaining assignments. I am already
making plans for the rest of the course, but the plans will be as nothing
unless I can see a productive way forward.
The hell with experience and the joy of learning: it is all about the
marks!
On a different, yet related subject. I have been searching for a particular book
which I am beginning to suspect I gave to Oxfam in the decimation of my library
before I left the UK. I sincerely hope
that I have not and that the volume is lurking behind some unrelated books
which I have not yet moved. But the
feeling is growing in me that it is one of the spurned volumes. This, more than ever, reinforces my belief
that no book, no matter how tangential to my life, should ever be thrown away.
I
have run out of places where it can be and the partial organization of my
remaining books which took place some time ago makes it even less possible that
the one that I want is ‘hidden’ in some way.
It is, however, a very pleasant and enjoyable frustration to go through
my library trying to find what I want. I
am always amazed, and not a little disturbed by the strange juxtapositions that
I discover as my eye sweeps along the spines!
I would be sad to have everything arranged in a totally logical
way. A library should be full of
surprises! And mine certainly is.
To
hell with Dewey-decimal and laud above all the Heath-Robinson approach to book
classification!
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