What useful stuff do you remember from school?
How do you find stuff out now?
Do you think if someone had told you this stuff when you were a kid you would have been interested?
Are you still interested in any of the same stuff now that you were back then?
If your school was just a building full of resources and friendly interested/interesting people to help you find out what you might want to know, would you have learned stuff or just taken the piss and not bothered talking to any of them?
If there was such a place now, would you leap at the chance to have a peep, or think there's now point now?
Is youth truly wasted on the young?
Is 'education' wasted on the young?
Do you only talk to people of your own age?
Do you think children are aliens?
Do you think old people are aliens?
Do you read for pleasure?
Do you watch documentaries about stuff you don't know much about, or only about stuff you already know everything about?
Do you use logarithms (excuse the spelling - I haven't a clue and don't care) in your day-to-day world?
Do you play netball?
Do you sing hymns in the morning?
Do you wear exactly the same clothes every day?
Do you speak when you're spoken to or whenever the spirit pokes you?
Do you ask permission to go to the toilet?
Can you work out your change before the digital cash register does it for you?
Could you write a letter to The House of Lords if required?
Can you cook an ommelette, or make a skirt, or work out why the car rattles?
Can you think of something to do when there's 'nothing' to do?
Can you empty your head and just be?
Can you drop everything come out for tea and cake?
Can you make a cake?
Can you make a scene?
Can you make the voices stop?
Can you see the point in being a grown-up?
Can your children?
Does it matter?
Seriously - I want to know. Anything!
Yes, it's uncanny! I'm a logarithm-solving, hymn-singing professional netballer, and I always put my hand up when I need a wee. Especially during netball matches (bladder not what it was).
ReplyDeleteThank you for reminding me why I hated about 95% of school. The 5% I didn't hate was learning about Vikings in year 3. What I wish I HAD had by means of an education is a sort of outdoor skills/survivalist/Bourne Identity commando training - want to be able to make a camp fire, jump-start a car, do a bit of karate... Really useful stuff for a 40-year-old mother living in Tunbridge Wells.
I went through the whole education system as a complete swot and ended up with a Geography degree. Bloody useless really as I have no sense of direction, wouldn't recognise an ox-bow lake if it bit me in the bum and have no idea where jute comes from or, in fact, what it is.
ReplyDelete(ps - love your comment on my post about the points for knocking down nuns - only one sheet of loo paper? That's abuse!)
Tunbridge Wells Survival School....now WHAT could we do with that? There's a whole blog in there surely?
ReplyDeleteMy brain retains vital information like about the chap who survived on a raft at sea for days by drinking the fluid from fish eyes, and the toddler who survived some car disaster which knocked out his mum/dad for days by eating mineral-rich mud, and don't start me on avalanches and jungle stuff............
Tunbridge Wells tho'........
Why I go in on one level of BHS and come out on another without having gone anywhere near a lift completely bemuses me.
Jute: uses and history of. 5,000 words by Tuesday. No excuses.
ReplyDeleteJute? I used to make macrame plant holders out of that stuff when I was 13. Came in two colours: sludge-brown, and greeny-sludge brown - all varieties were hairy and offensive. Made me sneeze, triggered my asthma and left piles of discarded hair everywhere. Should be banned.
ReplyDeleteWhat would I like to have learnt at school? Well, anything that might have been useful in the REAL world would have been a good start. Can't believe I have 5 A levels and an honours degree and still can't remember my phone number when people ask. (Though that could be because 3 alien beings have sucked my few functioning brain cells out through the umbilical cord)
There was a great line in that Victoria Wood film 'Pat and Margaret' (I think) about one of the adult characters who couldn't read - his mother (Thora Hird I do remember) said "We didn't have dyslexia in those days. You just sat at the back with raffia" I would have been very happy at the back with raffia, baskets, patchworks, plasticine - anything. ANYTHING rather than contour lines and the agricultural revolution. Unfortunately there was no jute to be seen so I cannot pass judgement - although your description puts me in mind of prisoners on rope-making duty.
ReplyDeleteUSEFUL skills!!?? Useful and beautiful crafts!!?? Survival skills should be top of the list!!!
You should have to do 45 minutes of Ray Mears every day; 30 mins of taking up trouser hems, making custard and changing a windscreen wiper etc a week; 20 mins of political translation (ie they're all lying bastards children therefore you must learn to think for yourselves); 10 mins of pure maths (I only had one glass of wine and no pudding, you had 3 bottles and 4 coffees etc); 5 mins of North is polar bears and South is penguins; 2 mins of running for a good reason (ie bus, mugger, chugger, child with spots licking your child's face etc) whilst remaining lady-like and not weeing; 1 minute of books are this way up and 30 seconds of nun target practice (you gotta be quick - those freaks can be looking over your shoulder in a silent flash). Oh - I forgot about 'socialisation'! - Shut school early and tell them to bugger off down the chippy.