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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1974-06-12, Page 2Brussels Post INMI/4404110 4 lirt PRUNE LS ONTARIO Spring colts Sugar and Spice By Bill Smiley Every year I look forward eagerly to the last part of May and the first part of June. Once again the world is green, the days are lbnger, it is no longer brass monkey weather, the trout season is open, the golf links beckon. Best of all, end of term is nearing, holidays looming, and I'll be able to forget those juvenile friends for two golden months. What more could a man want? And yet, every year at this time I am frustrated as a frog who thinks he's a butterfly. There are a number of villains in this particular tragedy. Meetings proliferate. Eyery time I should be listening to the solid crack of a drive or the lovely'clunk of a golf ball going into the cup, I seem to be sitting at a meeting, listening to some utterly inane suggestion that yet another committee be formed to look into nothing or other. Warm weather? Yeah, that's nice. But it makes the students coltish, to say the least. And in these days of permissive school dress it can be totally confusing. There you are, trying to teach the elements of a unified, •coherent, and emphatic paragraph. Aid sprawled right in front of you is a young woman, physically, at least, a veritable Daisy Mae, in a backless, bra-less halter and a pair of shorts so short and so tight they look as though they've been put on with a paint roller. Blank-eyed, she is completely lost to the beauties of communication via the printed woe d.Her thoughts are fixed on a different kind of communication, the kind she's going to share with Joe, When he picks her up after supper. The only part of her that is paying any attention whatever to her English teacher is her exposed navel, which stares at you unwinkingiy: End of term approaching? great. Put What is this vast pile of paper beside my desk? Three sets of term tests, two sets of creative writing, two sets of fresh endings for a play. I've tried staring at them' malevolently. I've tried spilling toffee on them. I tried dumping the ashtray on them accidentally. But they 'merely smouldered, like me. They won't go away. They have to be marked. Not conductive to trout fishing. Well, you'll say, these are minor things, If Smiley was organized, he could cope with these irritations, and still enjoy his late spring. True. But I haven't introduced-you to the real beast on the roster. This is the estate. Every fall, I get the place cleaned up, „Last fall we put out ninety plastic bags of leaves. I got a guy to put on the storm windows, not because I'm lazy, or can afford it, but because I'm too chicken to climb a forty-foot ladder, with a forty- pound window, in a forty-mile wind. And this spring we've put out already forty bags of leaves, left over from last fall, pins another twenty bags of acorns and twigs and there are still thirty bags stacked against the side of the house. I simply haven't time to do this work. Besides, i< have this bad back, which gets sore every spring, for some reason. It's almost impossible to hire kids to do the work. They want more than it would have cost me to have somebody rubbed out, in the Chicago of the 1920's. So this spring, the .Old Battleaxe, urged on by friends and me, took a whack at it. Her previous help with the "yard" had been confined to, "Bill, when are yeti going to get this place cleaned up? What will the neighbours think?" I'd haf e to tell yott what I tell her the neighbours can think, if they want to. Anyway, after about five days of raking arid stuffing bags, she burst out with, "Dearie tne, Bill," (or words to that effect), "this isn't a backyard. ft's THE LAND." She felt like a pioneer, trying to clear enough to live on, I had 'rid myself of my old power motet in a fit of gentle rage, when I couldn't start it. You can't hire a kid with a power mower. So I bought a new one., I got one of my students to run it, only by threatening that I'd fail his year if he didn't, The lawn is cut. There are only eight flower-beds left to rake and dig. And'the storm windows are still on. WEIWCSDAY, JUNE 12, 1974 Serving Brussels and the surrounding community.. Published each, Wednesday afternoon . at Brussels, Ontario by McLean Bros. Publishers, Limited. Evelyn Kennedy - Editor Tom fialey - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association. Subscriptions (in advance) Canadar$6.00.a year, Others $8.00 a year, Single Copies 15 cents each. Second class mail Registration No. 0562. Telephone 887-6641. The new schools The schools and students come in for a great de'al of criticism these days, most of it because things in education have changed so' radically in a very few years. Almost a complete switch in educational philosophy has taken place since those of us who are over 25 last attended' school. At first look it seems mighty strange and appallingly loose and undisciplined to see an elementary school class where children are playing with puppets, talking to each other and reading, (horror of horrors), all at once. Adults who return to the high schools would be amazed to see students questioning their teachers, arguing with them and with their fellow students, with maybe 60% of the class participating enthusiastically in class discussion. Yes, the days of children sitting silently in long rows' in the schools is over. As recently as 15 years ago, children should be seen and not heard was the educational as well as child rearing motto. Students in school didn't ask questions, they answered them, quickly and in the manner that the teacher prescribed. The old days of education had some good points. Spelling, grammar and arithmetic were learned because it was drilled into everyone's heads. You perhaps didn't= understand it but you "knew" it. Some kept a spark of interest through all the learning by rote and perhaps excelled and learned with curiosity and liveliness - but many others became discouraged and gradually dropped out, perhaps to hate learning and reading and everything that smacked of school for the rest of their lives. Those who survived the old educational system became highly motivated, skilled and well diSciplined adults. Admirable, but the catch is that those who failed to thrive got really nothing out of education at all. In the old days this reflected society as a whole only a few students would become an educated elite and the rest would form an uneducated mass. Modern education, adopting the Hall-Dennis report of several years ago, aims at educating everyone, not just a lucky few, to her or his maximum potential, dropping the emphasis on rules, discipline and standards in favour of self realization. It's difficult to Set one set of standards for all and be democratic at the same time. Who sets the standards and decides which is more valuable - art classes or English Grammar drills? Is the school's role to educate children so that they have the fullest possible lives or so that they can earn a lot of money? Our society and our educational system hasn't really resolved the conflict here. It has produced students with self confident, bright enquiring minds in place of children who were afraid to Open their mouths for fear of giving a "wrong" answer. There are no wrong answers students are told today. This philosophy is hard for the rest of us to accept, College professors arid some parents are concerned that the new system is producing a generation of semi-illiterates whO can't master basic grammatical or mathematical facts: So what if these students are articulate, they say, when they know nothing to be articulate about. it's a harsh condemnation of an educational system and of our young people, We prefer the noisy, creative and curious bunch of kids in our elementary and high schools now to the cautious; Cowed and silent crew that used to take Lid space in the classroom. But hOW dad we tell them we admire them? Many of them can't read!