Recess is worse than it seems. Teachers would like to think that it's just time for the kids to play outside, and have fun, and that it's all juuuuust fine. Well, it's not. And it's not like the teachers don't know about it, because they do. They just don't care. If someone scrapes their knee, the teacher finds out and comes over with a band- aid. But if someone complains to the teacher about someone else insulting or teasing them, he/she will just say "Oh, well you two can just work that out by yourselves than, okay?" Actually, it's not okay, because they'll never "work that out" in any real situation. And it's not just insulting and teasing either. There's physical conflict too. You have to watch out on the playground because people aren't afraid to just come up and trip you at random moments for no particular reason. When you tell the teacher about it, she/he just won't accept that the kids are being jerkfaces just because it's a Christan school, and so instead of actually doing something about it, he/she will just say " Mmmhmm, that's nice," not even looking at you. It just doesn't occur to them that maybe, just maybe, SOME OF THE KIDS DON'T CARE ABOUT THE RULES!
Hopefully someday, the teachers will care.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Philip--
ReplyDeleteWhile I continue to ponder various responses
to your existing blog entries--and, try on
a vast array of fezzes that my footperson,
Sam Quentin, keeps bringing to the palatial
estate where I reside in all my potentatious
splendor (ask your parents what a "fez" is
and look up "potentate" as a way into
"potentatious")--I have a question for you.
How can you have a blog, really, when you don't keep...
Blogging?
Put another way: we are all waiting for your
next outburst of pique.("Pique"--another word
to learn and use. It rolls off the tongue so
beautifully--so much more so than "cool" or
"awesome.")
I mean, are you mulling? Brooding? Do you
suddenly feel diffident or ambivalent or
peckish about the whole blogging-type thing?
Seriously, it is just so encouraging to see
a fellow your age put his thoughts down on
screen, that I can only hope the RIENSTRA
RANT (which I log into daily, just as I log
into THE NEW YORK TIMES)was not just another
Philippian summer "enthusiasm," but rather
the beginning of your lifelong commitment to
writing...
Something you are clearly very good at.
Okay. I'm putting my cattle prod away. Sam
Quentin is always terrified of it, anyway.
Here to encourage you,
The AM
Philip--
ReplyDeleteNothing has changed, since I was a boy, about
recess.
I now--simply from reading your evocative,
quietly profound post on the subject--see this very, very clearly.
I remember vividly the complete indifference
of the teachers at my "Christian" school to
the daily pounding and teasing I took from
my classmates--in fact, when I read what your
"teachers" (I take that word literally, even
though to do so is the height of naivete) said to you when you begged them for help, my
own "teachers'" cold moral squalor came flooding back upon me like the flavor of the madeleines did for Marcel Proust in REMEMBERANCE OF THINGS PAST. (Hope you dig into that reference, part of my continuing
effort to feed the massive blast furnace of
your precociousness with choice intellectual
ingots.)
Just remember: the bright kids always get
mocked and hassled. And I wish I could tell
you that that insanity ended later in life, but I can't.
It doesn't.
It wasn't just recess, you should also know. It was teachers who gave us tests on material they never covered in class and then flunked us with a smile, teachers who liked to slap us on the back of the head while calling us "Pallie,"
teachers who delayed the end of class just long enough so that some of us would miss our
commuter train home and have to wait three
hours for another one, teachers who were too
lazy to find out which of us were true wrongdoers and so punished the entire class
instead...
It hurts me that you are finding out about the utter cruelty of life so early on in the
game.
Again: Christ knew about it. That's why He came. It's just a shame almost 100 percent of
the world doesn't understand that--or, Him.
Anyway, know that as I read your pain, you have my sympathy, understanding and respect. I have been where you are.
And, eventually, you will get older, and get
out of the ridiculous, inhuman, excuse-for-
adult-malfeasance-and-irresponsibility called
"school."
This is why, meantime, your happy home, with
your loving family, is such a sanctuary.
Run to it each day after the bell rings, and
when you reach it, lock the door behind you
and thank God he gave you parents and siblings who love you--who totally "get" who
you are and will be with you all the way.
Because you will be lucky if you ever find
anyone like them in "school."
The Old Mariner just has to call them as he
sees them.
And I just did.
The AM
P.S. Really been enjoying all your new rants.
How do you find the time to churn out so many?
See: that was "sarcasm." It's maybe not so
good a thing for a Christian to use on other
people, but maybe it got a little chuckle
out of you, and if so, then I'm glad...
Phil--
ReplyDeleteWith prison--er, I mean, school--starting soon for you and all,
I was thinking today about my own "school daze" eons ago, and remembered the following
incident, which I thought more than appropriate to share with you, in the hopes
that it might do something to lighten the
total, searing, utterly hideous (and well-warranted) despair you must currently feel
over the onrushing prospect of yet another stretch in the slammer--er, I mean, year in our nation's completely inadequate educational system.
I clearly recall sitting at my wooden desk--I
think I was in sixth or seventh grade--and
looking directly down at the edge of my seat.
Right there, someone had carved the words,
"Don't look now, but little elves are nailing you to this chair."
It still tickles me now--perhaps because,
somehow, it really captured how I felt about
sitting there, erasers cascading past my
head.
Wanted to share it with you. Perhaps you can
bring your woodburning set to school and
expose a whole other generation of urchins
to its resonant and soothing meaning.
Well, gotta go. I'm building a replica of
the President's summer retreat on Martha's
Vineyard completely out of shredded wheat,
and tonight I have to finish up the roof.
Compassionately,
The Aged Seafarer
Good lads:
ReplyDeleteI know I have been rather sardonic lately in
my remarks about "school"--all triggered by
Phillip's memorable rant on "recess injustice."
Sometimes, a little bit of gallows humor can
be comforting to the afflicted--and I always want to be supportive to you two works-in-progress.
But, I don't want to discourage you too much
about your educational experience, either.
So, this next is serious and sincere.
I have a dream, now and then, in which I am
back in school--yet, not as a young man, but
at the age I am now. Everyone else in the
dream, though, is just as they were then.
So, in the dream, I have ultimate advantage.
But, in the dream, I don't misuse that advantage. Somehow, because I'm older yet
walking through my past, none of the dumb
stuff bothers me anymore. And to use the
nauseating New Age cliche, I, instead, embrace it. All of it.
As an enlightened adult,
I see everything the teachers say and assign
me to do not as drudgery, but as a wonderful
opportunity to make myself smart. So, I
welcome homework, welcome studying for exams,
welcome every word spoken by my instructors.
Everything that was painful is enjoyable. And,
of course, fueled by this point of view,
I go right to the head of the class--getting perfect scores on all my tests.
At some point, though, the dream ends.
And I am left, awake, with one thought: if
only I had taken the same approach to school
when I was actually there.
Oh, sure, back then, I did okay. But it was always such an ordeal. And because of the dream, I wonder:
maybe it could have always been different.
Better. Even, blissful.
Well, I share this because I think there is
something in it for Phillip Rienstra, esq.,
and Jacob Rienstra, esq.--two of the brightest
rapscallions in America.
You guys are so far ahead of the pack already,
I'm going to suggest that you approach school
now--well, as if you'd already graduated,
and are now back there as adults, just the way I was in the dream.
I don't mean, of course, that you should start
camping out in the faculty room, chewing the
fat with your teachers.
I do mean, though, that if you can just
transcend your circumstances--almost as if
you were flying above the earth, and looking
down at what you had no perspective on when
you were ground-bound--your circumstances
will suddenly become, well...
Magical.
I wish this for you, as another Labor Day
approaches. I couldn't arguably wish it for
every student your age, because most of them
don't have your brain power.
But, I do wish it for you.
Let me know, if you care to, if I've made
any sense here.
I hope so.
The Mariner