Ah education again, a subject I like

This is basically the sort of thing I've been saying since High School and my Mom has been preaching about since I was home-schooled (till I was 8). But since these RSAnimate people just do such a good job of explaining exactly how I feel about our education system I'll let 'em at it.



There is one thing they do leave out here. And that is that students are always always resisting. Wherever there is a dominant paradigm there will always be resistance to it. Students do it all the time, they do cheat, they do collaborate with eachother, they even discredit the marks they get simply by not letting it govern their lives. The power of a mindset is too often overlooked. Just imagine what education could be if the constrains of traditional schooling were lifted.

I've been thinking though, how do we start changing our education system around so that it is a better model for today's children and society? It's a lot more complicated than simply saying "it's not working but here's the sort of thing that would". We'd need to first break down what's not working - a task that could take more than simple years to come about. Institutions like schools are so embedded in our social system on so many different levels that even to change it minimally would take years. And then, what do we change it to? I feel like there are an infinite number of possible directions a new education system could take, all perfectly viable to try - but which one? How does one decide how to completely rework such a fundamental pillar of our society?

These are just those mind boggling questions I wish I could answer better. And maybe I will someday. In 100 (200?) years maybe they will look back on our society and think what silly silly 21st century humans, did they really think that was a good idea? In fact, I'm positive they will. They'll have moved forward as we always strive to, or perhaps they'll have simply moved - to try something different.

Yup just a song I like, tis all.

 

kindred spirits

there was this very sweet old french man at work today who just made things just feel a little bit better. he was waiting to speak to my manager but i decided to ask him if he needed help, he responded in french and when he saw i understood he started talking to me about learning languages. i think one of the first things he said was "you should learn french, italian, spanish... just for fun not because it will help you get a job!" and i think my heart just swelled after he said that. that's exactly why i wanted to go to france after stockholm, just for the experience of learning a new language. its so rare here that you get that sort of attitude, french is literally forced onto everyone who already has a job with the government and then its forced onto those who don't just so they can get a job and as a result you don't really get much positivity towards it. you try to talk to people in french and they just switch into english because you have an accent or your vocabulary isnt perfect. it was just really nice to talk to someone who was so enthusiastic about you learning his language.

i think ive been having a bit of trouble living that sort of attitude lately - not just with languages, outside circumstances start to bog you down and you forget. you just need someone with the same heart to say something like that more often and shock you back into the way you'd like to be living. 

too many long posts. here's a short one. and a picture of a parka ive been drooling over. just imagine the winter fun that could be had in this thing. this with my ski pants and my new FAT knitted mittens and a hat under that giant furry hood... you would never want to go inside i would just roll and roll in the snow until some killjoy who doesnt like winter as much forced me to go inside. bring it on winter i am ready for your harsh winds, your icy rain, your blizzards and your flash freezes. i am so ready for slipping down my driveway every morning on my way to work.

Alright people, it is Confession time.

Since the next Harry Potter movie is coming out in t-minus 10 days and many a person seems to be caught up in Harry Potter mania (re-reading the books, HP movie marathons, arguing about HP facts in the streets, etc.) I thought I'd join in with a little Harry Potter confession of my own. Ok here goes Iusedtowriteharrypotterfanfiction. Yup you read that right Harry. Potter. FanFiction. Now I'm going to make it sound like it was a cool thing to do.

It all started with my Grade 7 teacher. She introduced us to Harry Potter by making us read the first book for a school project. I then spent the next two years  reading and re-reading the first 4 books. I was a huge Harry Potter nerd. I corrected people when they pronounced spells wrong and made everyone pronounce Hermione HerMOINE because I thought that was the right way, I was an HP bully. I also finally gave up my childhood crush on Wesley from Star Trek (c'mon you know who I mean... the doctor's son? no...?) to crush after Ron Weasley... in the wizarding world everything was possible, redheaded boys could be good-looking, I was sure of it.

Luckily this mania had started to fade by Grade 9, but another secret mania began. I've always been a writer, in high school I don't think there was a time when I wasn't writing something. I even remember sitting in the mall by my work writing before I had to start. So, naturally my two manias from this time of my life eventually converged in the form of FanFiction. And I had fans. Yup, people emailed me if I didn't finish my next chapter in time. I got hate mail from fans who wanted to know what happened in my stories next if I didn't update them fast enough. By Grade 11 though real life had just got too busy to allow me any time for updating. I never finished either of the stories I had started. I remember getting one email from a reader complaining about an unfinished story. I responded saying something like 'I'm sorry I'm in Grade 11 its a stressful time of my life, theres a lot going on' etc. etc. She responded telling me she understood, she was in 2nd year University. I thought that was so cool... I had a fan in university.

I think I only ever told one friend that I was doing this while I was writing. I might've told others afterwards I can't remember. But I always sort of felt it was socially unacceptable to be writing fanfiction (why on earth would I have thought that?!). Now, though, if I think about it... that was pretty cool! I mean how many other 16 year olds were writing pretty much full out novel sized stories and had readers to boot? I was really organized too. I recently found a notebook where I'd written out chapter summaries - so that I knew what was supposed to happen when and how to lead up to events I wanted to happen later on. I mean sure I'd stolen the setting but some of the characters were my own and the plot was all me. Basically, I think it was really awesome and I shouldn't have been ashamed of it at all.

So there you go, that's my confession. And if you can't handle it you can just go shove a Crumple Horned Snorkack up your....  

Discovering what's on the other side...

...of the river. When I first got to France and my new students found out I was from Canada, they bombarded me with questions about popular French Canadian music groups or artists. Not recognising any of the names, I had to describe to them the extent of the divide between French and English Canada. I felt completely ignorant about whole cultural phenomenons whose existence was revered a short bridge-walk away. I've spent most of my life living on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River only really crossing over to Quebec in summers to go to a heavily anglicised cottage-country. Sure, we took multiple school trips to Gatineau where the Museum of Civilization sits but, to any English Ottawan, thats still Ottawa. I had never taken any interest in French Canadian culture, or if I did, it was to listen to bands from Montreal who had started singing in English, or a mix of both, and were being played in clubs and bars in Toronto. I never realised how Anglo-centric my view of Canadian culture was until these French kids, thousands of kilometres away, started outsmarting me with their knowledge of Canadian artists (writers, artists, musicians alike). It gives you a bit of a shock when you're standing in a French classroom and a bunch of kids are telling you about a singer they like who found his fame only a few short hours away from your hometown, or a TV show they're streaming that was produced in Montreal. Weird.

So now that I've found myself back in Ottawa for the time being I am trying to take advantage of the city's strategic position on the border of this Canadian divide. Understanding the language ten times better helps every day, although I find myself a walking stereotype of "English Canadian learns French in France and can't understand a word of Quebecois". Yet, I'm understanding French-English jokes way better than I used to and, as a result, am picking up on cultural cues. A friend of mine, who has worked on her French and is pretty much fluent, introduced me to a show called Les Invincibles. Hilarious show about a bunch of guys who make a pact to break up with their girlfriends at the same time and the resulting consequences. I've recently discovered it was remade in France for French television. There's this whole cultural exchange between France and Quebec which I, as an Anglophone, had completely missed. My sister also recently led me to discover a French Canadian group who were apparently huge from the 70s into the 80s. They started in Montreal and my mother (also an anglo), who grew up there, had only vaguely heard of them. Here is one of their most popular songs, which, now that I understand the lyrics, I've come to love. They're called Beau Dommage and the song is La complainte du phoque en alaska .

The song is telling the story of a seal who finds himself alone on an iceburg after his 'blonde' has left him for the circus in the United States. It's just a very pretty song, I especially like this lyric:

"Ca n'vaut pas la peine de laisser ceux qu'on aime
Pour aller faire tourner des ballons sur son nez"
It's not worth the pain to leave the ones we love
to go spin circus balls on our noses (but much prettier sounding than that)

I still have a long way to go in understanding French Canadian culture, but its been a really interesting start. You never know what you'll find just across the river.