I just found Jim's finance, Megan, has a blog and I had to quote this. She teaches at a rural Virginia high school. She complains about the same stuff that I always found... wierd back when I was in school. From her post about her first week back at school:
We got a new style of spirit shirt this year: a light denim button-up shirt, with the school logo on it. I can't even begin to tell you how hideous this shirt is. Now I have one of the more attractive figures at the school (how sad is that??), and it looks terrible on me! They come in "women's sizes" which everyone was excited about, except that they really don't. It's a man's shirt that runs ever so slightly smaller. And the worst part, everyone will wear this denim shirt with jeans this year. It doesn't go with jeans. Do they know that? Of course not because these are the people that wear holiday sweaters with bells and apples and rulers on them.
Priceless!
She also makes a serious point about the lack of technological sophistication in schools. It's something Tasha and I were talking about this morning since it's the topic of an essay she's writing for school. In very few other white collar professions would you be able to get away with the ignorance that Megan has to endure in her co-workers.
Technology Day, which I think Fred Flinstone planned. People waited in line for almost 2 hours to sign up for classes to sit in on that day. Among my favorite titles: "Searching Using Google", "Basic Office Applications", and "How to Insert your Flash Drive" (which I imagine went something like, 'If it doesn't fit in the hole, that's not where it goes'). Needless to say, I busted nasty in my evaluation of the day. The jist: Don't punish those of us who are technologically competent.
I'll refrain from making political points that my regular readers can easily anticipate. But this is just another serendipitous tidbit about education that I'm noticing in my daily information stream, given that I'm reading some John Taylor Gatto presently. There's also a book about teachers unions that I've been meaning to read, too (wonder what Tasha and Megan would think of it).
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