As in, 103 with a heat index of 113 in New York today. Compared to the chilly (relatively) temperatures in Vermont -- heck, I wore a sweatshirt out at dinner last week -- it's been a rough adjustment back to the city, and I could hardly bear to leave my apartment today.
It's not even sultry, steamy, Blanche DuBois hot. Or maybe I'm just not sultry enough. Regardless it's more of a sweaty, bags-under-eyes kind of hot. The kind of hot where we left our window unit running all night at 85 and it felt downright chilly compared to the rest of the house.
In honor of the heat, and in honor of my own return to the Handbook, I went back today to see how the scouts of 1911 would have coped. (Did I follow through with all these? No. Man, a scout in 1911 didn't have air conditioning, and despite my total stubbornness until this very summer, there is no way I'm going back.) I didn't get too far.
The Handbook starts out simple -- put green leaves inside your hat. In the days before the entire Patagonia catalog of wicking fabrics, this may have been valid. But this is also an artifact of the days when men wore hats, and when green leaves were (for everyone) easy to get one's hands on. For me, this was an interesting way of thinking, I guess, about who the Boy Scouts were intended for, at first, and about urbanization in general. See, in the 1920s, my maternal grandmother (and her family, my great-grandparents and various great-aunts and great-uncles) actually lived in the same neighborhood where I do these days. No trees. Also, very few Scouts -- honestly, the first scout troops were largely white (as in, African-American scouts were banned formally, until 1915 -- a topic for another day) and Protestant (as in, Catholics were banned until 1913, at which point a sort of separate-but-equal Catholic-only troop setup began, mirroring a similar Mormon-only troop structure a few years later).
Maybe it's not fair for me to think about green trees as being exclusionary, but that's where I am right now. Being up in Vermont and in way, way upstate NY until only yesterday has made me hyperaware, today, of just how remote my existence in Brooklyn is from the more rural scouting-ish lifestyle. It's the same issue that's present in a lot of educational equality discussions, the kind of inherent biases that some people think don't matter on standardized tests, things like that -- when you ask a city kid whether a slope of 90, 45, or 0 degrees would be better for cross-country skiing, you're putting that kid at a disadvantage, just by the very nature of your assumption that this city kid knows what these things are and how to deal with them. Am I calling the Boy Scouts inappropriately rural? Not by half. It would be like calling Neighborhood Watch too neighborhood-centric. Or like calling out the Hells Angels for a reluctance to pursue pony rides. It's the nature of the organization. But still, any organization will be easier for some people to join than for others, and we need to be aware of that.
Anyway. I'm disjointed, but it's hot. I'm going to eat me some ice cream, and we'll pick up this thread tomorrow. It's going to be 102 in Brooklyn, buddy, and I'll have a whole lot of time indoors.
Showing posts with label Book club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book club. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Fussell's bugbears
In his "Boy Scout Handbook" essay, Paul Fussell expresses delight that the more recent editions of the handbook are free of references to constipation, which is no longer "the bugbear it was generations ago."
Let me tell you that this is quite the loss.
Over Thanksgiving, the entire my-parents family was ferociously excited about the 1911 Handbook's references to physical health of all sorts. It promises a few health rules for growing boys that I think we need to attend to right now:
My favorite are the rules for eating. Ignore diet books, folks, because I think this will pretty much set you straight. First, don't eat too much. Second, don't eat meat more than once a day. Third, "don't eat anything that you always taste for several hours after you have eaten it, even though you like it." As a vegetarian for something like 10 or 11 years now (yowza), I've managed to convert John to eating a lot of meat substitutes around our house, so I'm kind of delighted with the century-old advice to limit meat consumption. However, the third piece of advice is really the hilarious kicker for me. As you're going to see in a moment, the Handbook assumes these teenage farm boys have the digestions of elderly bankers. There's more refernece to heartburn, indigestion, and, yes, constipation in the next few pages than in an AARP bulletin.
I begin.
Our discussion of eating advises, correctly, that we ought to be aware of our limits (though the Handbook's particular calling out of cucumbers as a frequent source of digestive trouble gives me pause). We are further advised that most boys "eat too much of a mixed nature," combining foods like pickles, soda, hot dogs, and chocolate (their list, not mine) in a "riot of eating." We are not to eat when excited, angry, tired, worried, or studying, and must chew our food until it is "the thickness of pea soup." While that did successfully kill my appetite, I'd like to point out that it killed the appetite for the huge brownie I just ate, while being kind of tired and totally excited to be reading the handbook, y'all! Take that. Really. Failure to ignore these pieces of advice will lead to our two chief problems (like I said): indigestion and constipation.
Rather than paraphrase the constipation warnings, I'll give it to you straight: "Drink a cool, copious draught of water upon arising. Then take some body-bending exercises. Follow this with the sponge bath. Then, if possible, take a walk around the block before breakfast. After school, play some favorite game for at least an hour. In the absence of this, take a good hike of three or four miles or a longer bicycle ride. At least twice a week, if possible, enter a gymnasium class and make special emphasis of body-bending exercises." We also need to schedule a regular poop time, whether we need to or not, and to eat plenty of graham crackers.
The Handbook also warns against coffee and tea, deeming them stimulants which can cause your own organs to eat themselves (really) and which a growing boy should have nothing to do with. It has a little confusion w/r/t stimulants, though, classifying tobacco as a narcotic, which we also ought to avoid. (Points for effort on this one.)
I'm idly considering a few days eating like a boy scout (or like one ought to). Taking this too far, or taking it not far enough? We'll see.
PS: There is a full section in the Handbook about the importance of avoiding discharges of "sex fluid." I feel too awkward to address this. Do you want to learn about it? Try searching this phrase: "To yield means to sacrifice strength and power and manliness." Yeah. That's right.
Let me tell you that this is quite the loss.
Over Thanksgiving, the entire my-parents family was ferociously excited about the 1911 Handbook's references to physical health of all sorts. It promises a few health rules for growing boys that I think we need to attend to right now:
My favorite are the rules for eating. Ignore diet books, folks, because I think this will pretty much set you straight. First, don't eat too much. Second, don't eat meat more than once a day. Third, "don't eat anything that you always taste for several hours after you have eaten it, even though you like it." As a vegetarian for something like 10 or 11 years now (yowza), I've managed to convert John to eating a lot of meat substitutes around our house, so I'm kind of delighted with the century-old advice to limit meat consumption. However, the third piece of advice is really the hilarious kicker for me. As you're going to see in a moment, the Handbook assumes these teenage farm boys have the digestions of elderly bankers. There's more refernece to heartburn, indigestion, and, yes, constipation in the next few pages than in an AARP bulletin.
I begin.
Our discussion of eating advises, correctly, that we ought to be aware of our limits (though the Handbook's particular calling out of cucumbers as a frequent source of digestive trouble gives me pause). We are further advised that most boys "eat too much of a mixed nature," combining foods like pickles, soda, hot dogs, and chocolate (their list, not mine) in a "riot of eating." We are not to eat when excited, angry, tired, worried, or studying, and must chew our food until it is "the thickness of pea soup." While that did successfully kill my appetite, I'd like to point out that it killed the appetite for the huge brownie I just ate, while being kind of tired and totally excited to be reading the handbook, y'all! Take that. Really. Failure to ignore these pieces of advice will lead to our two chief problems (like I said): indigestion and constipation.
Rather than paraphrase the constipation warnings, I'll give it to you straight: "Drink a cool, copious draught of water upon arising. Then take some body-bending exercises. Follow this with the sponge bath. Then, if possible, take a walk around the block before breakfast. After school, play some favorite game for at least an hour. In the absence of this, take a good hike of three or four miles or a longer bicycle ride. At least twice a week, if possible, enter a gymnasium class and make special emphasis of body-bending exercises." We also need to schedule a regular poop time, whether we need to or not, and to eat plenty of graham crackers.
The Handbook also warns against coffee and tea, deeming them stimulants which can cause your own organs to eat themselves (really) and which a growing boy should have nothing to do with. It has a little confusion w/r/t stimulants, though, classifying tobacco as a narcotic, which we also ought to avoid. (Points for effort on this one.)
I'm idly considering a few days eating like a boy scout (or like one ought to). Taking this too far, or taking it not far enough? We'll see.
PS: There is a full section in the Handbook about the importance of avoiding discharges of "sex fluid." I feel too awkward to address this. Do you want to learn about it? Try searching this phrase: "To yield means to sacrifice strength and power and manliness." Yeah. That's right.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Paul Fussell got here first.
Despite never having met him, I'd like to induct Paul Fussell into my Handbook Book Club (doubling the member count to two).
See, while I've never met Mr. Fussell, we have a certain commonality of experience. Though he's been retired from teaching for some years, he's a former professor at Rutgers, where I went to grad school a few years back. I read two of his books (Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Class) when I was in my mid-teens, at exactly the right age to be vaguely scandalized but not entirely understand why. Class, especially, threw me, instilling a lifelong horror of the word "home" instead of "house," as well of as decorating with artificial plants. I'm only a little ashamed to admit this. Seriously, Class was a weirdly revelatory book -- a little troubling and making explicit some aspects of American culture I'm not entirely comfortable with. Regardless, it turns out that Mr. Fussell wrote another book of particular personal interest to me.
In 1983, when I was but a wee little thing, he published The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations," a series of essays on American and British culture, travel, and (most of all) his experience in World War 2. TBSHaOO is hard to track down these days -- I had to get it pulled out of storage at the Brooklyn library -- but worthwhile. See, he and I have a similar interest in the Handbook as a historical document, but rather than looking at the 1911 edition, he examines the 1979 version. This makes the whole concept doubly-cool. While the title essay is only six pages long (meaning that, in going to and from the library, I walked 1/3 mile for every page of this essay), it's a great view of another Handbook edition.
In some ways, the Handbook has hardly changed since the 1911 edition. "A complex sentence," Mr. Fussell observes, "is as rare as a reference to girls," and endless focus on self-improvement, care for nature, and wide-ranging practical knowledge remains. What I find most interesting, though, are the two complaints Mr. Fussell puts forth: the excessive use of the phrase "free world" and enthusiastic urging of religion, to the point of packing a Bible when camping -- but not a knife. This sent me back to the 1911 edition. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I know for a fact that "free world" doesn't appear even once (take that, Mr. F!). The biblical references, though, are a little more tricky. See, the world of 1911 was a simpler one than the world of 1979, and pearhsp one, even, in which Lord B-P didn't feel as if he really needed to emphasize the importance of religion -- it was just obvious. The 1979 Handbook's increased focus on carrying a Bible, or on praying for guidance, is absent from the 1911 edition because we don't really need to be reminded. (It's worth noting here, as well, that I'm not idealizing the world of 1911, and I appreciate Mr. Fussell's remarks upon the inclusion of Harriet Tubman as an admirable American, and his observation that the later Handbook calls for "the prayer book of your faith," implying that Christianity is not a scouting requirement.)
As he tends to, Fussell brings George Orwell into the picture (he is also the subject of an essay in Thank God for the Atom Bomb, as well as four other essays in TB
SHaOO), pulling the Handbook into a post-Watergate world ("A scout does not bomb and invade a neutral country, and then lie about it") that's still relevant, um, three years ago, but I feel a little funny about it. I'm hesitant, I think, to politicize the Handbook more than I have to -- and I'll offer up this photo of Nixon (as Vice-President) addressing a Boy Scout Jamboree to seal the deal. Honestly, though, despite my personal feelings on the subject (strong), and even despite my personal feelings on certain issues without scouting as a movement (irrelevant at the moment), I worry that taking this kind of approach might weaken the Handbook as a historical document. Of course, anything is a product of the time in which it was written, but I have my own doubts about this particular interpretation, as taken from this particular document at this particular point.
Ultimately, Mr. Fussell's essay delighted me with its recognition that the Handbook is more than an instruction book for teenage boys in neckerchiefs. His read of it -- a "[repository] of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero" is one of the truest going. And, therefore, Mr. Fussell? Welcome to the club.
See, while I've never met Mr. Fussell, we have a certain commonality of experience. Though he's been retired from teaching for some years, he's a former professor at Rutgers, where I went to grad school a few years back. I read two of his books (Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Class) when I was in my mid-teens, at exactly the right age to be vaguely scandalized but not entirely understand why. Class, especially, threw me, instilling a lifelong horror of the word "home" instead of "house," as well of as decorating with artificial plants. I'm only a little ashamed to admit this. Seriously, Class was a weirdly revelatory book -- a little troubling and making explicit some aspects of American culture I'm not entirely comfortable with. Regardless, it turns out that Mr. Fussell wrote another book of particular personal interest to me.
In 1983, when I was but a wee little thing, he published The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations," a series of essays on American and British culture, travel, and (most of all) his experience in World War 2. TBSHaOO is hard to track down these days -- I had to get it pulled out of storage at the Brooklyn library -- but worthwhile. See, he and I have a similar interest in the Handbook as a historical document, but rather than looking at the 1911 edition, he examines the 1979 version. This makes the whole concept doubly-cool. While the title essay is only six pages long (meaning that, in going to and from the library, I walked 1/3 mile for every page of this essay), it's a great view of another Handbook edition.
In some ways, the Handbook has hardly changed since the 1911 edition. "A complex sentence," Mr. Fussell observes, "is as rare as a reference to girls," and endless focus on self-improvement, care for nature, and wide-ranging practical knowledge remains. What I find most interesting, though, are the two complaints Mr. Fussell puts forth: the excessive use of the phrase "free world" and enthusiastic urging of religion, to the point of packing a Bible when camping -- but not a knife. This sent me back to the 1911 edition. Thanks to Project Gutenberg, I know for a fact that "free world" doesn't appear even once (take that, Mr. F!). The biblical references, though, are a little more tricky. See, the world of 1911 was a simpler one than the world of 1979, and pearhsp one, even, in which Lord B-P didn't feel as if he really needed to emphasize the importance of religion -- it was just obvious. The 1979 Handbook's increased focus on carrying a Bible, or on praying for guidance, is absent from the 1911 edition because we don't really need to be reminded. (It's worth noting here, as well, that I'm not idealizing the world of 1911, and I appreciate Mr. Fussell's remarks upon the inclusion of Harriet Tubman as an admirable American, and his observation that the later Handbook calls for "the prayer book of your faith," implying that Christianity is not a scouting requirement.)
As he tends to, Fussell brings George Orwell into the picture (he is also the subject of an essay in Thank God for the Atom Bomb, as well as four other essays in TB
SHaOO), pulling the Handbook into a post-Watergate world ("A scout does not bomb and invade a neutral country, and then lie about it") that's still relevant, um, three years ago, but I feel a little funny about it. I'm hesitant, I think, to politicize the Handbook more than I have to -- and I'll offer up this photo of Nixon (as Vice-President) addressing a Boy Scout Jamboree to seal the deal. Honestly, though, despite my personal feelings on the subject (strong), and even despite my personal feelings on certain issues without scouting as a movement (irrelevant at the moment), I worry that taking this kind of approach might weaken the Handbook as a historical document. Of course, anything is a product of the time in which it was written, but I have my own doubts about this particular interpretation, as taken from this particular document at this particular point.Ultimately, Mr. Fussell's essay delighted me with its recognition that the Handbook is more than an instruction book for teenage boys in neckerchiefs. His read of it -- a "[repository] of something like classical ethics, deriving from Aristotle and Cicero" is one of the truest going. And, therefore, Mr. Fussell? Welcome to the club.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Handbook book club, #3
I begin with a life lesson: never, ever, ever get cranky at the world and decide to cut yourself bangs, vaguely based on those you've seen on one or two particularly hip girls on the train. It will not work out well. Tomorrow will be a day of bobby pins and of a hair-fixing appointment with, um, anyone who'll take me in. Geez.
This week's Book Club selection deals with the outfitting necessary for a scout. This is surprisingly intense, buddies.
So, the equipment. Man, the Boy Scouts were taking things seriously. This section reads more like a catalog than anything else, with the advice that "considerable difficulty has been experienced in the selection of the material used in making coats, breeches, and shirts," including sun tests, acid tests, and unspecified tests of colorfastness and durability. At the prices they're charging -- on the order of 75 cents per shirt -- you're not going to do much better. Would you, young sir, prefer to make your own Boy Scout uniform? No problem. You can procure branded Boy Scout logo buttons for only fifteen cents for a coat-sized set.
What's really interesting is just the focus the Handbook has on the importance of using only official Boy Scout items. I'd be unsurprised now, of course, but the notion that this concern was so prominent a hundred years ago is interesting to me. While earlier sections of the Handbook focus on the virtues of the ideal Scout, his sense of community above self, his total competence in even the most unpleasant situations, and his pride in good behavior, this section reminds us that the Boy Scouts were still a commercial enterprise, and they would sue you if you used the Boy Scout seal without authorization.
I guess we all like to think of times before right now as being somehow purer, or hell, maybe just realer. But today, Lord Baden-Powell and co. would like to remind you otherwise.
Update: Life lesson #2. Don't make an unfortunate hair decision, then post to your blog about it. You'll get an anxious call from your mother asking if you shouldn't have learned to avoid self-directed haircutting by age 12 or so. And she, of course, will be right. Love you, mom.
This week's Book Club selection deals with the outfitting necessary for a scout. This is surprisingly intense, buddies.
So, the equipment. Man, the Boy Scouts were taking things seriously. This section reads more like a catalog than anything else, with the advice that "considerable difficulty has been experienced in the selection of the material used in making coats, breeches, and shirts," including sun tests, acid tests, and unspecified tests of colorfastness and durability. At the prices they're charging -- on the order of 75 cents per shirt -- you're not going to do much better. Would you, young sir, prefer to make your own Boy Scout uniform? No problem. You can procure branded Boy Scout logo buttons for only fifteen cents for a coat-sized set.
What's really interesting is just the focus the Handbook has on the importance of using only official Boy Scout items. I'd be unsurprised now, of course, but the notion that this concern was so prominent a hundred years ago is interesting to me. While earlier sections of the Handbook focus on the virtues of the ideal Scout, his sense of community above self, his total competence in even the most unpleasant situations, and his pride in good behavior, this section reminds us that the Boy Scouts were still a commercial enterprise, and they would sue you if you used the Boy Scout seal without authorization.
I guess we all like to think of times before right now as being somehow purer, or hell, maybe just realer. But today, Lord Baden-Powell and co. would like to remind you otherwise.
Update: Life lesson #2. Don't make an unfortunate hair decision, then post to your blog about it. You'll get an anxious call from your mother asking if you shouldn't have learned to avoid self-directed haircutting by age 12 or so. And she, of course, will be right. Love you, mom.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Handbook book club, #2
You may not have known this, but I have a degenerative disease. And it is called Elmo-titis.
Yesterday evening, I was a little hoarse. (Groucho Marx joke here.) By this morning? No voice at all, except something high, squeaky, rumbly, and quiet. Kind of like Elmo. And, like Elmo, I'm pretty chipper, all things considered. But I fear the next step.
Anyway, as a result of the Elmo-titis, I didn't manage to get out today and work on the Athletics badge like I'd hoped to. That means . . . it's time for another round of Handbook book club!
When last we discussed this stuff, we talked a lot about the scout virtues -- cleanliness, honesty, that kind of thing. And while those are important, today we get into something that could be brutally dull but isn't: the structure of a troop.
We go through the scout concil officers fairly quickly, the president, vice president, etc., the scout commissioner, all that. The thing that interests me is the scout master. He's required to be at least twenty-one, be of good moral fiber, the basics. What's interseting is that he is specifically not required to be particularly good at the myriad tasks the Handbook assigns any good boy scout. The exact wording: "He need not be an expert at scoutcraft; a good scout master will discover experts for the various activities."
This is startlingly ahead of its time.
As some of you (those of you who've read my bio on the sidebar, at least) know, I teach school. Specifically, I teach science. Now, I have a decent amount of science-y background, but when I left grad school to start teaching, I realized something: what you know has almost no impact on how good a teacher you are. Seriously. This is hard for me to admit, because I've always been a strong believer in school. I worked hard in high school. I went to a good college and worked hard there. And I went to two separate good grad schools and worked hard at those, too. So I started out extremely good at the science I teach, and extremely hesitant to downplay the importance of learning. I walked into my classroom the first day ever, thinking that my spectacular science-ness was just going to pour all over these kids and bring them to their knees in awe.
By the end of that first day, I was crying in the parking lot.
It got better, of course, and I'm actually a little bummed now to know that my old students started class last week and Iw asn't there to see them. In the past few days, I've gotten emails from several of them, and it unquestionably makes my day. I started out terrified of them, and terrified I woudln't be able to get through to them, but over time, day by day, we managed to build a relationship that I'm really proud of.
In my planner, I have a note from one of my last year's students: "Thank you for being a fantastic science teacher. I already enjoyed science but you made the class so much fun and made learning enjoyable. You becamse my favorite class and teacher and I looked forward to it every day." First, girl spelled "every day" as two words, thank goodness, which shows you how smart she is. And second, this may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
So, as I was implying, I guess, over time you build up comfort with your students and with your job. There is a set of skills you need in order to maintain any regularity in the classroom, in order to write and organize lesson plans, is as different from knowing actual content as is knowing how to cook and knowing how to eat, and while each is different, each is also learnable. So I'm delighted that the scoutmaster simply needs to have an interest in the material rather than being an expert -- the Handbook is recognizing, years before much educational philosophy did, that there's a difference between knowing and teaching.
This is also extraordinarily relevant to my life right now. I've just switched from teaching in a rich, suburban district to teaching in the heart of Brooklyn. Once again, my first day was a rough one. Once again, I entered the classroom convinced that I knew how teaching science worked and that the kids and I would be best friends in a heartbeat. And, once again, I was unimaginably, insurmountably incorrect. It's more of the same, really -- what applies in one situation, whether it's basic science knowledge or how to keep classroom order in a central Jersey classroom in which, frankly, keeping order is not that much of a challenge, is almost irrelevant when it comes to reaching out to a specific group of individuals in a specific location at a specific time. What worked for me at my last job doesn't work here, and that's okay.
Tomorrow starts my second week at my new school. I'm ready. Just like the Handbook recommends, a desire to learn and a desire to teach will pull you a hell of a lot farther than all the knowledge you've got.
(Also, watching MTV's VMAs, I've just seen Taylor Swift singing and dancing on my regular train. I am totally blaming her for long wait times for the train this week, and now I hate a girl I've never met. Thanks, MTV. Thanks.)
Yesterday evening, I was a little hoarse. (Groucho Marx joke here.) By this morning? No voice at all, except something high, squeaky, rumbly, and quiet. Kind of like Elmo. And, like Elmo, I'm pretty chipper, all things considered. But I fear the next step.
Anyway, as a result of the Elmo-titis, I didn't manage to get out today and work on the Athletics badge like I'd hoped to. That means . . . it's time for another round of Handbook book club!
When last we discussed this stuff, we talked a lot about the scout virtues -- cleanliness, honesty, that kind of thing. And while those are important, today we get into something that could be brutally dull but isn't: the structure of a troop.
We go through the scout concil officers fairly quickly, the president, vice president, etc., the scout commissioner, all that. The thing that interests me is the scout master. He's required to be at least twenty-one, be of good moral fiber, the basics. What's interseting is that he is specifically not required to be particularly good at the myriad tasks the Handbook assigns any good boy scout. The exact wording: "He need not be an expert at scoutcraft; a good scout master will discover experts for the various activities."
This is startlingly ahead of its time.
As some of you (those of you who've read my bio on the sidebar, at least) know, I teach school. Specifically, I teach science. Now, I have a decent amount of science-y background, but when I left grad school to start teaching, I realized something: what you know has almost no impact on how good a teacher you are. Seriously. This is hard for me to admit, because I've always been a strong believer in school. I worked hard in high school. I went to a good college and worked hard there. And I went to two separate good grad schools and worked hard at those, too. So I started out extremely good at the science I teach, and extremely hesitant to downplay the importance of learning. I walked into my classroom the first day ever, thinking that my spectacular science-ness was just going to pour all over these kids and bring them to their knees in awe.
By the end of that first day, I was crying in the parking lot.
It got better, of course, and I'm actually a little bummed now to know that my old students started class last week and Iw asn't there to see them. In the past few days, I've gotten emails from several of them, and it unquestionably makes my day. I started out terrified of them, and terrified I woudln't be able to get through to them, but over time, day by day, we managed to build a relationship that I'm really proud of.
In my planner, I have a note from one of my last year's students: "Thank you for being a fantastic science teacher. I already enjoyed science but you made the class so much fun and made learning enjoyable. You becamse my favorite class and teacher and I looked forward to it every day." First, girl spelled "every day" as two words, thank goodness, which shows you how smart she is. And second, this may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.
So, as I was implying, I guess, over time you build up comfort with your students and with your job. There is a set of skills you need in order to maintain any regularity in the classroom, in order to write and organize lesson plans, is as different from knowing actual content as is knowing how to cook and knowing how to eat, and while each is different, each is also learnable. So I'm delighted that the scoutmaster simply needs to have an interest in the material rather than being an expert -- the Handbook is recognizing, years before much educational philosophy did, that there's a difference between knowing and teaching.
This is also extraordinarily relevant to my life right now. I've just switched from teaching in a rich, suburban district to teaching in the heart of Brooklyn. Once again, my first day was a rough one. Once again, I entered the classroom convinced that I knew how teaching science worked and that the kids and I would be best friends in a heartbeat. And, once again, I was unimaginably, insurmountably incorrect. It's more of the same, really -- what applies in one situation, whether it's basic science knowledge or how to keep classroom order in a central Jersey classroom in which, frankly, keeping order is not that much of a challenge, is almost irrelevant when it comes to reaching out to a specific group of individuals in a specific location at a specific time. What worked for me at my last job doesn't work here, and that's okay.
Tomorrow starts my second week at my new school. I'm ready. Just like the Handbook recommends, a desire to learn and a desire to teach will pull you a hell of a lot farther than all the knowledge you've got.
(Also, watching MTV's VMAs, I've just seen Taylor Swift singing and dancing on my regular train. I am totally blaming her for long wait times for the train this week, and now I hate a girl I've never met. Thanks, MTV. Thanks.)
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Handbook book club, #1
Surprisingly enough, very little of the Handbook’s text is actually badge-related information. Rather, of the 400-odd pages, only 20 contain badge requirements. The remainder is an assortment of information about how a Scout ought to live, discourses on chivalry, and instructions for preparing frogs’ legs for a camp dinner (if frying, serve with watercress).
More than anything, the Handbook is a prescriptive document for the healthy boy of the early twentieth century — if he wants to be strong and competent, he needs little more than to follow these instructions. It’s a step-by-step guide for becoming unquestionably manly.
The first section of the Handbook deals with the history of scouting, tracing it back to King Arthur and the Crusaders, who would unquestionably (we learn) have been Boy Scouts. Interestingly, the section also gives a nod to the Civil War soldiers who kept the United States together — interesting because the Civil War, to these folks, was really a piece of living memory, no more remote than the MLK’s march on Washington to us. (I’m being completely accurate here — from the surrender at Appomattox to the 1911 publishing of the Handbook was 46 years. 1963 to 2009? You guessed it.)
The Handbook also addresses virtue — kindness to animals, faithfulness to duty, that sort of thing. The scout is directed also towards physical hardiness and instructed to sleep “with the windows of his bedroom open both summer and winter,” and to take cold baths with rough towels. This is supposed to make him better able to endure hardship, and has the added bonus of exfoliated and minimizing pores. (The Handbook actually says this last part!) (No it doesn’t.)
One more thing: a scout should always, always breathe through the nose, never the mouth. No particular reason is given, though it's something I feel quite strongly about, too.
More than anything, the Handbook is a prescriptive document for the healthy boy of the early twentieth century — if he wants to be strong and competent, he needs little more than to follow these instructions. It’s a step-by-step guide for becoming unquestionably manly.
The first section of the Handbook deals with the history of scouting, tracing it back to King Arthur and the Crusaders, who would unquestionably (we learn) have been Boy Scouts. Interestingly, the section also gives a nod to the Civil War soldiers who kept the United States together — interesting because the Civil War, to these folks, was really a piece of living memory, no more remote than the MLK’s march on Washington to us. (I’m being completely accurate here — from the surrender at Appomattox to the 1911 publishing of the Handbook was 46 years. 1963 to 2009? You guessed it.)
The Handbook also addresses virtue — kindness to animals, faithfulness to duty, that sort of thing. The scout is directed also towards physical hardiness and instructed to sleep “with the windows of his bedroom open both summer and winter,” and to take cold baths with rough towels. This is supposed to make him better able to endure hardship, and has the added bonus of exfoliated and minimizing pores. (The Handbook actually says this last part!) (No it doesn’t.)
One more thing: a scout should always, always breathe through the nose, never the mouth. No particular reason is given, though it's something I feel quite strongly about, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
