Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to Episode 560 of Sneaky Dragon – the most disputatious podcast on the internet!
This week: identity; kicking bubblegum; fifteen minute fight; self-series; big red rooster; justified beret; not too Shaw-dy; now you seaweed; why Hawaii; this is where they shit; time travel; disappointing birds; trivial knowledge; unhelpful first aid; what gall; flower power; suck it up; toting barges; unexpected job expectations; make the worst of it; our efficient bodies; teacher training; teens don’t care; think of the parents; hobo classes; school is a building; kids are people too; it takes a child to raze a village; you’ve got to hide your nerd away; the bad ol’good ol’days; the perception filter; open therapy; generational dysfunction; oh bother; drug takes; Dork Shadows – Jenny, Jenny; Question of the Week – Sneakers respond; citizenship test; tattoo you; down under downtime; cowboy nuggets; thinks: school stinks; and, finally, monstrous conceit.
Question of the Week: What is your favourite thing to do at an amusement park?
Sub-question of the Week: What’s scarier: going to the doctor or going to the dentist?
Thanks for listening.
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I like freshly-spun cotton candy at an amusement park. And a stage showing local talent.
Whichever medical practitioner is sticking a needle in at the time is the scarier.
I don’t know if John Lasseter’s involvement would make Pixar’s latest movies better. He’s an executive producer on Skydance’s new movie Luck which is kind of a hot mess. It has some fun sequences and a few good gags. But for a movie aimed at a family audience, its underlying message is flawed. Apparently it’s a given that “you can’t have good luck without bad luck.” But they never answer questions like, “Why does bad luck happen to good people?” “Why don’t some kids have parents?” “Why aren’t all kids adopted?” The closest they come is saying that bad luck teaches you how to pivot. A more daring message would have been, “There’s no such thing as luck.” Or at least, “Believing in luck is okay if it helps you to envision a better future, but you can’t rely on luck alone.” I think it’s the leprechauns and the lucky cats, bunnies and pigs who should pivot. Their new job would be to inspire people to help each other to make the world a better place. For a grownup series about navigating the adoption system, try BBC’s “Trying” on Apple TV+.
*fake fur coat slips provocatively off one shoulder* – “Hello boys”
Not an amusement park but a funfair – I just visited the legendary ‘Carter’s Steam Fair’ on its final UK tour. If I may be so bold as to make Ian say ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ – then this is one helluva Gesamstkunstwerk! A collection of old fashioned timber and metal funfair rides dating back to the 1890s, all beautifully hand painted in traditional and more modern styles. Actual steam engines power the machinery (via belt drive), and they also provide the music, by pumping air through the pipe organs. The engines no longer drag the fair from town to town – this is done by vintage trucks, equally beautifully painted in the oxblood livery with cream piping. A combination of offal and dairy which sounds disgusting now I see it written down.
[An aside – by painting on reflective metal panels, light bounces through the paint, making opaque colours pop and translucent ones lustrous.]
My boy’s reaction on seeing the funfair from the other side of a field was like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. We headed straight for the carousel, with its centrally located steam engine and pipe organ. Once experienced, never forgotten – the smell of oil, coal, steam and smoke; the sounds of creaking timber and crashing cymbals; the kaleidoscopic colours and patterns… just heaven. Unbelievably the whole lot is on sale for a mere £2m. I really hope it can find a good home.
On your other question – A trip to the dentist reliably makes everybody feel guilty about how little they floss – and this includes dentists when they go for their checkups.
I enjoyed your chat about Education this week – it echoed a similar conversation we were having the previous night, where we were talking about the things ‘we wish we’d learnt in school’. David – I’m sorry but I feel you were being a bit obtuse, but I’m glad your friendship can withstand occasional obtubosity (?). I would say that there is a large overlap of responsibility between school and home for both educating and raising children. Parents are not teachers, and many are unable to pass on essential knowledge about how the world works. For example – a great home cook may not be able to explain why they do things in *that* particular way.
The UK has been blighted by an ideology of measuring student performance and plugging it into league tables. This may be fine for those elements that are easy to measure, but it is catastrophic for the rest. The word ‘Education’ stems from the Latin ‘E-duct-a-re’, meaning ‘to draw out’ – but we’ve had 10 plus years of ‘right answers’ being drummed into students’ brains.
Many of the things that have stuck with me are those that fell in between gaps in the curriculum – Astronomy club, say, or learning (through failure) how to manage a team decorating the school play.
Broad general education aside, I think the greatest skill we can learn is ‘process’ – this gives us the ability to start working on problems that we don’t yet understand in the sure knowledge that an answer exists somewhere in the future.
I have a brilliant answer to the question of how to best prepare people for the world through school – but this margin is too small to contain it.
Auf wiedersehen, Schneakers.
*flips fur coat over shoulder and sashays down the hall*
Re: questions of the week, my favourite thing to do at the amusement park is the roller coaster; in the doctor or dentist debate, I don’t think either is scary (fortunately), but I definitely think going to the dentist is more uncomfortable (and that’s from someone who has had no fillings and just needs regular cleanings, nothing more invasive – while it’s not necessarily scary or painful I find the dentist visit something I dread, not so much beforehand but more so during the actual procedure).
Re: the discussion on education, I think a lot of it comes down to choice. As a parent, I chose to teach my children certain things, as did my parents for me. For those parents who did not or could not do that for some reason, then the burden obviously falls on the school and unfortunately sometimes that torch is picked up and sometimes it is dropped. But we also encounter choice again.
When I was in school, I chose Business classes, and in those we did learn about taxes and I can remember even having to fill out an actual tax form so had some familiarity with the process, although for my whole life I have always used an accountant to do my own taxes as they are fairly complicated with two jobs, one being self employed.
As a teacher, I know that teaching about taxes is embedding in various parts of the curriculum – Business classes, Planning, Workplace Math, etc. Again, part of that comes down to choice – is the student going to take those classes? In other localities I really don’t know if similar topics are covered but one would imagine so.
In my own area, ESL, I talk about taxes every year simply as a familiarization to Canadian culture, as I know things are very different in other countries. It’s not a ‘how to do your taxes’ per se, but just an introduction to the idea of taxes.
I think one thing about schools that doesn’t work is teaching out of context, which unfortunately is done/must be done all the time – if you have no idea/no concept about what this teacher is going on about, it’s far easier to just tune out.
I think the more one has exposure to things, even something as mundane as taxes, both at home and at school, the better. My girls grew up with me having to take over the dining room table every Jan-Mar in the slow process of trying to sort out my books before they when to the accountant, so they saw the process happening before them in real (if very slow) time. When they got their driver’s licenses, they were often tasked with either dropping off or picking up the taxes at the accountants, and I’m happy to say doing their taxes seems to have been another level of adulting that they have somewhat seamlessly added to their repertoires without much fret and hassle.
But yes, there are always things that could be better in a curriculum, and there are always going to be employees who could have done their jobs better/covered things more thoroughly. And likewise, there are always parents who are going to hand the responsibility of many of the steps in preparing their kids for the world over to the school and hope for the best, or just move on without further thought. But such is life, I guess.