Two ::click:: two ::click:: TWO rants in one!

[captainsblog]

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder I can think at all
And though my lack of education hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama dont take my Kodachrome away

Mama won't, but the Big Yellow Box apparently will. In a move that made the Associated Press wire and topped the "breaking headlines" on the Buffalo News homepage, yet didn't get picked up by the Rochester Demagogue & Comical this morning until somebody pointed out the scoop to them ::whistles innocently::, Kodak announced today that it was phasing out its most iconic brand of film, beloved by generations of professional photographers and still used loyally by a shrinking number of them.

While I was vaguely aware of the brand name growing up, far from Rochester, in the 1960s, it was Paul Simon's use of the brand in the Single of the Same Name that brought it to far greater prominence. In one major stand-out from how things work today, the Great Yellow Father didn't object to the use of its trademark in such a positive and endearing way- insisting only that Simon put a trademark notice on the album.  Ultimately, saith Wikipedia, they used the song in their own ad campaigns.  Nowadays, they'd likely have an injunction against such infringing use of its intellectual property before Paul even had his guitar tuned, and every single copy on Youtube would have a pink takedown notice.

It's sad they can't find a way to maintain the brand on some kind of legacy basis, but this is a company notorious, for all my years in and near Rochester, for not being able to manage its way out of a paper bag, so maybe it's better to retire it with dignity than to fuck it up.

----

Even before this news, my mind was already turned back to "all the crap I learned in high school."

I wound up taking Emily to three of her exams last week, and her dear friend Kaitlin went along on a couple of the days when she had them, too. It was quite a mind trip listening to the two of them rattling off formulas and mnemonics for science Regents exams, and a little humbling, too, considering how I've virtually forgotten every dribble of that stuff which got crammed into my own brain, 30-odd years ago.

I got to wondering about the point of it all, though.  Em is on the same "honors academic track" that I was, and yet she's clearly going in an artistic direction; she is as likely to become a research chemist as I am to become the new third baseman for the Mets. (In other words, there's virtually no chance, although at the rate our infielders are getting injured, I probably stand a better chance of making a career change than she does.)  Kaits is a year behind her, and has no interest in any kind of honors or other pre-college academics; she's into her own forms of art and wants to go into cosmetology. And yet there goes Rhymin' Simon the Education Establishment, teaching them both basically the same crap I learned 30 years ago, without differentiating between either of them, between them and me, or between then and now.

Sure, they've gotten rid of shop and home economics tracks- mainly because they were forced to by sex-discrimination charges- and replaced them with limited ventures into practical study. But they're still ramming all the same core subjects into them and, worse, teaching mostly the same shit in the same ways despite how much the world has changed in 30 years.

Languages? Pretty much the same luck-of-the-draw choice of French or Spanish- and the latter taught, not to acclimate Anglos to the variations spoken, increasingly, in their own country, but with the same Received Pronunciation emphasis on Spain and its dialects and its culture.

Technology? All they ever suggested for Emily's curriculum was that she take keyboarding- which was called "typing" and which they tried talking ME into back in 1975. Nothing about programming or applications or much of anything else that exists huge now but didn't exist at all 30 years ago.

I had to stop in the principal's office last week to sign a senior privilege form for next year. That place is still hopelessly stuck in the 70s, too. Detention uses the same methods, and quite possibly the same chairs, that I remember.

Maybe I shouldn't be bitter about the crap she's learning- it's certainly leaving a lot of a beautiful brain free for her to develop on her own. Just not on Kodachrome film.

Comments

[ourika.livejournal.com]

That high school part bugs me, but it also frightens me. My dad and mom graduated in 1973. I graduated in 1992 having had the same teachers, the same ridiculous crap, and even the same damned typewriters for my typing class. We were in very different classes (my mom took secretarial, I took advanced college prep, and my dad took "i'm too sexy for my shirt"). Truthfully, I think they do need to teach stuff that doesn't interest people because there's no way for them to find that out without being interested - if someone knows for a fact they're going to cosmotology school, well, that's what VoTechs are for, isn't it? If someone's going to college, they require LA courses in most colleges these days specifically to make sure that folks have had a chance to see things from different perspectives with different ideas. You can't get a lot of that without some of the basic background. My husband teaches really neat math, but without the boring, basic, early stuff, you don't have the background to even find out that there's cool stuff there. That being said, I think there are far too many instances of it being made boring and repetetive "pass the test" crap. I also think that too many people are told that it will be boring in advance (ex: so many people tell me, in front of their six year olds, that they hate math it's too hard).

Nothing really to contribute, just I agree with your rant, I see your rant, I also see a need to teach "nonsense" but really hate how it's done and don't know how to fix an institution the size of the US public school system.