Tuesday, February 3, 2015

20150203.0721

The plains-sweeping wind blows outside, carrying chill and sounds of traffic to Sherwood Cottage, and I once again wish for warmer feet. They would offer less distraction from today's tasks of pushing through a shorter freelance piece (which ought not to take long) and grading what came in yesterday as needing grading. (The students have been advised that I might not get all of that done today. They have proven more engaged than most, which prompts me to work harder for them, but there are other demands on my time, and some of them come before the jobs I do. Ms. 8, for example--and she seems to be doing better so far today.)

I find also that I will have something to write for the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, to which I have been admittedly insufficiently attentive. A member of the Society pointed out a news article in which a Texas fourth-grader was suspended from school for "threatening" another student with Tolkien's One Ring. (Here's another.) Having grown up in Texas, although not the part of the sprawling Lone Star State in question, I am unsurprised that such a thing happened. (I will also not be surprised if the incident ends up being lampooned in Texas Monthly's Bum Steer Awards.) Texas schools favor zero-tolerance policies for those outside the highest socio-economic strata, and they tend to take a dim view of those who express interest in things other than guns, sports, and "Christian" faith. (And maybe alcohol, although there are many dry counties in the state.)

I doubt that the kid in question is an angel, otherwise. I note that the child is reported to have been in disciplinary trouble at other points--although one instance could use more context, and another seems to be a typical overreaction--and, as a teacher, I know that a student identified as a troublemaker receives careful scrutiny. Can't be helped, really. human nature being as flawed as it is and in the ways it is. But I also doubt that, had the kid quoted Revelation or some other...flavorful part of the Bible, he would have been sanctioned by the school. And I note the differences in headlines between the two articles; while the Daily News has problems (with which I am familiar from life in The City), it is not in this case making the mistake of equating a student referring to fictional magic as actually enacting "real" magic, as the more local source does. So I have to wonder what else is going on--and I have to think that I know full well what it is.

There are places where decades past have never passed. The places cling to years gone by, idealizing them in what soon become unhealthy ways, focusing on fads that are soon proven foolish to those who actually pay attention--but they do not pay attention, remaining happily consumed with themselves and their desperate cleaving to "when things were better." I think such a thing is in place where the child lives, and I think the time clung to is the time when Pat Pulling was popular. And that is a shame.

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