Thursday, May 06, 2004
“The sea is calm tonight…” Matthew Arnold
Jameson is so cool! I love smart thoughtful people.
Today I went and played with my kindergarten again. My name is now up on their class list, so I’m really part of the group! I’m learning lots of names, and I love spending time with them. We made caterpillars as part of a counting lesson today. It’s AMAZING how quickly they tire me out! Just an hour with them and I’m bushed!
It’s also such a lesson in good teaching. Their teacher is one of those rare individuals who’s aware of everything going on in the room. A look, a hand movement, a touch, and they fall into line immediately. Do you know how hard it is to keep control of two kindergarteners at the same time? Much less a CLASS FULL of them?? They have no idea how lucky they are to have such a good teacher. I am learning so much just from watching her a few hours a week.
In other news, Mich is the coolest person I know this week. WOOT!
And Hippo Birdie to Alissa (21! SMAT!), Uncle Jimmy, and Uncle Bill.
And Brian, Jags, and I are competing for the “I suck at life award.” It’s going to be a weekly thing. I hope to get prizes.
Actually, I spent every minute I wasn’t in class or at meetings or eating (k, not that much time) in bed today. I am so damn angry about the Abu Ghraib pictures. What did we think would happen? Honestly. Let’s send a group of medium trained kids over there, give them little or no instruction and training about how to deal with guarding people, and tell them that there is an Axis of Evil, they are the good guys, and everyone else is bad and out to get them. Then let’s give them weapons, a facility that used to be a torture prison, not nearly enough regulation or supervision, and a slap on the wrist if they do something awful. Oh yeah, let’s also call the people they’re guarding detainees instead of POWs, so we can do whatever we want and not technically be under Geneva (although we don’t follow that anyway, obviously), even if that just means we have no proof that they’ve done something wrong. We’d better chuck a camera into the mix too, for good measure.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/plaidder/04/21.html
And then we act all surprised when we see the dirty truth. Doesn’t anyone remember Milgram? Remember in psych, seeing videos of people shocking the shit out of another human being? The prison guard experiment? (Both talked about in above article.) I tend to believe most people are good—if you can meet them on an equal footing and look them in the eye. But WHY did no one stand up and say this is WRONG, knock it the fuck off. Don’t say people didn’t know. Even the bigwigs who might not have known details (cough Bush cough Rumsfeld) HAD to know that they had created an environment in which this could occur, and didn’t do enough to stop it. And there should have been some people with a spine, anyone who was there would do, to say STOP. What did we learn in elementary school? When someone STANDS UP to the bully, he’ll knock it off. But someone’s gotta do the brave thing, the hard thing, the outside thing, even if it usually means ending up supported by everyone else.
So I spent the day fuming. I’m not done yet, either. I wish we could count on people to do the right thing…but we can so rarely…
On that note, I’m going to finish my work and sleep. Feel free to blitz if you too are horrified and want to bitch.
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Jameson is so cool! I love smart thoughtful people.
Today I went and played with my kindergarten again. My name is now up on their class list, so I’m really part of the group! I’m learning lots of names, and I love spending time with them. We made caterpillars as part of a counting lesson today. It’s AMAZING how quickly they tire me out! Just an hour with them and I’m bushed!
It’s also such a lesson in good teaching. Their teacher is one of those rare individuals who’s aware of everything going on in the room. A look, a hand movement, a touch, and they fall into line immediately. Do you know how hard it is to keep control of two kindergarteners at the same time? Much less a CLASS FULL of them?? They have no idea how lucky they are to have such a good teacher. I am learning so much just from watching her a few hours a week.
In other news, Mich is the coolest person I know this week. WOOT!
And Hippo Birdie to Alissa (21! SMAT!), Uncle Jimmy, and Uncle Bill.
And Brian, Jags, and I are competing for the “I suck at life award.” It’s going to be a weekly thing. I hope to get prizes.
Actually, I spent every minute I wasn’t in class or at meetings or eating (k, not that much time) in bed today. I am so damn angry about the Abu Ghraib pictures. What did we think would happen? Honestly. Let’s send a group of medium trained kids over there, give them little or no instruction and training about how to deal with guarding people, and tell them that there is an Axis of Evil, they are the good guys, and everyone else is bad and out to get them. Then let’s give them weapons, a facility that used to be a torture prison, not nearly enough regulation or supervision, and a slap on the wrist if they do something awful. Oh yeah, let’s also call the people they’re guarding detainees instead of POWs, so we can do whatever we want and not technically be under Geneva (although we don’t follow that anyway, obviously), even if that just means we have no proof that they’ve done something wrong. We’d better chuck a camera into the mix too, for good measure.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/plaidder/04/21.html
And then we act all surprised when we see the dirty truth. Doesn’t anyone remember Milgram? Remember in psych, seeing videos of people shocking the shit out of another human being? The prison guard experiment? (Both talked about in above article.) I tend to believe most people are good—if you can meet them on an equal footing and look them in the eye. But WHY did no one stand up and say this is WRONG, knock it the fuck off. Don’t say people didn’t know. Even the bigwigs who might not have known details (cough Bush cough Rumsfeld) HAD to know that they had created an environment in which this could occur, and didn’t do enough to stop it. And there should have been some people with a spine, anyone who was there would do, to say STOP. What did we learn in elementary school? When someone STANDS UP to the bully, he’ll knock it off. But someone’s gotta do the brave thing, the hard thing, the outside thing, even if it usually means ending up supported by everyone else.
So I spent the day fuming. I’m not done yet, either. I wish we could count on people to do the right thing…but we can so rarely…
On that note, I’m going to finish my work and sleep. Feel free to blitz if you too are horrified and want to bitch.
