Ball Caps and Cell Phones: Nodes of Change

Ball Caps and Cell Phones

I know I am old school having taught in many educational settings for almost 40 years.  I have seen many changes and watched various systems evolve and devolve over time in the myriad of phases that come and go in and out of popularity.  Open Concepts schooling was once all the rage and the answer to pedagogical prayers until the walls and barriers started going back up and collectively we realized that maybe it was not such a good idea after all.  Report card evaluation based on summative marks to one decimal places, or formative anecdotal comments in lieu of marks as a basis for evaluation.  I’ve seen it go both ways and back again.

Special education with special classes, versus student removal to a special ed room, or integration of all abilities within one classroom where one teacher does all.  Merit in each approach.  It has gone both ways.  Now it is more differentiated instruction within the classroom because for one thing it is truly cost effective, but as an over all teaching strategy difficult for a new teacher to accomplish.  there are always cut offs between the alternatives.  Educational instruction, never perfect, ever changing.

My point is that styles of instruction are always in flux. Some change is good if the educational systems collectively and individually move forward.  Certainly technology has changed so significantly in a short span of time.  Almost comically I can remember the days when the overhead projector was new technology and was hoped to radically change the delivery system of information to students and the very nature of how teachers instructed.  Comparatively, in the age of computers and pads we have come a great distance.  Now some students are just as smart as they can google and overhead projectors are obsolete.  Are students learning more or less?

While working in Jinhua, China as a principal in an English school using the Ontario curriculum we did have impressive computer labs.  This was a school for wealthy Chinese and the status symbol then as now was to own a smart phone.  I did not allow students to have their cell phones in class, especially no where near an exam room.  In one conspiracy of communication 28 of our students were caught cheating using cell phones during a major exam.

I literally stood guard at the gate and announced both prior to, and while as students entered the exam room that no cell phones were allowed.  If caught they would fail the exam and there were no exceptions.  I would literally say, “Please check the phones with me as you enter if you have not left them in your room.”  

I know as a teacher the battle over student cell phones rages on and in some quarters it has been lost and students text onward.  To me it is a distraction, although I have seen classes where the cell phone, as a computer, can be integrated into class work.  That if done systematically can be effective and also cost effective in that the school is no longer providing costly computer labs.  

Recently, we hosted a German exchange student in our home.  She attended a high school in Waterloo.  After her first week I was disturbed to hear her stories of the classroom.  She mentioned how during the middle of a class students were allowed to leave the classroom, go to the cafeteria and bring food back to the class and eat during class time.  She told me this with incredulity, expressing how this would never be allowed in a German classroom, or at least not one in Potsdam.  Texting and the use of cell phones in the classroom was also permitted.  During class discussion there are those students who google, stream and text.  I’m not sure how I could teach in a coherent fashion if even a portion of my students were other wise distracted by food, drink and electronics.  To me where is the rigour, the structure necessary for learning in such a relaxed atmosphere.

Our German student did say she thought it was cool.  She also thought it was unacceptable, that from the mouth of a grade nine girl from Germany who values her education.

It is not an easy battle, but one that as educators we gradually get worn down by and give into the constant erosion by students, and often parents.  Perhaps  the bigger right is one to a better education. Perhaps this is natural change, just like allowing boys to wear ball caps in class, or either gender to wear clothing of any sort once considered inappropriate. 

 It is a new generation I think a pivotal difference between the generations is the role of the parent.  They have gone from the point of view that the teacher is always right (which is also wrong) to student entitlement.  We have bridged that distance in a very short time.  Students are often cocky about their rights and parents too enabling.  

  

I came from a system where the strap was still administered.  I got it twice in elementary school for throwing snowballs after the bell rang outside of the snowball zone.  It was a frightening and painful experience which I remember in every vivid detail.  I’m glad we have shifted that paradigm, but as educational systems drift between phases of what is acceptable and what is not, and what is progressive and what is just counter productive I hope the pendulum stops where students learn at an optimum level, in a liberal classroom, based on trust, respect and open analytical discussion. 

From the streets and shops of Amsterdam

Growing up Mennonite

Menno Simons versus Thomas Jefferson

The Preamble:

The Anabaptist movement took root, in the 1500’s, under the leadership of one Menno Simons from whose name we derive the word Mennonite.  This historic period was part of a larger Protestant movement which was instrumental in severing the ties that bind with the Roman Catholic Church over such issues as indulgences, whereby sinners could literally pay to have their sins forgiven, much like today in the Muslim religion whereby a life time of sins can be forgiven by building a mosque.  It is a system that seems to work because in Kuwait, where I now live, at the time of writing this story, there are more mosques per square km than there are Tim Horton’s in Southern Ontario cities.

The Anabaptists did not believe in child baptism nor did their counterparts led by Martin Luther (not KIng) who stapled his 95 theses, documenting his discontent with the Catholic establishment, to the door of the Wittenberg cathedral in 1517. He might have gotten away with it too had he not been so critical of the Pope Leo X who three years later had Luther excommunicated from the Catholic church.  You can’t keep a good man down and he and his anti-catholic followers with the aid of the newly invented printing press (which turned out not to be a fad) translated Luther’s many writings from Latin to the German vernacular and within two months his ideas flashed across Europe like a comet entering the earth’s atmosphere.  It was electrifying.  

In a similar fashion Anabaptists, evolved into Amish, Hutterites and Mennonites and they all soon discovered that, although they disagreed on just about everything else, they did agree on the concepts of pacifism and non-violence as ways of manifesting their protest, as a reactionary move, directed against the Roman Catholics. 

The Catholics of course had an exceptionally long history of warfare, violence, persecution and aggression as demonstrated in the Crusades (Christians 3, Muslims 4) and on their own continent in the inquisitions directed against the Jews and other non-believers, miscellaneous infidels, along with the numerous witch hunts, associated with thousands of deaths by burnings and drownings, and then later, to top it all off, the myriad of child abuse and pedophile cases for which the Catholic church is now famous. Obviously, as Ricky Recordo once said, “Lucy you got a lot of ‘splaining to do,” so did the Catholics.   I think the Anabaptists really called this one right, and Menno was right on his game when he led the separatist charge. 

For whatever reason Mennonites became to be known for their peaceful demeanor, not to be confused with their propensity and skill for passive aggressive behaviour which is a whole different ball game (refer to appendix A).  Ghandi would have been proud of my Mennonite ancestors and their core value system for the most part, in fact I suspect Ghandi got some of his inspiration, like making home spun cloth to show independence from British wool merchants, from the Mennonites themselves who were also self sufficient on many levels before they even knew who British Imperialist were.  But enough of all this boring history. 

My main point here is a little known fact that I recently unearthed during my research.  Mennonites did not like Thomas Jefferson who was not even a Catholic. Jefferson, as legend has it, and this could be just another urban myth, was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution.  For it was in that same document that he more or less gave  Americans the right to bare arms. I mean what was he thinking?  

As a result of this seemly minor semantic blunder in the Declaration,  Americans today have taken on the mission to arm themselves to the teeth with over 300 million hand guns stowed away in purses, glove compartments of cars, rifles in pick up trucks, and automatic pistols in night stands.  No other society on this planet has quite embraced the concept of an armed civilian population as throughly as the Americans have. On a per capita basis the Spartans didn’t even come close. Menno Simons would have turned in his grave if he knew this, so we are not going to say a thing.  Mum is the word!  I think we owe him that much.

As good Mennonites, and in the true meaning of pacifism and non-violence my brother and our friends embraced the words of Thomas Jefferson to the letter of the law, ...life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...oh, and the right to bare arms...” and were probably the best armed Mennonites since my father and uncle picked up rifles from dead Russian soldiers during the Russian Revolution.

The Story Begins:

“You shot me you dumb bastard.” 

I think Davy Crocket, the frontiersman, was likely more an influence on my childhood then was Menno Simons, In fact I had no clear idea of who Menno Simons was until I was nineteen years old and traveling Europe with a Mennonite exchange program when I was taken to see his cottage.  I believe it was in Bad Oldesloe or maybe Lubeck.  He travelled around alot so the house was probably a rental. 

No one really felt safe having Menno and his family as a dinner guest, or even worse over night because it tended to cost them their lives as Menno was a fugitive with a 2000 guilder bounty on his head.  I’m not sure how that converts to Euros, but just not a good sign when your religion is founded by a fugitive.  In fact the family seemed to have a bit of a wild side as  Menno’s brother, Peter, was killed with many others from Menno’s congregation as they tried to physically, in a military sense, take over a monastery. Yes, you read right, that would be a monastery.  I’m not certain if this was some sort of university or fraternity prank, or they really meant to conquer a monastery.  Either way it was a failed attempt and Menno became very heavy on his non-violence stance ever since that little disaster. In fact it is safe to say he was totally against the use of the sword to establish the Kingdom of God here on Earth.

As a kid I always thought that Davy Crocket’s coon skin hat was the coolest thing, as was his  fighting at the Alamo against all odds, not unlike attacking a monastery I suppose, but Disney never made a movie about that, did they.   Like every Mennonite boy growing up in the 50’s I wanted a hat and a rifle like Crochet's.  What can I say popular culture versus a minority religion led by an ex-priest who by his own admission played cards, drank and followed other diversions. I can only guess what those were. Give me that coon’s skin cap any day.

I’m really sorry, but if Menno Simons was alive today and had the fortune to be nominated by President Obama for a Supreme court posting his past would be dragged through Foxe and CNN networks and their affiliates all part of the Republican mud slinging machine and he would come out the loser even if he had a publishing resume longer than Nora Roberts.  Life is cruel.

And it came to pass I got my cap and rifle one Christmas as snow lay round about. Ironic, that I would receive a weapon of mass destruction on a Christian holiday.  In another story I’ll tell you how I nearly shot my eye out during the first week with my rifle.  I walked around for several days with a pronounced red dot on my forehead between my eyes, it had a truly a certain Indian quality to it.  My mother so astute about many things never questioned me as I passed it off as a mosquito bite.

Okay, I know,  fast forward, you want to get to the “You shot me you dumb bastard” part of the story.

As years went on my brother, actually I’ll distance myself from my brother during the procurement part of the story as he and his friends, older than me, making me an innocent in  much of this bought, a few guns.  I am the Colonel North in this story and not even Congress will change my testimony. Suffice it to say the world was a simpler place back then and mere kids, with no photo ID, could walk into Canadian Tire and buy rifles and ammunition. 

I think by the time of the shooting we had  (read my brother) a 22 hand gun, a 22 rifle, several pellet guns, a BB gun, a 410 shot gun, a 12 gauge shot gun an AK-47 (just kidding) and a cross bow, although technically not a gun, it could send an arrow four inches into the trunk of a willow tree, so I think it qualifies.  It would be an under statement to say that we were well armed, at least my brother was.  

I love my brother.  He was my Davy Crocket and took on the real big brother role at this stage of my life, despite the fact that he tricked me me into smoking so I could then be manipulated into not telling our mom that he smoked.  Clever guy my brother!

He has a name, but since this is a work of fiction I will not reveal that name to protect his identity.  I will however, mention I am from a family with two sisters and one brother. Marv taught me to fire a gun so I wouldn’t end up shooting myself in the head again. He knew our mother would be disappointed if I did.  We would often drive out to Cleason Snyders farm where we would take rifle practice in the quarry there.  

Did you know, for example, that a slug, a solid piece of lead, could penetrate the engine block of a Chevy.  I know I was impressed too.  My big brother taught me how to safely cross a fence line with a rifle without shooting myself.  He had great patience as he showed me how to line up my target, hold my breath and squeeze the trigger.  I can say thanks to my brother and my training just give me a ski mask and direct me to any 7 11 convenience store, but that would be wrong and you don’t have to be Mennonite to know that.

We killed ground hogs, pigeons, barn cats and song birds primarily.  Yes, in retrospect, while it is true we had shit for brains it seemed so right at the time.  There was no Green Party.  There was no environmental movement. There was no endangered species list.  There were just stupid Mennonite boys with guns on God’s green Earth doing what seemingly came quite naturally.  And it is usually at this point when I get quite defensive about my past, perhaps to cover my guilt, and I know the psychologists amongst you are now thinking nature versus nurture.  Well fuck you.  I had a good Christian upbringing and proud of it.  At least I wasn’t attacking some dumb monastery in a Frisian town, or dumping toxic wastes into the Love Canal.  This was our constitutional right and who cares if in the fine print we were Canadian and not American.  Details.

On week ends my brother, myself, Walter, Kurt, Donald, the Kaettler brothers and other hangers on would bike past the Welland Canal at Lock number one, where if we had the time and the inclination would place a penny under the bridge’s massive counter weight.  When a ship usually of Liberian or Panama registry came through ( I thought those countries had huge navies) we would then be thrilled to watch our penny get flattened like a pancake.  The same works with trains and railroads tracks, but sissy boys today can pay fifty cents and have a machine do it for them and it will probably say San Diego Zoo or Niagara Falls on the penny when all is said and done.

We were kids with guns, we were not sissies,  and on a mission to the renovated McNab junior public school where my brother was bussed to attend grade eight.  On this day we were on bikes and this was a trek.  A small creek ran passed the school through some very thick woods and on to Lake Ontario.  This was safari country.  We parked but did not lock our bikes. Bike theft was still in a developmental stage at this time.

We hefted our backpacks full of beans, wieners and Kool-Aid and hiked to the Interior.  Once situated we fired our guns at random targets. Walter fancied shooting at branches usually patently unaware of who was in his line of fire on the other side of the branch. I shot a blue jay that day,  not a baseball player, and apparently there was a witness to my deed.  A situation that would later teach me about cause and effect.

it seems that day we were being watched.  Apparently we had wandered into Mennonite country without really knowing it.  Its something like doctors without borders, one could easily pass into Mennonite lands unaware.  We heard a commotion back where we had our bikes parked by the school.  We quickly elected to send a scouting party to investigate. 

We did not like what we found.  Running off in the distance like mad dogs and Englishmen were several Mennonite boys, you could tell by their distinctive dark clothing, suspenders, bowl haircuts and flood-like pants. Their baggy untailored pant legs flapped like kites in a tropical storm. They were moving at great speed.

Everything was happening so fast.  We went for our bikes to give chase, only to discover that the tires were all flat, ever single one of them on all five bikes.  Walter came running up the path behind us and when he put two and two together, the kid was a math whiz, maybe he was a speed reader too because a sign attached to my bike said, “ Blue Jay Killer.”  Walter fired from the hip at the fleeing anabaptists little shits and got my brother right in the stomach.

“You shot me you dumb bastard.”  

The story ends.

Marty Rempel

From: Flights of Fancy from a mis-spent youth: Growing Up Mennonite

After Glow

After Glow

To say that my dad was quirky would be an understatement. He was also a pyromaniac. To his credit and to my knowledge, he never burnt down any sheds, barns or public buildings.

My dad had the habit of collecting the family dry and flammable garbage in the basement. He stacked boxes full of our waste paper and cardboard, (all very flammable), along one entire wall. We all knew that if the house ever caught fire we were sitting on a tinder box and we were all doomed.

I think my dad, without knowing it, was ahead of his times. He was the forerunner of sorting garbage for recycling; only no one had heard of that concept yet, and we never actually recycled a thing. When we had a cereal box, newspapers wrappings, cardboard box, grocery bag (they were made from course brown paper) we were trained to simply throw them down the basement steps for later stacking against the wall.

The “wall” also became a great place for target practice with my BB gun until “someone put an eye out.” I attached targets to some of the paper filled boxes along the wall and use them for my marksmanship practice.

That practice turned out to be short lived when to my dismay I soon discovered that at such a short range BB’s have the ability to travel through the target, the box, all the paper in the box, hit the cement wall on the other side, then ricochet madly back in the shooters general direction. Now I would remember if I, or anyone else actually put out an eye, but I did get a BB between the eyes. I took that as an omen and used the gun outside on small woodland creatures.

The point of the exercise after all was not to shoot at the boxes, but to burn them. As a family unit we had to accumulate a critical mass of fibrous product for a pyrotechnical display at the end of the month, even better, sometimes at the end of several months. This had become a popular ritual for the kids in our neighbourhood and I was frequently asked by my friends, “Is it time yet?”

At the end of the month the Rempel kids their co-conspirators and random enablers eagerly joined together to make a giant pyre at the end of the driveway. I’m certain that any passing Hindu would take serious pause and deep reflection as to our intentions. We weren’t multicultural back then and wouldn’t have cared anyway. We wanted to burn stuff!

I think my dad was of the opinion and lived by the motto,” if you burn it, they will come” because we always had a crowd of exuberant kids and disgusted adults. These were the type of disgruntled adults who often appeared in early horror movies carrying pitch forks attempting to run the monster out of the village and ironically quite eager to burn down the castle in the process. It was a rough neighbourhood.

Our driveway and property, by the way, were not situated on some isolated country acreage. Our short drive led on to a very busy street and was on a bus route. None of this seemed to faze my father as we continued to heap the cardboard boxes immediately under the hydro lines that ran about 20 feet above the driveway.

Next to Christmas, as far as festive occasion goes, this was even better than Easter. It was more of a pagan ritual probably stemming from pre-Christian times. As kids we had also played a game in which we dressed up as “savages” from the equatorial rain forest, or more precisely we envisioned ourselves as some sort of Greco/Roman/Amazonian hybrid.

We made spears and shields from garbage can lids and took our sisters and other girls in the neighbourhood as hostages for sacrifice to the Gods of the orchards. We lived in the Niagara Fruit Belt and felt human sacrifice was a prerequisite to a good harvest. We were a more suburban version of the children of the corn. We always thought the fire ritual would be a perfect setting to sacrifice a young virgin, but to our collective disappointment my father was quite strict on this point.

However, I believe a few cats went missing during the burning, but I think this was just a vicious rumour started by some of the local missionaries. To my knowledge no animal or virgin, was ever harmed in the making or burning of our pyres.

For some unexplained reason, as a child, I never understood why my mother never joined in on the fire ritual. She chose to look out; quite nervously it seemed, from the living room window. With the reflection of the flames on the window my mom at times looked quite surreal. I could see her hands go to her face as the flames leaped and tickled the hydro wires above the driveway. I never really got the connection between those wires and the necessities of life, such as watching Saturday morning cartoons and Captain Kangaroo.

After doing some major yard work involving cutting down some willow trees and pruning some of our plum trees we had a veritable arsenal of fuel for the “Rambo” of all fires. I sensed great anticipation in the neighbourhood as the combustibles began to mount in the vacant lot next to our house. Even the local virgins appeared to grow restless as the night of the great and inevitable fire approached. The evening had a genuine Lord of the Flies feel to it, and the momentum was mounting.

Off course it was all anticlimactic because no sooner did the flames reach the requisite 20 foot mark and the neighbours house seemed threatened, as was our own; the fire department showed up, dosed the flames, spoiled the fun and gave my dad a very stern warning and I suffered the angst of another missed opportunity at sacrificing a virgin, little realizing what a virgin was, or that I was one.

As an adult I have since returned to my childhood neighbourhood. If I look very carefully and get down on my hands and knees I can still make out the black ash remains of fires long spent and when I close my eyes I can clearly detect the acrid smell of smoke in the air.

Alberta: five Perspectives

Alberta

Ravens

Gliding in groups above

wheezing garbage trucks,

like derelict seagulls winging over

a seaward ferry,

the ravens perch on

street lights

at sub-zero temperatures.

They cackle and caw their

midnight melodies

and defy the elements

as northern lights

splendidly ply

the night sky.

Survival

The key is picking the right spot

the firm grip without missing a step

by understanding the lay of the land 

avoid twisting an ankle

walking the precambrian rock

covered in soft moss

a century deep, 

on a sunny day facing the sun

I close my eyes.

I hear nothing

then shots in the distance.

The Cree are hunting chickens.

I absorb the sun gratefully and slowly

open my eyes to vast vistas of clouds

through spindly Spruce and Birch

a rabbit stares me down,

dashes for cover.

Leaving the path the raucous speaking

of ravens

they circle a dog, part sled part Shepherd

eight to one the dog wearies guarding 

the dead carcass at his feet.  

The ravens smarter,

more determined will eat tonight.

The crunch of gravel under foot,

later I spoke to a native man

who told me about using birch bark

for kindling, keep

it in your car for the winter road

he told me.  It could save your life.

At a Spring Garage Sale after the Thaw

Each February a dark steel oil drum is set on the frozen Athabasca

over mid-stream. There it sleeps through the frozen sub-arctic

night.  Bets are made as to the day, the hour, the minute

as to when it will break through the ice at winter’s end.

Driving over the bridge the barrel is visible to drivers and the

odd brave pedestrian as a tiny speck on the barren ice.  Up-stream,

by the end of April, we hear news of the river break-up as Southern

snow melts and swells the river eventually heaving seven foot thick

ice slabs to the river’s edge.

Last winter I counted my winnings.  My picture in the local paper

holding a handful of twenties to the wind like a Vegas high roller. 

I bought my daughter a new bicycle. 

Some winters past, at the Spring garage sale, after the divorce,

the bike sold for a few dollars.

Waiting by Doors

Ballet class over

the young girl

waited at the doorway.

Her long graceful neck

bent over a fantasy novel

of dragons breathing fire

on a brave knight.

Outside it was minus 25.

Her Dad arrived

late again.

She looked up with a coy smile

recognizing the dirty Cavalier

with the cracked windshield.

They talked of dance, school and fantasy

as they drove home

for dinner.

Etchings

Walking the long meandering trails

through the northern Spruce Forests

one moonlit winter eve,

I noticed upon looking up

the trees were all

at least ten degrees off centre.

Nothing grows straight

or

true

as life just doesn’t work that way.

The forest knows this lesson

and so I learned it too.

Bent branches only etch

what the winds allow them to.