The Apologist: Test? What test?
It was the year 1998, and I, a senior, found myself in the first semester of Fine Arts (a sophomore class) due to a missing credit that was crucial to my attaining TOPS. While at first I was perturbed by having to take the class, I did like the teacher, and I did have at least one Sr. friend in the class.[1] Further, I could not complain about a class that was basically arts and crafts, amped-up to appeal to jaded teenagers who certainly did not not enjoy arts and crafts, but who had to pretend as if they didn’t in order to maintain their already shaky social status--which begs the question of, why bother?
Most of the class’s work was your basic building-things-out-of-random-unrelated-materials type of arts and crafts work. The best part about the class, though, was building things out of clay. Now, this was not the spin-wheel and water, Ghost kind of clay. It was more like just a chunk of grown-up Play-Doh, dry and gray, and we were given assignments like, “Build a jar like this:” and the teacher would show us how we were to go about doing the assignment and we would all mimic it, allowing ourselves room for some personal interpretation along the way.
I can’t remember exactly which jar it was, but I’m pretty sure that it was my green jar (made using small loops of clay stacked on top of a base to form a unit, with small circles being placed vertically in the front of the jar to make two eyes and a mouth, giving the jar a pseudo-Mayan look) that Mrs. Knight wanted us to write a story about. We were to write a small composition about the origin of our piece of earthenware. I was excited about this because, while I humored Mrs. Knight about the clay, it was not my first passion. I really liked to write, and at this time in my literary life I particularly enjoyed attempting to force a Vonnegutian[2] type humor on my writing that most of my peers in Eng. IV (also taught by Mrs. K., a fact that I clearly exploited in the execution of this writing assignment in Fine Arts) not only didn’t appreciate, but I daresay (and not out of arrogance) didn’t get.
So I wrote my story. I wrote my little paragraph on the origin of my pseudo-Mayan jar. I explained, in detail, the jar’s Irish beginnings. I don’t remember much now, except that the story of the jar had something to do with caves and leprechauns, and to be quite honest I’m sure it really wasn’t that funny. But to expect everything to be fall-out-of-your-seat hysterical is really not fair even to the idea of humor. I am sure, though, that it was at least mildly funny. It should have at least elicited a few grins and giggles. So when my turn came, I stood proudly and somewhat stupidly in front of this class of sophomores who barely knew me, and whom I barely cared to know, read my paragraph for them like a good little monkey, finished all smiles, and looked up ready for the response that I was sure was coming.
….
What I got instead was dead silence. Not even a chuckle. I got Mrs. Knight with a big smile on her face, turning her head side to side to see if anyone…anyone, Bueller, anyone thought what I just said was even remotely in the same emotional ballpark as humor. When the silence did not yield, but instead began to gain exponentially in intensity and weight,[3] Mrs. Knight broke it by saying, “Matt is in my English four class. He likes to write using surrealism.” Now, I have every respect for Mrs. Knight (her class being the single reason I majored in English in college and continued to even try to write once I graduated high school) but she had to know that this comment was not helpful to me or my situation. What’s surrealism to a tenth grader? Furthermore any time you throw out an -ism to a group of teenagers you might as well have just spoken in Mandarin. Be prepared to be met with blank stares, twisted brows, and screwed-up mouths all asking themselves, you, anyone, “What’s that mean?”
In the decade since, I have gotten more comfortable with being misunderstood.[4] I have accepted it as my yoke, a thing I have to bear. I could be walking down a crowded hallway carrying two armloads of unmanageable objects: a large paper bag filled with lunch plates, two cans of paint, a bowling ball, a stack of loose papers, and two full Styrofoam drink cups. I could walk up to the door that I need to enter obviously physically incapable of opening it myself, say to the nearest person, “Could you get that door for me?” and be looked at as if I just fell naked through the ceiling, jabbered in a foreign tongue, set my hair on fire, cursed everyone’s mother, ate a live cat, and…(you get the idea). The person I spoke to would say, “What?” and then there would be a moment or two of this kind of dance that people do when neither knows which way the other is trying to go. We would each step left, then right, then left again, until we were both infuriated with the situation. I would say again, “Could you please get that DOOR for me?”
“What?”
“The DOOR. I’ve got an armful here.”
“I’m sorry…?”
“&$%#!”
“You got a problem?”
“YES. JUST OPEN THE DOOR!”
“Oh. Man. Sorry, dude. Why didn’t you just say so.”
I have suffered extreme anxiety and almost chronic aggravation over the years at this inability to communicate. So of course I grow up and become a teacher, a profession that requires, if nothing else, an ability to communicate clearly with other people. To compound the problem, though, is the fact that teenagers are not real people. If the thing that separates us from the animals (according to science) is our ability to reason, then I can’t see how teenagers can possibly be defined as human. They are odd little sub-human organisms with no conscience, no capacity for patience or good will, no desire to know anything outside of what immediately affects them at the moment, innate hostility toward authority figures of any kind, no sense of community or brotherly love, and no emotion at all toward anything remotely educational.
So do this simple equation with me if you will: (inability to communicate + the resultant anxiety) + teenage ignorance/apathy ÷ educational objectives = y.
To sum this up, there is nothing more frustrating than to come in, take roll, give everyone a minute to finish their journal, then make the quick decision to start class by saying, “Now on the test this Friday…”
Heads began to snap around. Papers are shuffled.
“We got a TEST TODAY?”
“TEST?”
“WHAT’S IT ON?”
The slow one: “Oh, a test? On that stuff from last week?”
When I finally get a chance to sneak in a word, it’s never pleasant.[5] “No, no. We don’t have a test today. Did I ever say that we had a test today? What did I say? We have a test Friday. Not today.”
And so goes the workday. So goes the year.
NOTES (click on number to return to post)
1. One Luke G. who, on my absence one day, took it upon himself to paint the two-headed man (one head young, the other old, with the young head’s hand holding a “go” sign, the old head’s hand holding a “yield” sign) that I had made out of clay, baked in an oven, was extremely proud of and looking forward to painting myself.
2. i.e. humor like that of writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
3. While not containing mass, and therefore not an “object” subject to the laws of physics, silence nonetheless acts as a sort of psychological/emotional object that can be used as any number of tools--bludgeon, hammer, vice, pry-bar, drill, etc. It also has some kind of ability to grow, as noted, in intensity and weight the longer it is left sitting in one place. If I could footnote a footnote here I would say: Okay, okay, I’m not a scientist and I scraped through physics in high school, but come on, you know what I’m talking about.
4. I do NOT mean this in the wear-all-black, pout-around-listening-to-obscure-indie-rock-for-attention-I-claim-I-don’t-want way of being “misunderstood.” I mean, much more literally, that I am used to saying things that make sense to me, but do not make sense to the receiver because of a failure on my part to clearly communicate.
5. There is a teacherly tone that cannot be communicated in writing. It is some mix of frustration, exasperation, rage, and condescension. However, parts of the emotional tones cancel one another out so that it comes together as a unique and distinct emotional expression.
Most of the class’s work was your basic building-things-out-of-random-unrelated-materials type of arts and crafts work. The best part about the class, though, was building things out of clay. Now, this was not the spin-wheel and water, Ghost kind of clay. It was more like just a chunk of grown-up Play-Doh, dry and gray, and we were given assignments like, “Build a jar like this:” and the teacher would show us how we were to go about doing the assignment and we would all mimic it, allowing ourselves room for some personal interpretation along the way.
I can’t remember exactly which jar it was, but I’m pretty sure that it was my green jar (made using small loops of clay stacked on top of a base to form a unit, with small circles being placed vertically in the front of the jar to make two eyes and a mouth, giving the jar a pseudo-Mayan look) that Mrs. Knight wanted us to write a story about. We were to write a small composition about the origin of our piece of earthenware. I was excited about this because, while I humored Mrs. Knight about the clay, it was not my first passion. I really liked to write, and at this time in my literary life I particularly enjoyed attempting to force a Vonnegutian[2] type humor on my writing that most of my peers in Eng. IV (also taught by Mrs. K., a fact that I clearly exploited in the execution of this writing assignment in Fine Arts) not only didn’t appreciate, but I daresay (and not out of arrogance) didn’t get.
So I wrote my story. I wrote my little paragraph on the origin of my pseudo-Mayan jar. I explained, in detail, the jar’s Irish beginnings. I don’t remember much now, except that the story of the jar had something to do with caves and leprechauns, and to be quite honest I’m sure it really wasn’t that funny. But to expect everything to be fall-out-of-your-seat hysterical is really not fair even to the idea of humor. I am sure, though, that it was at least mildly funny. It should have at least elicited a few grins and giggles. So when my turn came, I stood proudly and somewhat stupidly in front of this class of sophomores who barely knew me, and whom I barely cared to know, read my paragraph for them like a good little monkey, finished all smiles, and looked up ready for the response that I was sure was coming.
….
What I got instead was dead silence. Not even a chuckle. I got Mrs. Knight with a big smile on her face, turning her head side to side to see if anyone…anyone, Bueller, anyone thought what I just said was even remotely in the same emotional ballpark as humor. When the silence did not yield, but instead began to gain exponentially in intensity and weight,[3] Mrs. Knight broke it by saying, “Matt is in my English four class. He likes to write using surrealism.” Now, I have every respect for Mrs. Knight (her class being the single reason I majored in English in college and continued to even try to write once I graduated high school) but she had to know that this comment was not helpful to me or my situation. What’s surrealism to a tenth grader? Furthermore any time you throw out an -ism to a group of teenagers you might as well have just spoken in Mandarin. Be prepared to be met with blank stares, twisted brows, and screwed-up mouths all asking themselves, you, anyone, “What’s that mean?”
In the decade since, I have gotten more comfortable with being misunderstood.[4] I have accepted it as my yoke, a thing I have to bear. I could be walking down a crowded hallway carrying two armloads of unmanageable objects: a large paper bag filled with lunch plates, two cans of paint, a bowling ball, a stack of loose papers, and two full Styrofoam drink cups. I could walk up to the door that I need to enter obviously physically incapable of opening it myself, say to the nearest person, “Could you get that door for me?” and be looked at as if I just fell naked through the ceiling, jabbered in a foreign tongue, set my hair on fire, cursed everyone’s mother, ate a live cat, and…(you get the idea). The person I spoke to would say, “What?” and then there would be a moment or two of this kind of dance that people do when neither knows which way the other is trying to go. We would each step left, then right, then left again, until we were both infuriated with the situation. I would say again, “Could you please get that DOOR for me?”
“What?”
“The DOOR. I’ve got an armful here.”
“I’m sorry…?”
“&$%#!”
“You got a problem?”
“YES. JUST OPEN THE DOOR!”
“Oh. Man. Sorry, dude. Why didn’t you just say so.”
I have suffered extreme anxiety and almost chronic aggravation over the years at this inability to communicate. So of course I grow up and become a teacher, a profession that requires, if nothing else, an ability to communicate clearly with other people. To compound the problem, though, is the fact that teenagers are not real people. If the thing that separates us from the animals (according to science) is our ability to reason, then I can’t see how teenagers can possibly be defined as human. They are odd little sub-human organisms with no conscience, no capacity for patience or good will, no desire to know anything outside of what immediately affects them at the moment, innate hostility toward authority figures of any kind, no sense of community or brotherly love, and no emotion at all toward anything remotely educational.
So do this simple equation with me if you will: (inability to communicate + the resultant anxiety) + teenage ignorance/apathy ÷ educational objectives = y.
To sum this up, there is nothing more frustrating than to come in, take roll, give everyone a minute to finish their journal, then make the quick decision to start class by saying, “Now on the test this Friday…”
Heads began to snap around. Papers are shuffled.
“We got a TEST TODAY?”
“TEST?”
“WHAT’S IT ON?”
The slow one: “Oh, a test? On that stuff from last week?”
When I finally get a chance to sneak in a word, it’s never pleasant.[5] “No, no. We don’t have a test today. Did I ever say that we had a test today? What did I say? We have a test Friday. Not today.”
And so goes the workday. So goes the year.
NOTES (click on number to return to post)
1. One Luke G. who, on my absence one day, took it upon himself to paint the two-headed man (one head young, the other old, with the young head’s hand holding a “go” sign, the old head’s hand holding a “yield” sign) that I had made out of clay, baked in an oven, was extremely proud of and looking forward to painting myself.
2. i.e. humor like that of writer Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
3. While not containing mass, and therefore not an “object” subject to the laws of physics, silence nonetheless acts as a sort of psychological/emotional object that can be used as any number of tools--bludgeon, hammer, vice, pry-bar, drill, etc. It also has some kind of ability to grow, as noted, in intensity and weight the longer it is left sitting in one place. If I could footnote a footnote here I would say: Okay, okay, I’m not a scientist and I scraped through physics in high school, but come on, you know what I’m talking about.
4. I do NOT mean this in the wear-all-black, pout-around-listening-to-obscure-indie-rock-for-attention-I-claim-I-don’t-want way of being “misunderstood.” I mean, much more literally, that I am used to saying things that make sense to me, but do not make sense to the receiver because of a failure on my part to clearly communicate.
5. There is a teacherly tone that cannot be communicated in writing. It is some mix of frustration, exasperation, rage, and condescension. However, parts of the emotional tones cancel one another out so that it comes together as a unique and distinct emotional expression.
posted by Matt McDonald at 8:04 AM
Link to this Post
2 Comments:
Hiya, I found your blog from an old article on Random Bytes website. It was your instructions for how to suppress the navbar on Blogger. I tried to find the code you gave but haven't been able to. Can you help me to do this? I'm trying to customise my blog and really want to remove this if possible. Thank you.
My email is williamtheoutlawATgooglemailDOTcom
Sounds much like student ministry. I do understand your seemingly lack of ability to communicate. I am fairly positive that you and I had this problem quite regularly. I must be honest, while I know that it caused your great frustration while trying to relay to me your point that "the strumming pattern goes like this" there may have been times that I knew exactly what you were talking about and only pretended not to so as to get a desired reaction. I would feel bad except, I know you did the same thing.
Post a Comment
<< Home