My streams of thought meet here
a blister from
the new white sneakers
first day of school
opening a new
geography text
the miles we'll go
nervous new teacher
the class bully
flexes his ego
party animal the family business draining down his throat
snowflakes
on the old school bell
thirtieth class reunion
Bloganuary’s challenge for today is to tell about a treasure that’s been lost. It looks like 78 bloggers to this point have responded with various things they miss — or they think we all miss. These challenge could be taken either way: this could be something I’ve lost myself or something I think we as a society have lost.
One of the treasures I’ve lost is my HEARING. I started out with one hearing aid twenty-odd years ago; have had two for the past fifteen years. Marvelous little things! Without them I’d only have half the hearing capability of a normal person, if that. The hearing in my left ear especially is way down. Some of this was unavoidable, being due to allergies that cause fluid backup around the ear drums. Some I could have avoided had I known…
When I was in my early thirties I had tubes put in my ears, because of said allergies, and was given cortisone ear drops to put in my ears. I used them faithfully, being sure they went all the way into my ears. A dozen years later we lived in another place and I asked a doctor for a refill. He said, “You can’t use those long-term. Studies show that if they get through the tubes into the inner ear, they can damage your hearing.””
“Well, okay. Now I know.”
So it’s impossible to determine how much of my hearing loss was inevitable and how much was due to being uninformed. My dad and brother both got hearing aids, so some of my problem could be genetic. In any case, HEARING is definitely a treasure I miss.
As far as things we as a society have lost, I’ll say the teaching of HISTORY. Again–since this is one of my regular laments. Young people in our society aren’t learning enough history to give them a balanced perspective on current events. If we have the knowledge of what has all gone on before us, we can compare, we can learn.
Fact is, the world has seen times like this before — and much worse. We aren’t suffering more, or living with more fear, than anyone else in the history of the world. Mankind as a whole has survived tough times. Also, in the past this course of action has led to such and such consequences. Let’s avoid a repeat of the bad ones.
So there’s my view of treasures lost.
I’m having fun recalling things about Montréal. Hope you these linguistic trials give you a smile.
French 1 newbie
Je suis née…
not je suis nue!
La rivière march?
Well my dictionary says
marcher means to run
Centre d’achats
sounds like sang de chat.
My tutor shrieks
Sound bites…
“Did you hate your supper?”
“No, I liked it!”
Notes for non-francophones:
Né (M) née (F) means born; nu (M) and nue (F) means nude.
Marcher means to walk like a person walks, or to run like a machine/car would run. La rivière coule, meaning flows. (Better as la rivière s’écoule.) Le camion (truck) s’écoule would get you a chuckle, too, I think.
Centre d’achats is a shopping center; sang de chat means cat’s blood. Yes, my tutor did shriek a bit over that one. 🙂
Francophones have trouble getting the right vowels, too, at times, plus they tend to tack on an “h” now and then. The hair is cool this evening. I hate pizza for supper. Did you hate some, too? Or leave it off, like Cockneys. ‘ave you seen ‘im today?
Dictionaries can bring such chaos. I corrected a French-to-English translator who used remove the apple heart, meaning core, because in the dictionary celery had a heart, so the apple must, too. Our word “fit” can mean like a garment fits, but also someone had a seizure. That has brought some intriguing translation woes.
I decided to try the Six Sentence Challenge issued by GirlieOnTheEdge at her blog. The idea is to write a story in six sentences — no more, no less. The prompt word is SCRIBE and here’s my response:
Wanting to inspire other poor kids with her own ghetto-to-CEO success story, the chief executive officer of a leading multi-national conglomerate hired a young English literature graduate to ghostwrite her memoir.
After a day of working through the CEO’s notes the grad presented a transcript to her boss for proofreading. The executive shook her head in dismay after finding eleven spelling mistakes, thirteen wrong homonyms, six dangling participles, four misplaced modifiers and seven incorrect verb tenses.
“How did you ever get through university, writing all those term papers and theses, when you don’t know basic English,” the CEO asked the ghastly scribe.
“Well, actually…I hired another student to write those for me,” the grad explained. “She was working her way through college.”
The Ragtag Daily Prompt for today is FLUTE
LIVELIHOOD pulling in passers-by, compelling them to pause, to tap a toe, the buoyant notes of the busker's flute punctuated by the ring of coins buying the flutist his accounting degree
Someone once told me about a young busker who paid his way through university with his earnings as a street musician. 🙂
Fandango’s Provocative question #104:
What do you think is the one subject (or thing) that should be taught in school that isn’t?
Since this touches on one of my big concerns, I’ll post a response. The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning, ASSIGNMENT, should fit into this topic quite nicely.
One day I was checking out at the local supermarket and the clerk asked if I’d like to donate some money toward the literacy program in local schools. “To help students learn to read.”
I was puzzled. “Isn’t that what they do in school?” I asked. She looked at me blankly; maybe she thought I was, like, totally out of it – which I am when it comes to today’s education.
Another time a friend told me that her niece was in Grade Three and couldn’t even spell the word “ARE.” She only knew the text-speak “R.” Fifteen years ago I listened to a group of about twenty grown-in-Canada adults under thirty puzzle over what country Ottawa is in.
For the past century or so, our schools have been places to try out social experiments in education. One of these was to eliminate phonics. Ontario, thirty-some years back, went even further and abolished the teaching of grammar, because having to obey rules hinders the free flow of the student’s thoughts. “We want them to be creative, not slowed down by following all the rules.”
A few years ago a teen told me students aren’t “on the same page” when it comes to studying literature. That is, there’s no novel to study and assess together. Students pick a book they want to read and then discuss it in class. Since no one else has read the same book, do you hear any other opinion than your own?
Back in 1987 the Southam News Agency shocked us all with the results of their nation-wide study on literacy in Canada: 24% of Canadians are functionally illiterate. To determine “literacy” the subjects were given reading and writing assignments as well as having to read bank statements, time schedules, and calculate the change you’d get at a store.
Immigrant or native-born didn’t make much difference. One of every three Grade 8 graduates and one of every twelve Grade 12 grads were functionally illiterate in day-to-day affairs. The study found that many students entering universities had to take remedial reading classes.
A study done in 1989 shows that 20% of Canadians have strong literacy skills. This is a diverse group of people who exhibit a broad range of reading skills and various strategies for dealing with complex material. These people can meet most reading demands and handle new reading challenges.
A report in 2020 laments that, although public interest in literacy was strong between 1980 and 2000… “Against this background, it is surprising that the Canadian literacy infrastructure was subsequently largely dismantled.”
From a report by the European Journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, Vol.11, No.1, 2020, pp. 109-125.
Apart from the need to teach better Reading, Writing, Grammar, Literature, and Math skills in Canadian schools, I think our children need to learn some HISTORY. Not the dates part so much, but basic concepts of social history: something about the Colonial days, Victorian Times, the Wars, the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, the Cold War.
I wish our children could learn enough history to help them understand how other people have lived on this earth and gone through tough times, too. That people once entertained different ideas, upheld various ideals that were valid. That peer pressure is nothing new. That Covid-19 isn’t the worst plague ever. I’d like to see them get a good general history of the world that would bring them through time to where we are now. It would bring them down to earth and ground them – and hopefully generate more appreciation for our privileged era.
Christine's Collection 