1. Yesterday, in our staff meeting, the budget priorities
for the next year were discussed. Of course,
adding more science and programming classes is a priority, which should not
come as a shock to anyone living in the US of A. Some of our humanities teachers spoke up to
advocate for the importance of their field too, a point I absolutely, 150%,
believe in. The trend towards placing
value on higher education based on the salaries guaranteed its graduates really
bugs me, as I don’t think we should let capitalism drive our sense of what kind
of knowledge is worth having (or good for a nation). Though I benefit from having a science
background (obviously so easy to get teaching jobs and even the teacher professional
development for science teachers is much better funded and more plentiful than
other subjects), I place equal value on my humanities education and every year,
I strongly encourage my students to at least get a minor in philosophy (the original
queen of the sciences!). It’s sad that
at the university level and the high
school level, there is an increasing de-emphasis on the humanities. My cousin is an engineer and did not have to
take even ONE class that involved writing in college! Can you imagine!? If I had stopped writing at the age of 18, my
writing skills would barely count as literate. Some things that I attribute solely to my
humanities degree: writing, understanding that ancient history was filled with
people just as smart as the ones today, seeing modernity in context of a vast
and complex human history, reading for extended periods of time, synthesizing
many nuanced points of view, sifting through complexities of thought, being thorough
and logical in argument.
2. I bought Theo a child-sized accordion for Christmas. I am so incredibly excited about this gift
(mainly so I can play with it). We
pulled out his recorder today and he doesn’t quite get that you blow into it,
because he sort of half blows and half makes a high pitched noise with his
throat. It’s the cutest thing ever and I
have been a neglectful mother in documenting his childhood, so I have no
pictures or video.
3. Just as Natan was chastising me for being down on Disney,
I read an article in the NYTimes about why a person would love it and have grown
a little softer about the issue. The
article basically likened Disney aficionados to collectors, and I immediately
thought of my own Target gift card collection and how I am sure that there is
someone (or most people) who finds it to be utterly ridiculous, yet it gives me
so much pleasure to have it, tucked away (to someday be inherited by Theo). I also thought of my love for pumpkin patches,
Christmas trees, and Fantasia and realized that there is a lot of overlap
between those things and D-land (so perhaps I am a Disney person?).
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