timemachineyeah:

STUFF MR ROBINSON DID THAT WAS VERY GOOD:

One time Mr. Robinson closed the door to the classroom furtively and asked a student near the door to keep an eye on the door’s window in case anyone from the administration was coming.

He explained the next curriculum was one he had been explicitly disallowed from, but he didn’t know how we were going to cover the next portion of our history work fairly without covering it first. He said if any of us were offended by it or felt it threatened our beliefs to be discussing it, please talk to him and he would gladly find alternative work for us to do instead. But he asked if we would be okay not broadcasting too loudly to the administration (our parents were fine) about it.

At this point we’re on the edge of our seat. Forbidden curriculum? YES PLEASE.

“All right, do I have a promise from you you won’t tell on me to the principal?”

We, of course, promised.

“Good. Then let’s talk about World Religions.”

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(A side note here, if you ever have a not-forbidden courseload you want your students to really enthusiastically consume, I think pretending it’d forbidden will up interest levels immensely. The work was informative and we loved it, but the Secret Agent-ness of doing a SECRET ASSIGNMENTS and having SECRET PROJECTS and LOOKOUTS FOR THE FUZZ upped our investment in the material beyond description. Even if you DON’T have secret coursework, PLEASE DO THIS WITH YOUR CLASS SOMETIME. IT’S FUN.)

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At the start of the Great Gender Debate when someone would try to say boys and girls aren’t different and they can do whatever the other does, he’d super respectively ask them if they really thought that, or if they were saying it because they thought that’s what they were supposed to say, and encouraged us being honest about how we actually felt about the difference between between boys and girls and who was better.

Then lots of super fun shouting and throwing paper at each other and making desk barricades and more yelling.

(Keep in mind, this was 1999/2000. A lot of people didn’t even have internet at home. This was a small conservative town. Being trans or nonbinary wouldn’t have even been an option we knew about.)

Then he eventually stepped back into the fray of the Great Gender Debate and made us break down our points, which he had been taking notes of, on the white board and then had us carefully and intentionally refute or discuss them one at a time. Until we had reached a real and honest consensus that actually we’d been tricked into thinking gender was anything at all. Now when we said we thought neither was better than the other and being a boy or girl didn’t mean anything about what you could or couldn’t do, we fucking meant it.

One of our male classmates started wearing nail polish the next week and we told him it looked rad.

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One time it was a nice day out and even though we weren’t doing trig at that point he was like, “Wanna learn something cool? I’m gonna show you how to calculate how tall something is using shadows” and then we went outside and learned how to find out how tall things are by measuring their shadows and measuring the shadows of stuff we knew the length of, and then for fun we also independently worked out the world was round and how big it was.

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One of the times the cops were called on us it was because we were having a Hot Air Balloon making contest and people thought there were UFOs or spy planes.

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Another time we were just setting off dry ice bombs, lol.

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They changed the milk at lunch and we hated it and Mr. Robinson may have given us ideas about civil disobedience and direct action that led to the lunch room sit-in the schoolchildren ended up staging until they would switch the milk back. At the time it felt like he was being really cool, and he was, but thinking on it he may have also been using us as props to prank the administration and also give himself an afternoon off while all the administration tried to get a hundred 11-12 year olds to leave the damn cafeteria while we chanted about milk.

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We grew up in a town that was about 2% black. It was not uncommon for people living there to not know any black people at all.

One day Mr. Robinson told us we were going to be having a very important speaker come talk to us, and that he expected us to treat her with respect and deference. That she was one of the most important people we could be learning from, and we were honored to have her come to us. We all sat up, wondering who this important woman could be.

And he opened the door and it was one of the ladies who worked the front office, accepting our tardy slips and making us wait for the school nurse. A black woman, one of the only black people you’d find in the school.

She then sat down with us and talked to us about the racial history of our town. Explained to us what a Sundown Town was. Explained to us the racism she experienced growing up there. Explained the mistreatment of the police.

She wasn’t even that old. It struck us all. But you’re not even old. Is this still happening? Why didn’t you leave? Did anyone help you?

It was an incredibly powerful day.

When I went home to talk to my parents about it, they had no idea about any of it, even though this was the same town they had grown up in.

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Mr. Robinson would occasionally repeat this habit of special guests were not academics, just people who had lived in our town for a while, bringing in a lunch lady or a janitor, making us talk to them, learn our town’s history, learn to respect their jobs, learn manners and deference for the working class.

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One time he gave us bread, water, and ziploc bags and set us loose on the school to rub the bread on stuff, drip water on it, seal it, and watch what mold grew. The kid that got the grimiest piece of bread with the most enthusiastic mold would win.

We learned that many of the surfaces we consider the most dirty get the most regular cleaning, and so are in fact the least likely to produce mold. While many of the surfaces we eat off of and touch regularly are nasty as hell.

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Similar to the Great Gender Debate, one time he let class go wildly off course while we debated hotly for over an hour about The Lion King. I do not, for the life of me, remember the substance of this debate. I think The Little Mermaid may also have been a point of conversation? I just remember it got HEATED, and Mr. Robinson always thought these heated debates were REALLY ENTERTAINING and would quietly sit back and egg them on.

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One time he gave me detention and I cried through the whole thing thinking my parents were gonna kill me when I got home and instead when I got home my mom hugged me and told me how he’d called her and said I’d been really honest and showed moral fiber in standing up for a friend and taking the detention in the first place and she was really proud of me for being a good person or whatever and idk if he actually was impressed with my actions or if he saw that I was stressed about my parent’s reactions and wanted to mitigate that, but that was such a good move.

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IDK. I just have a hard time thinking of any teacher I ever had both as capable of chaotic dry amusement and completely upright righteous anger. He modeled for us what it was like to evaluate things based on merit rather than based on rules and expectations, and you felt that energy constantly.

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timemachineyeah:

This was the same teacher that got the cops called on our school like three times and would reward us for being good by spraying our hands with rubbing alcohol and setting them on fire.

timemachineyeah:

I just remembered one time in like sixth or seventh grade (we had the same teachers and class both years so hard to remember which) somehow we got into a debate of “who is better, boys or girls?” and instead of stepping in to stop it our teacher formalized it and egged us on by providing thoughtful prompts and counters to each side and by the end each group had built a barricade of desks on either side of the classroom and we were throwing balls of paper at each other and screaming about personal hygiene while our teacher just watched and enjoyed a Baby Ruth candy bar.

He was the best teacher I ever had.

Plus like getting to set your hand on fire for good behavior is a way better reward than whatever dumb stickers or candies or whatever it is teachers usually use. “Behave and we will play with fire” is the BEST incentive.

(via redrikki)

sylvies-chen:

every week ted lasso is consistently like “the villains are not people they are the constructs, cultures, and mindsets we fall victim to, these intangible villains are not who we are but we also do things we must be held accountable for while under the influence of these antagonistic forces of vengeance and vanity and insecurity and retribution and toxic masculinity and silence and mistrust, and if you break through all of that noise to instead choose radical empathy you will become a fundamentally better and more loving, forgiving, person capable of real happiness. except for rupert. he’s the fucking worst.”

and they’re fucking right.

wilhelmjfinkbs:

B Dylan Hollis: my fav clips part 1 of ?

(via mandaloriandy)

kyraneko:

thestuffedalligator:

My favourite type of movie is “period piece romance but fantasy-horror hijinks happen and now everyone has to adapt to the new genre or die,” ala Curse of the Black Pearl, Anastasia, The Mummy (1999)

“everybody has to adapt to the new genre” is really criminally underutilized in general

(via izloveshorses)

thenorthsource:

Starks as barbie girls✨

Inspo

(via sayruq)

freeshavacado:

you can only reblog this today

(via dollsome-does-tumblr)

louistonehill:

delphiniumblooms:

delphiniumblooms:

SHE DIED NOT KNOWING THE EMPIRE WOULD LOSE! LYRA DIED IN DEFEAT! LYRA DIED HOPELESS! WHAT THE FUCK!

‘your father would be proud of you’ is great and all but the Lyra erasure is HORRIFIC. she’d be in the afterlife crying her eyes out bc her little girl got to grow up AND to be instrumental in the defeat of the Empire. she would be so PROUD.

also very important: Jyn watched her die. Jyn knew she died trying to stop Krennic. Jyn watched both her parents die trying and failing to stop the Empire and she knew she was destined to die for the cause too. SHE FINISHED WHAT THEY STARTED.

No no no no you don’t understand

Lyra wasn’t erased. Lyra set the pattern. Lyra was the person Cassian emulated at the end.

Because Lyra shot Krennick in one shoulder to save Galen, and Cassian shot him in the other to save Jyn.

Lyra set the “you lost” pattern that Jyn, feisty and aggressive and wild, like her mother, always like her mother, only ever like her mother, completed when she sent the files to the Rebellion.

Lyra is the one who saves Cassian and Jyn from falling into a patriarchal Damsel In Distress situation. Lyra makes Cassian’s actions matriarchal.

And even if it isn’t ever said, it is constantly shown.

(via izloveshorses)

thedreadvampy:

thedreadvampy:

people seriously pretending EEAAO is overrated suddenly bc it swept awards? it swept awards largely because it is very very very good. I cried like someone who’s just had a religious revelation BOTH times I watched it bc it touched something raw and real and beautiful but it was also just very, very funny. everyone’s performance kills and the concept is creative and interesting and doesn’t distract from the emotional core. you guys are just contrarian.

oh my god I just saw like 20 people solemnly agreeing that it “looked nice but was written for children” because it. because it. has. immature jokes about hot dog fingers and butt plugs and because the ultimate message is “be kind”.

written for children

as if it isn’t extremely written for adults dealing with adult problems that are keeping them from finding space in their life for joy and whimsy and silliness.

it is about a woman doing her taxes!!!!! it’s about being weighed down by age and responsibility and the sense of the turns you missed in your life and being so exhausted from Being A Grown-up that you burn all the most important relationships in your life!!! it’s about being a mother and a wife and a businesswoman and a human person!!!!! it’s about trying and failing to hold it together in the face of your own well worn traumas and cycles of abuse for decades! it’s incredibly specific to an adult audience!

the message of the film isn’t even “be kind” as much as it’s “be silly. fuck around. laugh it off. find joy in being ridiculous. fuck cynicism.”

like I just. the amount of contrarianism you have to be huffing to fuck up your sense of media literacy this bad. there is a lot of childish humour and absurdity and silliness in the film because the thesis statement of the film is that silliness is profound and important. the message isn’t “be kind” it’s “find joy.” literally it’s so on the nose the character Evelyn is reaching for is Literally Called Joy.

like how do you watch a film where the triumph over nothingness is symbolised by sticking googly eyes on everything and think “oh, the reason this film is full of absurdities that seem immature is clearly an unconscious failure of the film to be mature or deep” rather than “oh the way this film is constructed is Specifically About This Explicit Theme that the whole film has been repeatedly reifying, that both stoic responsibility and chaotic nihilism are paths to self destruction and the real hard important work is allowing yourself to be earnestly naive, vulnerable and silly.”

I do not understand. how multiple people seem to have decided the theme of the film was “be kind to one another” and not “engage authentically with the absurdity and joy of the world because nothing matters except what you make matter!!!!” Simone de Beauvoir did not die for this!!!!!!! kill both the sensible man and the nihilist and revel in the absurd!!!!!!!!!!

(via redrikki)

ekjohnston:

living400lbs:

brigidkeely:

lyricwritesprose:

three–rings:

mikkeneko:

doctorbluesmanreturns:

pennie-dreadful:

fluffmugger:

godlessondheimite:

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

When millions of people “miss the point” of books they’re required to read in school then MAYBE the fault lies with the people who were supposed to teach the books not doing their jobs.

If you’re 30 and your biggest take away from reading Huck Finn 15 years previously is that racism is ok then your teacher FAILED as a teacher. If this were one or two people, fine, some people suck. But this is COMMON and WIDE SPREAD and the biggest common denominator is the teachers.

I mean, there’s a REASON nearly everyone misses that Holden Caulfield was sexually assaulted in “Catcher In The Rye” and that REASON (other than a failure to recognize that men can be sexually assaulted) is teachers skimming over that.

Reading fiction from the past is a window INTO that past, same as reading a book from a different culture. Reading British fiction sends me to Google for slang and terms, like the British women’s war effort groups.

Me, at least casual acquaintances of all these YA authors: Congratulations on taking the tweets ENTIRELY OUT OF CONTEXT, GENIUS.

If you knew ANYTHING about Ellen Oh, you’d know that she is frontline fighting book bans in the US.

Kat’s tweet in particular is an illustration of how cherry picking is a lazy way to “win” an argument. Because why do we ban “The Hate U Give” (racism), but not “Huckleberry Finn”? WHICH ONE IS COMFORTABLE FOR WHITE PEOPLE? She’s being SARCASTIC. Great job on the reading comprehension, my dudes.

All of these tweets are talking about the bullshit we excuse in Classics because they’re Classics (because they’re white), but use as excuses to ban current books that deal with the same situations WAY BETTER (and, perhaps more importantly, in a way that kids can relate to more easily).

(And, perhaps MOST importantly, the current books are INFINITELY better at centring marginalized people within their own narrative. To Kill A Mockingbird is white saviourism. The Black guy DIES. He is wrongfully convicted and shot 17 times. A little white girl is the most important person in the story. The Hate U Give gets it RIGHT.)

My books don’t teach straight kids to be queer. Ellen’s books don’t teach white kids to hate themselves because of the systemic racism practiced against Asian Americans. But that is why they are banned. That is why we get cheesed off about “the classics” being trotted out over and over as exemplars of what good fiction used to be.

It’s not the author’s fault. It’s not the teacher’s fault. It’s your fault for getting complacent and not fighting back hard enough against the current wave of backlash.

Run for school board. (And if you want to be REALLY fucking uncomfortable and maybe also grow as a person but you still think YA isn’t getting the job done (you’re wrong), read BABEL and preorder YELLOWFACE.)

(via ekjohnston)