Post on September 11th, 2007
by Meredith Broderick
Above Photo By My Husband, R.J. Formica
This year the weather is rainy, far from the idylic weather that morning six years ago, Tuesday, September 11th 2001 .
Well another tuesday falls on September 11th this year 2007 and I am watching Oprah. I know I said I don’t watch Oprah, but she is doing a special on September 11th, and no one else seems to really remember just how much the day that changed the name of the World Trade Center forever to Ground Zero changed our world forever.
I checked the T.V. listings, no specials, save for PBS, normal programing. Most of the kids I teach are too young to remember that day clearly. We had a moment of silence, not the 5 moments we observed last year to remember the times the planes struck buildings, planes crashed into the field and exact time when each building fell.
Attendance at the Ground Zero site memorial was smaller than any other year. I guess people have moved on.
I feel profoundly sad. I don’t know if there is another emotion that would be appropriate for this day. I always thought everyone would always remember, but this year, the sixth anniversary, it is apparent to me that they do not, they have forgotten. No judgement here, just an observation.
Two of my older classes blogged about it. Some of them remembered the day. We talked, and shared our memories. It was the only time I felt right all day.
I do remember that day, it was a day of no answers, but so many questions, many still left unanswered. It was like no other day I had every lived through. It changed my world, and I know my world will never be the same.
Six Years ago on that other tuesday I watched the 2nd tower go down from the waterfront of Staten Island. It just fell and was no more. A building I had once worked in as a clerical worker, that I shopped in the lower level of at least once a month. I remember going to a bank that had a piano and player, there when I was sixteen with my first boyfriend to cash checks from my first job.
I know the world is different. I know it, no matter if any else does.
Before 9/11 New York, the United States, my world was one of innocence. Six years ago on another tuesday in September the World Trade Center became ground zero and we lost more than we realize or remember. Technorati Tags: /Septembr 11th9/11,
This is going to be a pretty disjointed post. I am in a strange place, and it is the first week of school in New York City.
Forewarned as they say, you know the rest, so read on only if you are in the mood to cope with a lack of structure and more than a bit of chaotic rambling.
I have had 24 first weeks of school as a teacher and another 10 as a student (dropped out of High School in the 10th grade).
That is 34 first weeks in the NYC school system. Mind-boggling.
Ramble 1. I think George Carlin is brilliant and funny and pinned the tail on the donkey in this piece.
Chris Sessum mentioned it on his blog. It is profane, (much of Carlin is, and in my book anyone who is that sharp can curse till the cows waltz in the wheat fields) but dead on when it come to the failure of the American Education system. It is interesting to me how accurate his observations are about education, NCLB and our present psychotic fascination with testing.
Ramble # 2. I am also Simpson’s fan. No clip here, so I will try to set the scene: A group of T.V. executives in a “creative” meeting all sitting in front of their own T.V’s trying to come up with an “original” idea for a reality show starring Homer. They all kept feverishly surfing channels on their personal t.v.s, watching shows on other networks saying things like,
” Wait I think I am getting an idea”.
I think this is what the T.V. executives must really do to come up with the idea for these some of the shows . How else can you explain that as of last week I count 3 “new” shows on different networks where the premise of the show is to see whether some dolt can win big bucks by finishing the lyrics to Abba’s Dancing Queen?
Back to the Simpsons, they show the “creative genius” of T.V in formula: replicate a show that has a modicum of success again, and again, and again until all the life is beaten out of it, and T.V. veiwer suicide/murder rates skyrocket. Bottom line they never replicate the initial show, it is usually just a watered down imitation, lacking any substance or entertainment value.
An example of this is Oprah and daytime T.V. Think back when Oprah did a tabloid like shock show,( she did you know in her beginning she was not always discussing the philosophy of “giving” with Bill”the rock star” Clinton.)
In ancient times, before Google and YouTube around (1984) she did the kind of show that was closer to Jerry Springer Or Maury Povitch. Hell she is the mother of Springer and Povitch’s daily misery fests. And if you don’t remember, or believe me that Oprah the Good Witch once rode her broom in a more seedy neighborhood, well, as the popular rant on these shows say, , go ahead Oprah “take the test, take the test” you know their your children!
After Oprah’s show became popular the other T.V. executives had “a creative brainstorm” and daytime talk T.V. with a penchant for Freak show suffering was born. Oprah changed her show’s format. ( But Oprah is the mother of this mess no matter how many schools for girls she finances in Africa. )
This desperate insistence on replicating anything that has had slight success runs rampant in the American Education system as well as in T.V. land. We even have a term for it in education, “Best Practices”. “Best Practices” lets replicate their ” Best Practices”.
That is like saying lets replicate William Faulkner’s writing in Absalom Absalom, or ” The Sound and The Fury”.
Fool, you can’t replicate great writing, you can be inspired by great writing. If you try to repeat brilliant writing you will just write a bad book. There are hundreds of books written by the way trying to “replicate” Faulkner’s “best practice” in his writing and not one of them has.
Good if not great writers on their own terms, wearing their own pants and thinking their own thoughts like Cormac McCarthy have been inspired by Faulkner. (As an aside the Oprah The Good Witch “did” McCarthy and his latest book The End on her book club as the first book of last year, maybe their is hope for Springer and Povitch yet.)
You can’t replicate “brilliant teaching” probably for the same reason you can’t replicate T.V. or books. The players, setting, and time is different. I am no Oprah fan but even I know Jerry Springer is no Oprah, and no one will ever be Faulkner, ever!
Teaching is the same, when I see great teaching and I do in my little brick school house in New York City, believe it or not I do. I don’t copy it, I get excited by it . The thought to do exactly what they have done never occurs to me. Yet “Balanced Literacy, Reading First, and Every Day Math are built on this premise that you can “script” and replicate great/ good teaching and learning.
Ramble # 3: As my final ramble on testing I came across a peice written by a guy name Bruce A. Jilk. He plans schools all over the world.
He has some great things to say
“There is something that learning, because of it’s nature, is not the display of a packaged product. Learning is an inner process that is manifested as continual discovery”
Also this:”Nearly all children are born with creative potential. The drawings, singing, play, and place making of young children is in evidence everywhere. As they move through their years of “development” many seem to lose this creative propensity. We have all seen it when we visit schools. The delightful, spirited kindergarten classroom seems to diminish, year by year until you get to the more somber rooms of the 6th grade and beyond. What’s going on here?
For many reasons the teaching process in the US becomes more focused and controlled as students move ahead. This certainly is done for significant reasons. And with the fed’s passing laws that require testing this will become even more evident. The problem is that this also is limiting the creative channels of children. Typically we, planners and designers, respond to our clients by developing teaching environments that are supportive of this emphasis on focus and control. Recent security issues even push those concerns further. I believe this is what we are expected to do, but we can do so much more.”
To recap: I have spent too many years in school buildings, George Carlin is on to something , I watch the Simpsons, I don’t watch Oprah because I know where she comes from, Cormac McCarthy is a good writer, William Faulkner is a great writer (if you have time stop reading blogs and read them), you can’t replicate or package a creative process, ( and teaching/learning Bozos is a creative process) , You can be inspired by the creative, I am all the time and enough with spending billions of dollars on testing as you don’t fatten a cow by weighing it.
his year the weather is rainy, far from the idylic weather that morning six years ago, Tuesday, September 11th 2001 .