Thursday, October 06, 2005
The First Annual "Airbag" Assignment
A School senior on the opening track of OK Computer after hearing it just twice:
And another senior, an international student:
It's Radiohead in the classroom!
A School senior on the opening track of OK Computer after hearing it just twice:
"Airbag" is roug and abraisive to the listener's ears as it begins. As the song
gradually continues and the lyrics begin a softer tone emerges. The singer is
repeating the phrase "I am born again." One can infer from the title of the song
"Airbag" that the character of this lyrical ballad has lived through a deadly
accident or been saved in some way that he feels he has been given a
second chance and is "born again." While listening to the song I got the
mental picture of someone climbing a mountain, which is symbolic of the
challenge the character of the song is confronting. Towards the end of the song
I got a biblical sense when the guitars and drums started to sound like the
music of a sitar and it made the song seem Arabic or middle eastern.
And another senior, an international student:
The beginning has a melancholic atmosphere...singer's tone also such as gievous
and sorrowful to me. In general, I felt darkness and sadness in this song. I
could not understand the song's meaning, but it is about dream, desire, and
suffering...His tone was sad, dark, and rough. I felt affliction come over his
tone, and he sounde dlike he wanted some...dream or other world...
It's Radiohead in the classroom!
Sunday, October 02, 2005
A Rant, If I May Indulge
It's been ages since I've blogged about The School, but let me share this observation, common as it may be. Parents love to exaggerate the worth of their children. This may be human need and a human behavior -- a vital trait of parenting -- but it seems that my experience with doting Long Island parents has ramped up my cynicism for this phenomenon. Take, for instance, standardized testing at the pre-high school level. I have a bias against ETS and their like to begin with, but let's assume for the sake of rant here that these scores are a somewhat accurate measure of a pre-teen's abilities in basic academic skill areas. What is the most common catchphrase used by parents with a child who has some form of learning/behavior disability? This:
"They say his/her intelligence is off the/our charts, but..."
And they hand me this piece of paper with diagnostic graphs on it, and the measurements indicate that the kid is in the upper level of a four-tier gamut, but clearly within the bounds of this gamut. I'm always tempted, but never liberal enough, to mention, "They said off the chart? Well, it seems here that Bobby has a score, and the score is between the highest and the lowest possible scores: he's actually on the chart."
I hope against fate that when Amanda and I have budding young scholars that we call a spade a spade and make only quasi-accurate embellishments about their talents.
It's been ages since I've blogged about The School, but let me share this observation, common as it may be. Parents love to exaggerate the worth of their children. This may be human need and a human behavior -- a vital trait of parenting -- but it seems that my experience with doting Long Island parents has ramped up my cynicism for this phenomenon. Take, for instance, standardized testing at the pre-high school level. I have a bias against ETS and their like to begin with, but let's assume for the sake of rant here that these scores are a somewhat accurate measure of a pre-teen's abilities in basic academic skill areas. What is the most common catchphrase used by parents with a child who has some form of learning/behavior disability? This:
"They say his/her intelligence is off the/our charts, but..."
And they hand me this piece of paper with diagnostic graphs on it, and the measurements indicate that the kid is in the upper level of a four-tier gamut, but clearly within the bounds of this gamut. I'm always tempted, but never liberal enough, to mention, "They said off the chart? Well, it seems here that Bobby has a score, and the score is between the highest and the lowest possible scores: he's actually on the chart."
I hope against fate that when Amanda and I have budding young scholars that we call a spade a spade and make only quasi-accurate embellishments about their talents.
