22 January 2010 Filmstrips in the morning

22 January 2010 Filmstrips in the morning


I’ve been fortunate to find parking spots near the building where my classes take place every morning so far. Having a disabled parking tag is an advantage although one I’d rather not have become qualified to display. Today is a very high pain day. The mountains have been shrouded in fog nearly all day and the barometric pressure has bottomed out and is now climbing into that region where we feel the effects of pressure changes less.

The Holocaust class spent most of the morning slightly side-tracked as the instructor apparently tripped a memory cascade and we digressed into German history. We reached the end of the class period in a lecture about the people who believed that race was relevant to Darwinian evolution, that some races are innately inferior to others. While we know this is a blatant lie it was readily believed and used as propaganda by the Nazis to seed a fertile bed already growing nationalism based upon racial Darwinism and institutional anti-Semitism. And out of nowhere, one young woman asked “why the Mayans weren’t in this discussion.” She apparently feels that they were somehow the equivalent of any 19th or 20th century culture. And rather than tell her that stone age cultures were not the equivalent of 20th century industrialized nations, Fritz, danced away from the question by telling her that he was sure the German philosopher being discussed had never heard of the Mayans but would probably say that they had vanished due to inter breeding with other people.

Political correctness rears its head. I’d have told her flat out that the Mayans ran out of room, food, and then bred their selves out of existence quite happily, with no concern for anyone else but their ruling class. It remains apparent why I am not a teacher.

The CSI class has a lot of information to offer. I hope we get around to delving into core material rather than having the book shown and read to us. I have no doubt the assistant instructor knows the course material full well and is adept at using the core knowledge. But the start of today’s class was passing out a handout copied from the book. We then sat there while she ran a power point presentation that was essentially pages from the book, previously assigned as reading material, then read the material to us. How sadly reminiscent of film strips in grade school. It seems this student population needs to be told when to take notes, does not otherwise take notes, and wants the book offered to them in Power Point presentations so that they won’t have to read the book.

I want this course to accelerate in what we’re given in class. I don’t want to sit in a college classroom and have core curriculum spoon-fed to me as if I was unable to absorb it in any other manner.

I did volunteer the answer to one of the few questions she asked the class, “Why should leather gloves not be worn to collect evidence?” It’s pitifully obvious that they absorb body fluids and other liquids. Someone should have jumped on that question. No one did so I answered. However, once she said “OJ” they all had a common referent.

The trip home was uneventful but when I got home I found Gloria huddled on the front porch. She’d gone out the back door to feed birds and Loki jumped at the sliding door and somehow pushed the lock. Gloria spent about 90 minutes outside in the cold but has warmed up with no harmful after effects.

The day will end as ours do, happy to be here with each other.

Shabbat Shalom.