September 27, 2011
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1 “A camel is a horse…”
2 Truer words.
3 I’m not too certain as to the origin of that saying. I learned it as “A camel is a horse created by a committee.”
4 It was originally the germ of thought for today’s DN.
5 As I was hopping online yesterday, I must have had about a hundred interruptions by Trend Micro, Incorporated, saying that my computer protection had run out.
6 I actually have a couple of watchguards that supposedly take care of that stuff, dangerous websites and all.
7 Naturally, each time I go to “upgrade” they inevitably ask for more money. This is okay, but it seems that my stuff runs out faster and faster every year. I never really watched carefully, but I’m starting to think these guys know that they can keep doing that every six months or something, and that most people probably routinely pay and move on, because who has time to check all that out?
8 So I keep getting these warnings, and I keep forgetting to upgrade, or update, or whatevs.
9 I’ve also noticed that they are overly protective at the same time. Huh?
10 For example, I was thinking about how the old saw “A camel is a horse created by a committee” came into existence.
11 I googled it, on this, the thirteenth birthday of Google.
12 I immediately had a website blocked.
13 Evidently, that must fall under the category of blockworthy material.
14 I understand some things, but really?
15 Like any time I try to research government corruption, I get blocked all the time. But a goofy saying? Boys. Puh-leeze.
16 It wasn’t a big deal, really. I just like to be accurate in my quotations. People misquote nearly every day. As a person who at least tries to keep accurate, I usually check with Bartlett’s or Bartleby’s for accurate quotes. I’m often surprised at who really said things, and how the quotes happened.
17 No examples today, sorry to say. I was just looking up “A camel is a horse created by a committee”, a pretty common quote at meetings and all, but got blocked every which way.
18 Further, most websites had it as “A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”
19 I didn’t really see anything with a dot.org that made me see who said it, and what was actually said, but I did get blocked by Trend at least three different times.
20 This is the same Trend that keeps asking me for money.
21 They must be trying to prove how good they are. Sounds like they REALLY want the job.
22 Listen, I’m glad they’re vigilant, because goodness knows what sorts of viruses and bugs are out there. As a rule, I’m pretty careful about cruising around the internet, but it seems that more and more things are getting blocked.
23 What is disturbing is when normal things get blocked.
24 Anyone who knows me knows I am constantly digging for real stories, for corruption in government, in sports, and in any world event. There is usually a backstory somewhere, and trying to navigate around mainstream news can get a bit tric.
25 I routinely get blocked when I try looking into the Bush family, for example. Fortunately, there is SO much dirt on that family that the internet has given up trying to keep those things at bay. And fortunately for the Bush family, most people couldn’t care less anyway.
26 The JFK stuff is now completely ignored by Trend or any other protectors. That story is pretty much out there, solved, and it’s now fairly easy to get scandalous stuff on that entire black op. But that is SUCH old news that again, most people couldn’t care less.
27 The absolute scandal that is 9/11 is out there, but the websites and documentaries, for the most part, are poorly presented and make “whistleblowers” look like nut cases. It is hard to have any credibility when you are wearing a bee-keeper suit holding some stupid sign that says, “Impeach Bush”.
28 Dude.
29 a) you’re wearing a bee-keeper’s suit. b) Bush isn’t the President.
30 All I wanted to do last night was get some famous old saying out there so I could make a point about our district’s pacing guide.
31 I thought it would be tremendously interesting for people to watch a teacher actually trying to follow it to the letter, which I have been doing.
32 My point was going to be that week-to-week, everything they want us to do is unrelated to what we did the previous week. For example, the second week of school, I was supposed to talk about plot/conflict/exposition/rising action/climax/falling action/protagonists/antagonists, etc. The next week I was asked to teach all eight parts of speech, and elements of poetry. The next two weeks I was supposed to teach writing, complete with thesis statements, paragraphing, topic sentences, introductions, bodies, conclusions, etc. Last week was phrases/clauses, connotation, denotation, and impact (they’re BIG on those things!) and this week I’m supposed to teach all elements of drama.
33 This is all fine and good except that somewhere we need to read literature in order to teach those things, or we are just great big mean definition machines.
34 Whoever created these “guides” simply took the California Department of Education standards and randomly tried to squeeze them into a school-year calendar, which I knew twenty years ago was an impossible task.
35 Throwing bucketloads of definitions at students is ineffective if the students don’t have time to channel the stuff, to see examples, to have repitition, and finally, to pass some form of formal assessment.
36 What starts out as plans for a horse inevitably becomes a dusty, confused camel.
37 That’s sort of where I was going.
38 My research over the years said that a good teacher tries getting as many standards as possible into their teaching, but that engaging students with creativitiy, humor, music, and surprises will always trump dull lectures and rote teaching.
39 As we age, we are able to look back and see that the teachers who lit up our lives were usually engaged, interested, excited to be there on a daily basis, were willing to change a lesson plan if the class moved in a certain direction, and engaged spontanaeity and sheer vitality into each day. Over the course of a year, a good teacher would touch on almost all the standards quite naturally.
40 They roll in on a Trojan horse, not a camel.
41 It just amused me that when I googled “A camel is a horse created by a committee” that I got blocked from around six different websites.
42 AND the company doing the blocking has been telling me that their protection has expired.
43 Fortunately, I can get around most things, and get the job done.
44 But at 3 a.m. I wasn’t going to search the web for the origin of a quotation. It’s too intense of a week to spend time going all over the web.
45 And somehow, my point about pacing guides and teaching came across through all this mysterious fog anyhow.
46 So that’s my rant for the day. I’m “off to teach phrases, clauses, asides, soliloquys, dramatic dialogue, etc.” and other things randomly thrown at us by committees.
47 I’ll do it, laugh, and entertain while doing it.
48 Yesterday I taught prepositions using a teddy bear, a doghouse, massive groupwork, and Disney tunes (Just Around the River Bend and Under the Sea are prepositional phrases, right? ; ) <———- way cool sideways winky guy.
49 And that will never change.
50 Have a great day.
51 Peace.
~H~
