Science and Chemistry always held my interest, but in school I never got good grades. Public school has a knack for discarding children who are not rote memorizers of text. Children who saw pictures, grasped concepts, and able to connect dots were not marketable in the larger society were severely disciplined but teachers. I used to get beaten with paddles and rulers. Most of the beatings were inspired by my intellectual curiosity, and my day dreaming into the worlds I kept looking at, and the music always playing within me, and around me.
In first grade I loved school. Our teacher was a short fat light skinned woman with a stern face. She had us drawing Christmas figures. I convinced my best friend, James, to color Santa brown or black. Our skin wasn't white. I didn't know anyone's skin was white at the time. If we looked like this he should look like this, I reasoned. The teacher sent me into the cloakroom. The cloakroom was made of old and thick wood. It was stately and eye catching. I remember its beauty and strength. I had to focus on it as I pulled my pants down. I could both feel and smell the snow wet coats in the cloakroom but they gave me no covering, no protection from the snarling dragon of my teacher. I was seething with anger. I was scared to death and trembled like leaves high in a tree.
That teacher beat me severely. She found a square wooden paddle, and beat and beat and beat until she was satisfied. She never stopped talking about what I did. Her ears were closed to my pleadings, and the fear in my voice. I must have looked a pitiful sight. Skinny and helpless like a scrawny cat captured by the fox and tormented by its teeth and claws.
She taught me that original thought, curiosity, and dreaming are the equivalent of a target to be shot at on a firing range. A system set up to reward a few, and punish the majority is pretty much an accurate assessment of the American education system. There has to be a reason that Islam, for hundreds of years, has not produce a product, or a new idea into the arena of humanity. It has to be, I suspect, the harshness of conformity that prevails in their worlds. Christianity is no less harsh, and unfriendly towards young people who do not conform to the 'system' but there are differences. One of the main differences is the land. The United States sits upon Turtle Island, and Turtle Island is full of ceremonies, history, and stories, and ancestors who watch, remember and guide us Native folk, and live as a consistent reminder of the spiritual responsibility of the land, and its resources. The breath of this land holds what Europeans left on their land: their dead, their essence, and their contradictory relationship with the spirituality of their ancestors, and what they have become today.
I suspect the unresolved conflicts between the spirit of Europe's land, and the thinking process of a people at odds within themselves has traveled across the seas in many different guises. Science was taught the same way Christianity has taught: that unexamined lives produce elemental forces that hinder growth. – Gregory E. Woods, Heart Song Stone Man
In first grade I loved school. Our teacher was a short fat light skinned woman with a stern face. She had us drawing Christmas figures. I convinced my best friend, James, to color Santa brown or black. Our skin wasn't white. I didn't know anyone's skin was white at the time. If we looked like this he should look like this, I reasoned. The teacher sent me into the cloakroom. The cloakroom was made of old and thick wood. It was stately and eye catching. I remember its beauty and strength. I had to focus on it as I pulled my pants down. I could both feel and smell the snow wet coats in the cloakroom but they gave me no covering, no protection from the snarling dragon of my teacher. I was seething with anger. I was scared to death and trembled like leaves high in a tree.
That teacher beat me severely. She found a square wooden paddle, and beat and beat and beat until she was satisfied. She never stopped talking about what I did. Her ears were closed to my pleadings, and the fear in my voice. I must have looked a pitiful sight. Skinny and helpless like a scrawny cat captured by the fox and tormented by its teeth and claws.
She taught me that original thought, curiosity, and dreaming are the equivalent of a target to be shot at on a firing range. A system set up to reward a few, and punish the majority is pretty much an accurate assessment of the American education system. There has to be a reason that Islam, for hundreds of years, has not produce a product, or a new idea into the arena of humanity. It has to be, I suspect, the harshness of conformity that prevails in their worlds. Christianity is no less harsh, and unfriendly towards young people who do not conform to the 'system' but there are differences. One of the main differences is the land. The United States sits upon Turtle Island, and Turtle Island is full of ceremonies, history, and stories, and ancestors who watch, remember and guide us Native folk, and live as a consistent reminder of the spiritual responsibility of the land, and its resources. The breath of this land holds what Europeans left on their land: their dead, their essence, and their contradictory relationship with the spirituality of their ancestors, and what they have become today.
I suspect the unresolved conflicts between the spirit of Europe's land, and the thinking process of a people at odds within themselves has traveled across the seas in many different guises. Science was taught the same way Christianity has taught: that unexamined lives produce elemental forces that hinder growth. – Gregory E. Woods, Heart Song Stone Man
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