A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Psychosplodge]

IDK if its changed in the last fifteen years since I left school Yorkie, but they made it very clear you were in the top set(science we were only one that did individual sciences as opposed to double award, maths we were only ones to do the extra module that was more A* orientated, English we were told bluntly by the teacher). All the other sets were described as "mixed ability" but I know they did group a "bottom set" together in maths and science (they were in next room to us) even if they didn't call it that.

[YorkNecromancer]

IDK if its changed in the last fifteen years since I left school

It has. Significantly and generally for the better. Seriously, I'd much rather be a pupil now than back when I was in the early nineties.

We've had significant problems since the coalition came in, with the Tories trashing everything in sight in the name of their emotionally-motivated ideologies, but as far as pastoral care goes, schools are way better. I'm not saying perfect, and obviously individual schools are going to be vary dependent mostly on the quality of the headteacher. But even in the twelve short years I've been teaching, things have visibly improved, often in tiny but important ways.

[Psychosplodge]

I'm assuming you're a secondary teacher? Do you think they concentrate too much on pushing everyone to Uni still?

[Mr Mystery]

As long as they support the gifted kids as much as those who have educational needs, I'm all for it.

Wasn't much fun when I moved from Scotland to England. They'd been in secondary school for half a term, and I came straight out of primary. Only I'd been taught what they were learning already.

There was no provision for those with great big brians - which lead to much mucking about, and damaged my capacity to learn for a while. Nowt worse than being at the age where you think you know it all, and being certain you know more than everyone else in your class.

[YorkNecromancer]

Do you think they concentrate too much on pushing everyone to Uni still?

Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha.

No.

Since Uni became prohibitively expensive, there's now no reason to recommend it to anyone unless they can afford it. Because while uni is wonderful, and would be the making of so, so many young people, the real world comes first, and a huge number of uni degrees simply aren't worth the money the universities charge.

In the mid 2000s, there was a real push to provide every kind of qualification and apprenticeship. The coalition goverment wanted to get rid of that; they want 'academically rigorous subjects' only (read: anything taught in the 50's), and while they couldn't ban the apprenticeships (which would have caused an outcry), they could devalue them. None of the apprenticeships and vocational courses - and that includes ones with real, cogent benefits that helped actual pupils I taught get into genuine careers - got enough people on them. And so the courses were cancelled.

Now, the UK schooling path is GCSEs>A-Levels>work. Some - the children of wealthy middle classes, and those poorer families who recognise the value of further education - will still go to uni. But uni is very much something for the rich now.

It's their world. The rest of us just live in it.

Nowt worse than being at the age where you think you know it all, and being certain you know more than everyone else in your class.

Just so you know: 90% of the top set kids think that about themselves. Doesn't make it true.

One of the big problems you get from clever kids is that they can't actually judge their own abilities well. They tend to either overstate them and become complacent, or defeat themselves with crushing self-doubt.

I don't doubt that in your case, you were let down by the school. An average teacher will teach nine classes, each with thirty pupils. They will be allocated two and a half hours a week to get all their planning and marking done. They will be expected to know every single pupil's previous grades, current grades, and predicted grades. They will be expected to know each pupil's personal educational needs, and to factor that into their planning.

Which we do.

However, sometimes? Sometimes it's just too much. This is the real world, and even with the best of intentions, sometimes people slip through the net. It's not right or fair, but that's life.

Were you treated poorly? It absolutely sounds like it. Could it have been avoided? Maybe.

But with the current climate? Less money, year on year? Teachers made to teach more classes with more pupils? Teachers now have an average career length of two years; most just can't handle the job. Not the kids - the kids are fine. It's the job itself. There's just too much to do. Not to mention, someone like myself, who's made a career of it, gets an average life expectancy of 68. We don't get long retirements; teachers generally die of stress-related illnesses in our late sixties.

It's the greatest job in the world when it's good. But it's also hard, and it's only been getting harder since the coalition came to power. They've actively ruined many of the things that made the UK education system so good.

[Psychosplodge]

Just so you know: 90% of the top set kids think that about themselves. Doesn't make it true.

One of the big problems you get from clever kids is that they can't actually judge their own abilities well. They tend to either overstate them and become complacent, or defeat themselves with crushing self-doubt..

Probably did both...
If I was playing the blame game though I'd point at the Alevel/ASLevelA2 cahngeover as having genuinely ****ed over my educational experience.

[eldargal]

It has. Significantly and generally for the better. Seriously, I'd much rather be a pupil now than back when I was in the early nineties.

This has been my observation with my little cousins, even if admittedly we send them to a very good school. But they seem to get much more support and a much higher focus on their participation and well being than there was when I was a student there.

[Gotthammer]

[URL="http://feroxspiritus.tumblr.com/post/113690775984/the-lolita-covers"]Interesting read[/URL]:

here’s a question: if vladimir nabokov’s “lolita” is truly the psychological portrait of a messed up dude and not the girl — let alone a sexualized little girl, as all of the sexualization happens inside humbert humbert’s head — then why do all the covers focus on a girl, and usually a sexy aspect of a girl, usually quite young, and none of them feature a portrait of humbert humbert?




here are nabokov’s original instructions for the book cover:

"I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls. … Who would be capable of creating a romantic, delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for LOLITA (a dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic highway—that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl.
and yet, the representations of the sexy little girl abound."

i became driven by curiousity. why did this happen? why is this happening?

i am not alone — [URL="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1440329869/braipick-20"]there’s a book about this[/URL], with several essays and artists’ conceptions about the politics and problems of representation surrounding the covers of “lolita.” [URL="http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/designing-lolita"]this new yorker article[/URL] gives a summary of the book and its ideas, and interviews one of the editors:

"Many of the covers guilty of misrepresenting Lolita as a teen seductress feature images from Hollywood movie adaptations of the book— Kubrick’s 1962 version, starring Sue Lyon, and Adrian Lyne’s 1997 one. Are those films primarily to blame for the sexualization of Lolita?"

As is argued in several of the book’s essays, the promotional image of Sue Lyon in the heart-shaped sunglasses, taken by photographer Bert Stern, is easily the most significant culprit in this regard, much more so than the Kubrick film itself (significantly, neither the sunglasses nor the lollipop ever appears in the film), or the later film by Adrian Lyne. Once this image became associated with “Lolita”—and it’s important to remember that, in the film, Lolita is sixteen years old, not twelve—it really didn’t matter that it was a terribly inaccurate portrait. It became the image of Lolita, and it was ubiquitous. There are other factors that have contributed to the incorrect reading, from the book’s initial publication in Olympia Press’s Traveller’s Series (essentially, a collection of dirty books), to Kubrick’s startlingly unfaithful adaptation. At the heart of all of this seems to be the desire to make the sexual aspect of the novel more palatable.
here’s a couple of kubrick inspired covers:



which very well could have, after tremendous sales, have influenced the following covers:



…straying so far from the intention of nabokov that the phenomenon begins to look more like the symptom of something larger, something sicker.

after a lot of researching covers, it was here, in this sampling of concept covers for the book about the lolita covers, that i found an image that best represents the story to me:



[art by linn olofsdotter — and again, this is not an official cover]

but why aren’t all the covers like that? even the ones published by “legitimate” publishing companies, with full academic credentials, with no intended connection to the film; surely they must have read nabokov’s instructions for the cover. and yet, look at the top row of lolita covers: all legitimate publishing companies, not prone to smut. and yet.



my conclusion is that the lolita complex existed before “lolita” (and of course it did) — a patriarchal society is essentially operating with the same delusions of humbert humbert. nabokov did not produce the sexy girl covers of lolita, and kubrick had only the smallest hand in it. it was what people desired, requested and bought. the image of the sexy girl sells; intrigues; gets the hands on the books.

as elizabeth janeway said in her review in the new york review of books: “Humbert is every man who is driven by desire, wanting his Lolita so badly that it never occurs to him to consider her as a human being, or as anything but a dream-figment made flesh.”

isn’t that our media as a whole? our culture as a whole?

the whole lot of them/us — seeing the world through humbert-tinted glasses, seeing all others as Other and Object, as solipsistic dream-reality. as i scroll through the “lolita” covers i wonder: where’s the humanity in our humanity?


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Related:

[eldargal]

That last image makes me physically ill. Literally, no hyperbole.

I took very strongly against Nabokov and his novel for along time as I had only seen the film, now I know the sheer irony in a book condemning creepy male obsession and sexualization has become a byword for glorifying those very traits. Poor Nabokov.

[Psychosplodge]

Is that a legit youtube statistic? That's scary. Also scarier that the authorities aren't catching more people that are clearly browsing questionable stuff logged in.