316 Back to School!

It’s that time again!  All over the country (world?) people are heading back to classrooms, or soon will be, for the delightful experience of filling their heads (or trying to fill their students’ heads) with new and important knowledge for their intellectual growth and development.  “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”  Aren’t we ALL just completely THRILLED?  (Perhaps not.)

In honor of this auspicious time of year, I thought I would share a bit of the “education & teaching” related stuff which I have collected over the years.  I enjoy it, at least in part, because I don’t have to worry about year-opening faculty meetings, class planning, or even getting up early and stoking up on coffee to be ready to go for my first class at 8 o’clock in the morning.  Seems like I had a lot of those.  My guess is that there was no other way for me to teach a full load of classes AND spend half a day, or more running the scene shop.  Oh, and designing sets & lights, as well (in my “spare time”).

What this all means (at least to me) is that RETIREMENT IS GREAT!!!  But that’s probably beside the point.

Anyway, here are some attempts by various cartoonists, and other folks, to find humor in some of the various  experiences of modern education.  Parents (and teachers) MAY find them more amusing than students of ANY age, but I think there’s plenty for everyone to enjoy, so have a good time!

I suspect, if we’re going to be honest, the first question which both teachers and students have to face is “Why does anyone really need an education in the first place?”  Thankfully, this Family Circus cartoon has a good, positive response to that question:

Now, some folks might suggest that that’s a bit too simplistic a response, but it makes a fair amount of sense to me.  

On the other hand, a bit more sophisticated response might take the form of this Dustin cartoon:

Possibly we shouldn’t focus quite so much on mathematically-related questions.  After all, that can lead to quite difficult concepts which can lead one completely off into totally other areas of consideration.  For example:

And, if one isn’t careful enough, THAT SORT OF THING can get one tied up trying to deal with entirely different areas of knowledge!  As in this from Non Sequitur:

Since that direction doesn’t seem likely to be productive, it’s possible that we might find it more worthwhile to look at returning to school from the student’s point of view.  This brings to mind the perennial question, (and the most important one, especially for most students),“What’s for lunch?”:

Now that we have found an answer to THAT question, we might turn to the standard teenager’s response to the oft-repeated problem of having a major assignment (which, of course, was actually assigned, something like a week or more ago) which is SUDDENLY due TODAY.  (As explained in this from Zits):

THAT sort of problem inevitably leads to one of the variations of the “explanation of lateness” which teachers have been receiving from students since the invention of education.  As explained in For Better or For Worse recently, however, I will admit that THIS variant is relatively modern, though.

Of course, teachers have their little “foibles,” too.  For example, I’m quite certain that I have been taken to task at times by students for expecting them to actually write out their work applying the basic, standard rules of grammar, punctuation, and something close to appropriate spelling.  (I must note that my own knowledge of these things is far from perfect, but I do make an effort to TRY to conform to the “proper” rules of the language, even if I do fail at times.)  I also recognize that this has been a battle between teachers and students for a LONG time, as is suggested in this Non Sequitur cartoon:

Of course, the faculty do, ultimately, get to have the last laugh, at least most of the time.  After all, before too far into the school year, most faculty members usually have more than just a smattering of an opinion as to the capabilities of their students (or at least the willingness of those students to invest time, energy and brainpower in the assignments they are given).  That means that they are quite likely to have some (probably fairly accurate) preconceptions of what they should expect from the majority of their students. 

That reminds me of a little story I read (and collected) about a group of Engineering professors who were invited to fly in a plane.

Right after they were comfortably seated, they were informed the plane had been built by their students.

All but one got off their seats and headed frantically to the exits.

The one lone professor who stayed put, calmly in his seat, was asked: “Why did you stay?”

He said, “I have plenty of confidence in my students.  Knowing them, I can assure you this plane will never even start.”

I should point out, however, that my experience suggests that most teachers (at ANY level) DO enjoy the occasional, pleasant surprise of receiving better than usual work from one of their students.  Probably because that sort of thing, unfortunately, tends to be somewhat rare, it is quite HIGHLY appreciated!

I expect that I’ll return in a couple of weeks with something else on what I, laughingly, call my mind to “cuss and discuss.”  I wonder what it will be?  I guess we’ll all have to wait to find out.

🖖🏼 LLAP,

Dr. B