Its a pig bad world out there...

The flu is winding down here.  I am left cleaning up the emotional, institutional, and bureaucratic refuse left behind by the Secretary of Public Education here in Mexico.  

Interesting ramifications include but are not limited too: new restrictions on all sorts of behaviors at school, the implication by some administration officials that the Flu has had traumatic effects equitable to 9/11 in the U.S.A., a total reboot of educational momentum with more material to cover with less time, i.e., etc., more to follow.

The break provided for ample time for me to reflect and plan for the rest of the semester.  Right...like that happened.  I shut down just like how most of the students did.  Human beings who spend their formative years in prison-like institutional settings like modern education programs are quick to revert to a sloth-like hunter/gatherer eco-niche.  We have to force ourselves into productivity for enough time during these important formative years, just long enough so that our brains become addicted to self-inflicted stress.  Or, the brains of those among us who are productive, were taught to sculpt their pleasure receptors into needing "productivity" to achieve a sense of well-being.  Why are so many of us so prone to diddling away hours of our time?  Those of us who had long summer vacations every year of school surely became masters of forgetting everything we had learned.  I would love to look into the behaviors of kids during their leisure time (either unstructured or self-directed, structured) as predictors of future professions, habits, skills, beliefs, etc. 

The only thing I did year round was read, and that is the backbone of my intellect now.  I can't do math, learn a language, draw, or score a goal, but I can totally read.  

At some point, our ancient ancestors (who had drastically more leisure time as hunter gatherers versus as members of a society with specialized jobs) came to value productivity.  Nowadays we volley imaginary necessities around our worlds that are intersected with pressures that we identify as either outside or inside ourselves.  These pressures are either healthy or unhealthy, either profitable or not profitable, "self-actualizing" or "destructive" the bifurcations mean less and less the more we attempt to classify them.  Can one really do something in the pursuit of one's own fulfillment?  I wonder if it is a process by which we are continually convincing ourselves of the "self-fulfilling" properties of the things we do without understanding why.  If you don't know why you like feeling that feeling, it automatically falls under the category of "self-fulfillment."  If you DO know why you like feeling that feeling, it will most certainly still fall into "self-fulfillment" but how often do we ask how that particular behavior began to feel good?  Was it through practice?  Was it an epiphany on a rainy afternoon?  Was it EVER a good teacher?  I hope once in a while.

This is what I think about when trying to manufacture feelings of "self-fulfillment" in young learners who have no stamina for independent work.  I am forcing something down their mind-gullets which has no connection to those unstructured/free activities that they would choose to do themselves.  My answers are coming more and more in the form of props and costumes, though.  That is definitely worrisome for my future principles, and those budget requests for medieval costume rental...