Lately, when it comes to nattering "Ned", it's been happening a lot to the pond.
A sort of weird, yearning experience ... a condition that might be called "if only" ...
If only the pond had just read H. G. Wells' The History of Mr Polly before reading "Ned" on education.
If only someone had put it out the week before "Ned" scribbled about the joys of memorisation, rote learning, core knowledge and such like.
If only ...then the pond could have dragged in Mr Polly, but what the hell Archie, toujours gai, the pond is going to do it on the basis of another principle, better late than never...
...I remember seeing a picture of Education — in some place. I think it was Education, but quite conceivably it represented the Empire teaching her Sons, and I have a strong impression that it was a wall painting upon some public building in Manchester or Birmingham or Glasgow, but very possibly I am mistaken about that. It represented a glorious woman with a wise and fearless face stooping over her children and pointing them to far horizons. The sky displayed the pearly warmth of a summer dawn, and all the painting was marvellously bright as if with the youth and hope of the delicately beautiful children in the foreground. She was telling them, one felt, of the great prospect of life that opened before them, of the spectacle of the world, the splendours of sea and mountain they might travel and see, the joys of skill they might acquire, of effort and the pride of effort and the devotions and nobilities it was theirs to achieve. Perhaps even she whispered of the warm triumphant mystery of love that comes at last to those who have patience and unblemished hearts.... She was reminding them of their great heritage as English children, rulers of more than one-fifth of mankind, of the obligation to do and be the best that such a pride of empire entails, of their essential nobility and knighthood and the restraints and the charities and the disciplined strength that is becoming in knights and rulers....
The education of Mr. Polly did not follow this picture very closely. He went for some time to a National School, which was run on severely economical lines to keep down the rates by a largely untrained staff, he was set sums to do that he did not understand, and that no one made him understand, he was made to read the catechism and Bible with the utmost industry and an entire disregard of punctuation or significance, and caused to imitate writing copies and drawing copies, and given object lessons upon sealing wax and silk-worms and potato bugs and ginger and iron and such like things, and taught various other subjects his mind refused to entertain, and afterwards, when he was about twelve, he was jerked by his parent to “finish off” in a private school of dingy aspect and still dingier pretensions, where there were no object lessons, and the studies of book-keeping and French were pursued (but never effectually overtaken) under the guidance of an elderly gentleman who wore a nondescript gown and took snuff, wrote copperplate, explained nothing, and used a cane with remarkable dexterity and gusto.
Mr. Polly went into the National School at six and he left the private school at fourteen, and by that time his mind was in much the same state that you would be in, dear reader, if you were operated upon for appendicitis by a well-meaning, boldly enterprising, but rather over-worked and under-paid butcher boy, who was superseded towards the climax of the operation by a left-handed clerk of high principles but intemperate habits,—that is to say, it was in a thorough mess. The nice little curiosities and willingnesses of a child were in a jumbled and thwarted condition, hacked and cut about—the operators had left, so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled confusion—and Mr. Polly had lost much of his natural confidence, so far as figures and sciences and languages and the possibilities of learning things were concerned. He thought of the present world no longer as a wonderland of experiences, but as geography and history, as the repeating of names that were hard to pronounce, and lists of products and populations and heights and lengths, and as lists and dates—oh! and boredom indescribable. He thought of religion as the recital of more or less incomprehensible words that were hard to remember, and of the Divinity as of a limitless Being having the nature of a schoolmaster and making infinite rules, known and unknown rules, that were always ruthlessly enforced, and with an infinite capacity for punishment and, most horrible of all to think of! limitless powers of espial. (So to the best of his ability he did not think of that unrelenting eye.) He was uncertain about the spelling and pronunciation of most of the words in our beautiful but abundant and perplexing tongue,—that especially was a pity because words attracted him, and under happier conditions he might have used them well—he was always doubtful whether it was eight sevens or nine eights that was sixty-three—(he knew no method for settling the difficulty) and he thought the merit of a drawing consisted in the care with which it was “lined in.” “Lining in” bored him beyond measure.
But the indigestions of mind and body that were to play so large a part in his subsequent career were still only beginning. His liver and his gastric juice, his wonder and imagination kept up a fight against the things that threatened to overwhelm soul and body together. Outside the regions devastated by the school curriculum he was still intensely curious. He had cheerful phases of enterprise, and about thirteen he suddenly discovered reading and its joys. He began to read stories voraciously, and books of travel, provided they were also adventurous. He got these chiefly from the local institute, and he also “took in,” irregularly but thoroughly, one of those inspiring weeklies that dull people used to call “penny dreadfuls,” admirable weeklies crammed with imagination that the cheap boys’ “comics” of to-day have replaced. At fourteen, when he emerged from the valley of the shadow of education, there survived something, indeed it survived still, obscured and thwarted, at five and thirty, that pointed—not with a visible and prevailing finger like the finger of that beautiful woman in the picture, but pointed nevertheless—to the idea that there was interest and happiness in the world. Deep in the being of Mr. Polly, deep in that darkness, like a creature which has been beaten about the head and left for dead but still lives, crawled a persuasion that over and above the things that are jolly and “bits of all right,” there was beauty, there was delight, that somewhere—magically inaccessible perhaps, but still somewhere, were pure and easy and joyous states of body and mind.
Sure, it's way too long, and the "if only" moment has long passed, and anyway, the pond needn't have relied on the street library, because Mr Polly is at Project Gutenberg here ...
And what a circuitous way to get to the latest "Ned", but at last the pond has arrived, only to discover "Ned" in a high state of flapping Chicken Little agitation ...
Yes, it's "Ned's" and the reptiles' worst nightmare, that dread beast slouching towards Canberra. It's bad enough to have to put up with comrade Dan, and besides everything is going swimmingly with Scotty from marketing, and yet that dire sense of dread still besieges "Ned" and no doubt he wakes up in a sweat at night to pound out his fears ...
Here the pond must pause to note a genuine comedy item. The reptiles are still trying to plug the notion that listening to "Ned" read his columns is better than a sleeping pill ... and so in desperation these days they insert a player, in case less than ten forgot to download the podcast ...
Of course the pond had to shrink it down so nobody would mistake it for a thing, when it's just a harmless screen cap ... and now, on we go, without having to endure the sound of "Ned's" voice ... though the pond can still hear it echoing down Pompous Lane, just off Portentous Way ...
At this point, the pond wondered what happened to the little clips the reptiles inserted into "Ned" to relieve the tedium. Did they get "Ned" to read a transcript, just so that the entire presentation could be preserved?
Why does the pond bother? Well the sight of "Ned" in a state of terminal anxiety is always a pleasing one ...
Best of all, perhaps the fatigue induced by the effort of reading his text into a microphone so that the nation might slumber in peace has seen "Ned" reduce the size and scale of his tomes ...
Indeed, indeed, the tragedy of Labor is that it might yet get the "Ned" stamp of approval. Just a little more remoulding, and why, we might yet get "Ned" cheering on Tweedledumb ...
And so to the real treat of the day, held back only because the pond wanted to remember Mr Polly - the pond had absolutely no interest in what "Ned" had to say this day, and already any memory has been erased, and the contents sent to the cloud ...
If the pond had been playing fair with those genuinely interested in reptile loons, it would have followed the reptiles and elevated Dame Slap to the top of the digital page ... but better late than never ...
Last weekend saw Dame Slap's people take to the streets. What a fine Sky News after dark mob it was, but it left the reptiles in something of a dilemma.
How not to hurt their feelings, how to celebrate their intent on staging a superspreader event?
Easy peasy for Dame Slap, bring on BLM and old enemies, like that News Corp turncoat Karvelas ...
Karvelas routinely ruins the pond's attempts to listen to the ABC, but can look after herself, as Dame Slap delivers a classic Slapian snipe ...
And so to the killer putdown, with the Dame's brain hurting ...
At this point, the pond confesses that its brain hurts too ...
You see, Dame Slap spends much energy putting down Karvelas and Hanson-Young and BLM, and yet nada, zip, zilch, zero when it comes to last weekend's protests, or the cavalcade of News Corp style clowns that staged it.
Why is that?
Please excuse the pond because this is the pre-emptive moment when the pond must explain why its brain hurts ...
Why does the pond keep dragging up this reminder of Dame Slap's valiant efforts over the years?
Well after all that nonsense about double think from Karvelas and the like, Dame Slap followed up with ...
Actually the pond recently listened to a BBC world service interview in which the blowtorch was applied to Norway's environment minister about the dependence on oil and gas, and he sounded extremely feeble and defensive ... but it's more than passing rich for a country rampantly trading in coal and gas to drag Norway in as a distraction.
But that's Dame Slap for you.
When it comes to her climate science denialism, Dame Slap can be relied up on to achieve a frightful level of hypocrisy, up there with her hero, "Lord" Monckton ... though these days she seems to trip a little lightly around the "Lord" and his splendid insights into world government by Xmas ...
Indeed, indeed, and let's not forget that Dame Slap has been peddling denialism, via "debate", for a long, long time, as befits the IPA Chairman and chief stooge for Gina's mob (strangely never noted in the lizard Oz CV).
The pond drifted back in time, as it occasionally does, to May 18, 2009 ... and memories of Dame Slap and the now gone Ian Plimer ...
You don’t need a long list of degrees in science to feel that something is awry with the current climate – the climate of debate, that is. Few of us want to endanger the planet if sensible measures can be taken to avoid that. But equally, many – especially those in towns and communities where the climate change rubber will hit the road - feel disenfranchised by the current one-sided debate, derided by city folk who have made up their mind on the issue and will readily put the jobs and futures of those in the country on the line to assuage their inner city conscience. Hence, in a local pub you will find a genuine spirit of enquiry about Plimer’s work often lacking in the cities.
It is a natural part of our rich human nature to imagine the importance of man and to prefer neat answers. But much of the inner city debate is infused with a disconcerting arrogance that we understand everything, that the science of climate change is settled, that man is to blame and that man can and must fix it, regardless of the cost.
Saucy doubts and fears, that's what you need ... with the Riddster these days stepping in to do a Plimer and help us understand that everything is for the best in the best of all possible warming worlds ...
Well, talk of climate ideology is a handsome twist, so much more to the point than the usual reptile angle of talk of the religion or theology of climate change. So much better when science can be boiled down to a hint of Marxism ...
Reality?
The woman who lives in a land above the faraway tree, or perhaps on planet Janet - the pond has yet to settle the matter definitively - talks of reality?
Here, settle back for a smooth drink after that little effort ...
And so to the bonus, and the pond is only running it because it hasn't thought of Christopher Pearson for years ...
When I converted, as an adherent of the Latin mass I became a member of a minority, as marginalised and persecuted as the first generation of out-and-proud gays. In fact, it was a lot like reliving the 70s. I also got the distinct impression that a number of acquaintances in the hierarchy had been more cordially disposed towards me in my unregenerate middle age. Perhaps they wondered whether it was really necessary for me to make what pastoral care jargon calls "lifestyle sacrifices". All I can do is quote another of Muggeridge's paradoxes: "One of old age's pleasures is giving things up."
The pond wandered back down memory lane again to the days of Pearson...
Latin, until recently a universal language, was prized as such, the sign of a universal church. It wasn't a serious barrier to popular understanding because parallel texts were, and still are, freely available. Had Vatican II simply authorised the Bible readings in the language of the people and left the fixed unvarying parts of the mass in their familiar, ancient forms, as was originally intended, a great deal of anguish and bitterness could so easily have been avoided.
Until recently a universal language!
Rather cruelly at the time, the pond referenced ...
Latin killed the Romans and now it's killing me.
The mass was in Latin until I was about twenty. All my childhood in country NSW the mass was said in a mumble we could not hear or understand. We knelt and quietly read our St Joseph’s missals, and the old ladies said the rosary. We had jokes about the Latin, ‘Me a cowboy, me a cowboy, me a Mexican cowboy, ‘and ‘Will you play dominos with me? Yes I will play dominos with you’, for instance. There were many priests who said mass badly. Almost none of them, even those who said mass well, spoke or read Latin and few of them pronounced it well, even church Latin. There were notable exceptions of course. I did not experience the Latin mass done consistently well until I entered a monastery where we had good musicians and singers and priests who could say mass well all the time. Even there we had the occasional priest who was scrupulous and could not get through the words of consecration. One came to consecrating the wine, went ‘Hanc, hanc, hanc, hanc’ and could go no further.
To read people like Christopher Pearson you would think we all heard Palestrina, Haydn, Mozart, Monteverdi and the like Sunday after Sunday when in fact we heard wheezy melodeon or harmonium style organs played slowly and badly and the music that was played was no better than now.
Yes, the pond had been there, and heard all that, but now it all seems so many child molestations and Pellist scandals and corrupt church of Rome finances ago.
Even so, it amused the pond, and even now there's a lingering nostalgia for lost times ..
Indeed, indeed ...
In 1996, around 864,000 people attended Sunday Masses in Australia – 18 per cent of the Australian Catholic population.
But by 2016, Sunday Mass attendance rates across the country had dropped to just 11.8 per cent of all Catholics.
The number of Mass-going Catholics reduced by a third between 1996 and 2016, at the rate of around 12,000 people a year. (here)
And so on and so declining numbers forth ...
Well it took the pond away to another distant land for at least a nanosecond, and how cruel of the immortal Rowe to drag the pond screaming and kicking back to this world, with more cruel Rowe here ...
Now about Mr Polly: "...about thirteen he suddenly discovered reading and its joys." But, bg, butt, hasn't the very knowledgeable Professor John Sweller told us, via Neddy, that "there is no 'natural' process to learn how to read and write. That is knowledge we have to teach explicitly." But from what we've been told about the "education" of Mr Polly, nobody ever "explicitly" taught him how to read (or anything else for that matter).
ReplyDeleteSo how did he learn ? Given the proclivities of the author, was Mr Polly "explicitly taught" by Martians or by time travellers, maybe ? Or was H G Wells a Martian or a time traveller who just didn't understand the great limitations of human beings ?