The Outside Perspective
Feb. 27th, 2006 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerOne challenge, as a beginning writer, is learning to crawl outside of your societal box. I have been thinking about this a bit recently, and ran across a remark from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky over at a Making Light discussion about the proposed law in Arizona that would allow students to opt out of any assignment that offended them. Jo's comment:
Jo grew up in Wales but now lives in Montreal. There is, I would say, absolutely nothing like moving (even temporarily) to another country to shake up your perspective.
When I was thirteen, my father went on sabbatical, and my family spent a year in England, living in London. My parents both did research (my father for a book, my mother for her dissertation) and my brother, sister and I went to school. I have since been told that 1986-87 was something of a nadir for state education (what Americans call public education -- "public schools" in England are private schools, I'm not sure why) in London. Things started improving not long after I left, but academically the school I attended was dismal, and my formal education that year was kind of a wash.
My informal education, on the other hand, was unparalleled.
For example, let's take lunchtime.
(Cut for length.)
First, we had a full hour for lunch. During that time, we were almost completely unsupervised. My parents gave me pocket money that included one pound per day for lunch money. If I ate at the school, I could get lunch for about 35p; that was the cheapest option. Lunch was served by seniority. At the beginning of the hour, the sixth years and the teachers went to the cafeteria, and bought their meals, while the fifth years waited in line in the cafeteria, the fourth years waited in line in the stairway (which was at least sheltered from the weather), and the third years (that would be me and my friends) waited outside in the elements. Once the fifth years had been served, the fourth years went into the cafeteria, and the third years moved into the stairway. (The first and second year students -- the 6th and 7th graders, in U.S. terms -- were on a completely separate campus, down a steep hill.) Only after the fourth year kids had gotten their lunches were we allowed to go get ours.
People would try to cut in line. Now, kids at my American high school would cut in line all the time, but most were sort of sneaky about it. They'd go stand and pretend to chat with their friend who was already in line, and then get in line behind their friend when it was time to order. At Highgate Wood, there were no pretenses: the law of the jungle prevailed. You'd pick someone who looked weaker than you, step in front of them, and grab the railing. They'd grab you by the shoulders and try to throw you out of line. If you were tenacious enough that they couldn't get rid of you, then congratulations, you had successfully cut in. If you were aggressive enough to defend your spot in line, you probably wouldn't get cut in on too often. Oh, and if you were genuinely scary (and a couple of kids at this school really were genuinely scary), you would saunter up to the front of the line and no one would complain.
No teachers intervened, because we weren't supervised. Until we were in line in the actual cafeteria (or at least in the stairway), we just weren't considered their problem.
By the time we got to the cafeteria, there usually was not a lot of food left. I remember stone cold fish sticks, and french fries. The spotted dick wasn't too bad. (Er, that's a dessert. It tasted sort of like a yellow cake with raisins in it and gloppy sweet custard dumped on top. It wasn't cake, it was a steamed pudding, but the texture was kind of cake-like.)
Fortunately, we did have other options. If we didn't want to deal with the line to get into the cafeteria, but didn't want to leave the school grounds, there was this little truck, the size and shape of an ice cream truck, that would park at the edge of the campus each day at lunchtime. It sold the most vile hamburgers and hot dogs you can possibly imagine. That wasn't quite as cheap as the cafeteria, but it was pretty cheap.
Or, we could walk down the hill to Crouch End Broadway, which was a bustling neighborhood business district with a large selection of restaurants. For a pound, I could get a doner kebab (usually called a gyro in the U.S.), or a large bag of chips (you know, British-style French fries), or a samosa, or a sausage roll. All of these options were fast, hot, and filling.
If we went to the broadway (which most days we did), on the way back, we'd often stop to buy sweets. At my American schools, kids never shared candy with each other -- maybe a tiny taste for your best friend, but for the most part, your dessert was yours, not something you shared around. At my British school, that would have been appallingly rude behavior. All candy was shared. Therefore, all candy was purchased in bulk. It was nearly all hard candy, and nearly always in a small white bag. I don't much care for most kinds of hard candy, but I bought and shared anyway because I was savvy enough to see that this was a way to fit in.
This was probably the cultural shift that sank in most deeply. When I got back to the U.S., it felt wrong not to offer to share candy with my friends. I had at least one friend who would always accept and never reciprocate. (Yes, he was a shameless freeloader.)
Anyway, I know of no American schools that have a hierarchical lunch line (unless you count teachers getting to cut in). I also know of no American schools that give students an hour for lunch. My British school also had two fifteen-minute breaks in the morning, and only four classes total each day, a little over an hour long. However, it was sometimes impossible to use the bathroom during these breaks; they would lock them in order to keep kids from going in there to smoke. Except, they wouldn't check the bathrooms before locking them, so if you were a smoker, you'd sprint for the bathroom and get locked in with your friends to smoke in peace for the duration of the 15 minute break.
England is one of the easier foreign countries to live in, as an American, because you speak the language (more or less). Yet there are a million ways in which it is foreign. Having this experience as a thirteen-year-old was both terrifying and exhilerating. The most fundamental thing I learned was that Other People Have a Different Normal -- this is a very basic lesson, but I learned it in a bone-deep way that year.
I love that when Jo first read about the American liberal arts education, she thought it was this wildly creative science fictional idea. That is such a good illustration of what I'm talking about. The idea of distribution requirements is almost inherent to the American concept of an undergraduate education; there are schools that have no such requirements, but they're the rare exception. Yet this was so foreign to Jo's experience that she considered it science fictional.
She notes later in the thread that her bitterness is because this would have been so perfect for her, and she didn't find out about it until it was too late to take advantage of it.
papersky over at a Making Light discussion about the proposed law in Arizona that would allow students to opt out of any assignment that offended them. Jo's comment:Jo Walton ::: (view all by) ::: February 26, 2006, 09:12 AM:
Oh, and anyone who wants to study one thing and one thing only with no breadth requirements should go to university in Britain. When I first read about the American Liberal Arts education, in Doorways in the Sand I thought "What an imagination Roger Zelazny has got! What an astonishing SFnal idea." When I discovered it again, in The Number of the Beast, I thought "Heinlein got this idea from Zelazny! And he didn't acknowlege it anywhere!" It took coming across it again in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin to make me actually believe it existed. I've been sulking ever since.
Jo grew up in Wales but now lives in Montreal. There is, I would say, absolutely nothing like moving (even temporarily) to another country to shake up your perspective.
When I was thirteen, my father went on sabbatical, and my family spent a year in England, living in London. My parents both did research (my father for a book, my mother for her dissertation) and my brother, sister and I went to school. I have since been told that 1986-87 was something of a nadir for state education (what Americans call public education -- "public schools" in England are private schools, I'm not sure why) in London. Things started improving not long after I left, but academically the school I attended was dismal, and my formal education that year was kind of a wash.
My informal education, on the other hand, was unparalleled.
For example, let's take lunchtime.
(Cut for length.)
First, we had a full hour for lunch. During that time, we were almost completely unsupervised. My parents gave me pocket money that included one pound per day for lunch money. If I ate at the school, I could get lunch for about 35p; that was the cheapest option. Lunch was served by seniority. At the beginning of the hour, the sixth years and the teachers went to the cafeteria, and bought their meals, while the fifth years waited in line in the cafeteria, the fourth years waited in line in the stairway (which was at least sheltered from the weather), and the third years (that would be me and my friends) waited outside in the elements. Once the fifth years had been served, the fourth years went into the cafeteria, and the third years moved into the stairway. (The first and second year students -- the 6th and 7th graders, in U.S. terms -- were on a completely separate campus, down a steep hill.) Only after the fourth year kids had gotten their lunches were we allowed to go get ours.
People would try to cut in line. Now, kids at my American high school would cut in line all the time, but most were sort of sneaky about it. They'd go stand and pretend to chat with their friend who was already in line, and then get in line behind their friend when it was time to order. At Highgate Wood, there were no pretenses: the law of the jungle prevailed. You'd pick someone who looked weaker than you, step in front of them, and grab the railing. They'd grab you by the shoulders and try to throw you out of line. If you were tenacious enough that they couldn't get rid of you, then congratulations, you had successfully cut in. If you were aggressive enough to defend your spot in line, you probably wouldn't get cut in on too often. Oh, and if you were genuinely scary (and a couple of kids at this school really were genuinely scary), you would saunter up to the front of the line and no one would complain.
No teachers intervened, because we weren't supervised. Until we were in line in the actual cafeteria (or at least in the stairway), we just weren't considered their problem.
By the time we got to the cafeteria, there usually was not a lot of food left. I remember stone cold fish sticks, and french fries. The spotted dick wasn't too bad. (Er, that's a dessert. It tasted sort of like a yellow cake with raisins in it and gloppy sweet custard dumped on top. It wasn't cake, it was a steamed pudding, but the texture was kind of cake-like.)
Fortunately, we did have other options. If we didn't want to deal with the line to get into the cafeteria, but didn't want to leave the school grounds, there was this little truck, the size and shape of an ice cream truck, that would park at the edge of the campus each day at lunchtime. It sold the most vile hamburgers and hot dogs you can possibly imagine. That wasn't quite as cheap as the cafeteria, but it was pretty cheap.
Or, we could walk down the hill to Crouch End Broadway, which was a bustling neighborhood business district with a large selection of restaurants. For a pound, I could get a doner kebab (usually called a gyro in the U.S.), or a large bag of chips (you know, British-style French fries), or a samosa, or a sausage roll. All of these options were fast, hot, and filling.
If we went to the broadway (which most days we did), on the way back, we'd often stop to buy sweets. At my American schools, kids never shared candy with each other -- maybe a tiny taste for your best friend, but for the most part, your dessert was yours, not something you shared around. At my British school, that would have been appallingly rude behavior. All candy was shared. Therefore, all candy was purchased in bulk. It was nearly all hard candy, and nearly always in a small white bag. I don't much care for most kinds of hard candy, but I bought and shared anyway because I was savvy enough to see that this was a way to fit in.
This was probably the cultural shift that sank in most deeply. When I got back to the U.S., it felt wrong not to offer to share candy with my friends. I had at least one friend who would always accept and never reciprocate. (Yes, he was a shameless freeloader.)
Anyway, I know of no American schools that have a hierarchical lunch line (unless you count teachers getting to cut in). I also know of no American schools that give students an hour for lunch. My British school also had two fifteen-minute breaks in the morning, and only four classes total each day, a little over an hour long. However, it was sometimes impossible to use the bathroom during these breaks; they would lock them in order to keep kids from going in there to smoke. Except, they wouldn't check the bathrooms before locking them, so if you were a smoker, you'd sprint for the bathroom and get locked in with your friends to smoke in peace for the duration of the 15 minute break.
England is one of the easier foreign countries to live in, as an American, because you speak the language (more or less). Yet there are a million ways in which it is foreign. Having this experience as a thirteen-year-old was both terrifying and exhilerating. The most fundamental thing I learned was that Other People Have a Different Normal -- this is a very basic lesson, but I learned it in a bone-deep way that year.
I love that when Jo first read about the American liberal arts education, she thought it was this wildly creative science fictional idea. That is such a good illustration of what I'm talking about. The idea of distribution requirements is almost inherent to the American concept of an undergraduate education; there are schools that have no such requirements, but they're the rare exception. Yet this was so foreign to Jo's experience that she considered it science fictional.
She notes later in the thread that her bitterness is because this would have been so perfect for her, and she didn't find out about it until it was too late to take advantage of it.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-27 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 01:43 am (UTC)I've never written so much about lunch before.
Date: 2006-02-27 10:49 pm (UTC)In 6th grade, the middle school I attended was structured so that students stayed in fairly homogeneous class groups, even though we got to go to different classrooms for each subject. They had our morning teachers grade the class on behavior, and the class groups that had the best conduct grades got to get lunch first. But since our 6th grade class was made up of goodie-goodies, I never got to find out whether the more troublesome classes got sub-par lunches later in the lunch period. (Most of my memories of lunches in the 6th grade revolve around my friend Susan talking about dieting, and about how her older sister got her period. Deep stuff when you're 11 and 12.)
Re: I've never written so much about lunch before.
Date: 2006-02-28 01:43 am (UTC)The thing that was weirdest was not the hierarchical order in which we were served, but the fact that by the time we got there, most of the food was gone. (This was even more depressing when you realize that many of my classmates got free lunches, and in theory this was supposed to be their reliable nutrition for the day. Fortunately, in most cases, they actually had the pocket money to go elsewhere anyway.) Also, the way the teachers ignored the bullying and line-cutting. Bullying was taken less seriously generally in American schools in the 1980s than it is now, but still, I don't know of anyone at an American school who had a lunch line as routinely and casually violent as mine was.
I can tell you how it's done in Richfield
Date: 2006-02-28 12:02 am (UTC)I recently quit my job so I'm doing odd things to make money while I figure out what I want to do when I grow up, and today, I got to be a sub school lunch lady in Richfield Middle School. The youngest went first, then the kids with disabilities, then the middle grade, then the lunch ladies (one brought food from home) and the oldest kids went last. The teachers went somewhere else except for the ones accompanying the kids with disabilities. And heaven forbid you left the school grounds for lunch. And yes, we did run out of food, but handed out bagged potato chips instead of fries. The last 4 kids figured that was a bonus, but really the fries weren't bad.
Re: I can tell you how it's done in Richfield
Date: 2006-02-28 02:04 am (UTC)Re: I can tell you how it's done in Richfield
Date: 2006-02-28 03:01 am (UTC)Re: I can tell you how it's done in Richfield
Date: 2006-02-28 04:49 am (UTC)BTW, the head teacher, in informing us that Naomi's brother should bring a lunch, commented that Nate was an American boy who just wanted his peanut butter and "jam" ("jelly" in England is jello) sandwich. Nate loathed peanut butter and jam, but that's what he got for lunch. (At the school and Naomi and siblings attended in the U.S., we ALWAYS had to send packed lunches, so it was a bit of a release to have the option of "dinners" at school.).
Re: I can tell you how it's done in Richfield
Date: 2006-02-28 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-28 10:43 am (UTC)As I recall, in my elementary school we were all escorted to the cafeteria by our teachers, and then one class at a time would get food, still escorted by the teacher (there were about three classes per grade). Looking back on it, I wonder when the teachers managed to eat -- I suppose they got food when we did. We were not allowed to leave the cateferia, let alone the school. In high school, we had forty-five minutes and often left the school grounds, though I have a feeling this was frowned-upon. Most people I knew brought lunches, so the lines weren't as much of a thing, though I remember those who did buy their lunches rushing to get out of class and get to the line before anyone else did.
Some more perspectives on lunch
Date: 2006-02-28 05:32 pm (UTC)In junior high, we ate packed lunches downstairs in the Auxiliary Gym. In high school, where the lunch break was 47 minutes, there was a cafeteria offering such staples as fries with gravy, really bad poutine, cardboard hamburgers, cream-filled long johns, and -- most importantly from my point of view -- coffee and caffeinated soft drinks. Everyone's lunch hour was at the same time, and there was no hierarchy or any other sort of order to lunch-eating. Most students either brought packed lunches or went off-campus to one of the many local eateries, the now defunct Bagels & Buns being the most popular. There was room for perhaps 200 people to eat in the cafeteria; the other 1550 of us fended for ourselves, mostly by way of groups establishing their territory in certain hallway spots.
In 1981-1982, my family spent a sabbatical year in Sevilla, in the south of Spain (you know, where Carmen is set). In Spain they have the very sensible concept of the siesta, which means that if you are an elementary-school student, you go to school from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., then go home for lunch, then come back at 3 p.m. and go to school until 5 p.m. Eating lunch at school, at the school I attended (whose name I have blocked out because it was such a horrible place -- my class had 60 kids in it, and we did almost nothing but sit at our desks and do endless worksheets, except during recess, when we went up to the roof of the building and I was systematically tormented by the Spanish kids, who called me "la Inglesa" in the same tone in which North American kids of the same era would have said "retard"), was more or less unheard of, and so my mom shlepped all the way across the city by bus to collect me for the two-hour lunch/siesta break, and then we went all the way back again for the afternoon session -- four crosstown bus trips per day. Lunch was the main meal of the day, at least for kids; that was when you had hot/cooked food, and lots of it, whereas in the evening kids got what in the UK they call tea, a smaller, usually cold meal around 5 or 6 p.m., closely followed by bedtime, after which the adults ate their supper sometime between 8 and 10 p.m.
This is all so fascinating!
SylviaH
no subject
Date: 2006-03-02 04:44 am (UTC)Of course, I went (literally) dumpster diving the first time in my life there too...