Sure sounds like you have been doing some heavy duty treading on the path of higher education recently. Hearing about those cuts made to meet " the bottom line " in your college was not cool. Up here that same kind of cost-cutting activity has been in the news a bunch recently. A number of years ago the provincial government passed a law that made it mandatory for all boards of education to balance their budgets. It was an election year so this was part well-intentioned and part election time politics.
Predictably, this did not bring stability of any sort but just upped the turmoil ante in the education sphere. Most folks, it seems, feel that education is something to be endured in their formative years and ignored thereafter. The upshot has been some pretty massive budget cuts in the last few years as boards of education try to toe this line that puts the ledger above the future, if you will. Yes, it does truly suck, sometimes, to realize that so many people don't catch on to the fact that education is a long term investment as well. Scrimp on it now and it will come back and bite ya in the future.Speaking of the future, I was back nosing around in Gizmodo, one of my favorite sites to visit, and ran into this article:
Nanorobots wade through blood to deliver drugs
By Nick Lavars
June 17, 2015
Nanorobots hold great potential in the field of medicine. This is largely due to the possibility of highly-targeted delivery of medical payloads, an outcome that could lessen side effects and negate the need for invasive procedures. But how these microscopic particles can best navigate the body's fluids is a huge area of focus for scientists. Researchers are now reporting a new technique whereby nanorobots are made to swim swiftly through the fluids like blood to reach their destination
Well, while it did initially make me say to myself, " Isn't this far out? " it also almost immediately reminded me of one of the very first movies that really made me think about technology way back when I was a fifteen year old in 1966.
I actually went to the theatre twice in the same week to see Fantastic Voyage because it was so intriguing . Now, remember that this is a boy of fifteen we are talking about, so the intrigue comes in a variety of forms. I also went to see another movie with one of the stars from this one twice, too.
I would be lying if I said that I remember Raquel Welch for her riveting performance in either of these 1966 epics, but I'd also be fibbing if I said that I wasn't riveted to the screen whenever she appeared...
Like the poster says ...
" This is the way it was "
for this 15.5 year old guy in 1966.
Hopefully Ms. Welch does not go to the back of her closet these days and grab any of the outfits she wore at work in 1966, slap them on and go for a walk in the neighbourhood.
Horsing about in IMDB for 1966 brought me to a number of other cinematic touchstones for that particular year. I did get to the cinema to see each of the following - although Godzilla, Batman and Zontar were observed at the drive-in because I had a friend whose mostly in absentia parents soothed their guilt and bought him off by giving him the car whenever he asked.
Got to see Fahrenheit 451 at the movies while we were at school thanks to an English teacher who was ahead of her time. She had to bend a few rules to get a class of "minor niners " freed up halfway through the afternoon to walk downtown to the movie theatre, I'm thinking. Fortunately our school was only five blocks from the cinema, or I'm sure most of us would have been MIA on the way there.
We read the book in class earlier in the year. I do believe that this is one of the first examples in my literary life of how the book can excel and exceed well beyond the movie. Mind you, Julie Christie stuck with me from that movie, and certainly not for the the same reasons that Raquel did! ( Again, we gotta remember that this a fifteen year old talkin' here )
Godzilla and the Sea Monster, The Batman Movie and Zontar, the thing from Venus were all drive-in specials..........
I admit to a particular weakness for schlocky Godzilla movies. I'm certainly not alone in this regard.
I think, as do lotsa people, that this shark up the ladder after Batman scene may have inspired the Sharknado movies thing.
I have no defense against why I went, willingly, to see Zontar other than at fifteen it was cool just to go to a drive-in. This ain't the kind of thing that ever happened with my parents and I'm sure I fabricated an elaborate excuse to get out of the house that night.
The only other thing about pop culture in 1966 that bears mentioning right now is that this was the year that a bizarre little debut album from Frank Zappa and his band The Mothers of Invention came out. I am still torn as to whether I should put Mr. Zappa as my second or third most favored musical influence of all. I'm gonna leave the basic introductory details to Wikipedia in the paragraph below. However, Carolyn, you are a musical person and if the name doesn't ring a bell, I'd like to think that it would with your musical offspring. For reasons I cannot explain or elucidate, I love Frank Zappa. I loved him then and I love him now.
Zappa was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often difficult to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical. His lyrics—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.
Anyhow, Carolyn, to bring things full circle, you asked last time around what Mark Twain might have had to say about the incongruous developments in the world of education where you are. Well I think Mark and Frank ( Zappa ) may have gotten along well in terms of their feelings about public education at its lowest common denominator. I can't say that either one would have approved of the budget-motivated cuts of which you spoke. I think they would have felt the system was suspect from the git-go. However, I also figure that these kind of long-range and wide-ranging visionaries can often lose track of how the rest of us have to deal with such things here in the trenches.
I had this Twainism picked already as a recognition of Donald Trump's silly presidential sortie down your way, but I think it can be easily stretched to fit the mindset of the policy-making powers that be in your teaching situation :
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
Have a good week.
Don
All images sourced from Google Images
Fig. 1 - gcn.com
Fig. 2 - Gizmag.com
Fig. 3 - stuffpoint.com
Fig. 4 - en.wikipedia.org
Fig. 5 - moviepilot.com
Fig. 6 - stuffpoint.com
Fig. 7 - thesupernaughts.com
Fig. 8 - garth.typepad.com
Fig. 9 - vinliciously.gr
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