1-Teachers with no backbone
A tour guide hustled a group of kids out of the official residence of the Governor-General, because one of them that the audacity to ask a question about the recent spending & budget fracas swirling around our vice-regal representative.
Jeremy Patfield’s teacher should hang his or her head in shame…or even accept a smack in the face! Young Mr. Patfield may have asked the question in a snarky manner, but if I had been there, a withering look and a quick lecture on manners would have been the sum total of his punishment.
But to allow the entire class to be shoved out of the building, simply because the kid was expressing his constitutional right to question the behaviour of his leaders? This teacher obviously knows nothing about civics, government, our constitution, or common sense! Maintain order, but don’t squash curiosity. There’s enough mindless spoonfeeding going on in the world — stifling dissent isn’t doing the free world any favours.
And don’t EVER imply to a student that they don’t have the right to question. That is one of the founding principles of our democratic society, and if Jeremy’s teacher doesn’t recognize this fact, I suggest immediate, remedial instruction…or, at the very least, pulling their head out of their ass!
If I had been Jeremy’s teacher, and the tour guide tried to evict my group for simply asking a question he or she didn’t like, they would have had to drag me out of there in handcuffs before I let them kick out my class for offending someone’s dignity by indulging in democratic principles.
2-Apparently, it’s better to be old and dying, than to squeeze every last ounce of energy out of life…
According to the Pope’s official psychiatrist (there’s a joke in there, somewhere…), affluent societies gobble up too much of the world’s health-care resources with their fetish for stay-young-forever medical cures. He urged them to look to Pope John Paul II as a model for the inevitability of old age and illness whose stoic suffering should be imitated.
His exact quote:
“Precisely in the handicap, in the disease, in the pain, in old age, in dying and death, one can ….. perceive the truth of life in a clearer way.”
That’s right, folks. The Pope is the role model for living life — accept the inevitable, don’t fight disease, or illness. Just be some old-fashioned, Biblical martyr-cum-masochist — suffering is good for the soul.
What a load of gobshite!
I plan to live a long, healthy life…and I plan to take advantage of all the resources available to me. Leaving it to fate is another way of saying “I’m a deluded fatalist, who doesn’t believe in controlling my own destiny.”
The Pope can rot in his degeneration. For all I know, he may even enjoy it — it would certainly fit in with his Opus Dei-like medieval beliefs. Personally, I plan to fight for my quality of life every inch of the way. Bring on the gym, the drugs, the medical therapies. I deserve them! We all deserve them!
So endeth today’s bitch session
