On the name of Shakespeare

(Notes for Year 10) 

Education cannot produce a Shakespeare, it cannot create genius, but it can give genius that chance in early elementary training without which even the most adaptive minds lose their direction.

--Charles G. Harper

     

      The name of Shakespeare was not in olden times a respectable one. It signified originally one who wielded a spear; nor a chivalric and romantic knight warring with the infidel in Palestine, or jousting to uphold the claims to beauty of his chosen lady, but a common soldier, a rough man-at-war.

     (Spoiler 1) The first Shakespeare of whom we have any notice in Stratford-upon-Avon was a John of that name. He was hanged punished for robbery, and perhaps he was one of those very many unfortunate persons who have been in all ages wrongly convicted.   

     (Spoiler 2) One Shakespeare before the dramatist’s time had reached some kind of local eminence. This was Isabel Shakespeare, who became Prioress of the Priory of Baddesley Clinton.
     (Spoiler 3) Warwickshire was, in fact very rich in Shakespeares. They grew in every hedgerow, and very many of them owned the Christian name of William, but they spelled their patronymic in an amazing number of ways as a matter of taste and fancy. We will forbear the most of these. “Shaxpeare” and “Shagspeare” are the commonest forms.
      Sure and certain foothold upon genealogical fact is only reached with William Shakepspeare’s father, who established himself at Stratford-upon-Avon about 1551. John Shakespeare was a rising tradesman and became a member of the town council.  

 

What a disgrace!

It is estimated around 40 per cent of male and 20 per cent of female public sector workers including teachers and health care workers may not live long enough to claim their pensions under the new rules, as prime minister announced the Russian state pension age would be hiked from 60 to 65 for men and 55 to 63 for women.   
     Putin is by no means a good guy when he is spreading the lies around the globe that people in Russia live longer. The Russian Main Stream Media should be ashamed of itself blithely printing all this pure propaganda and ignoring the suffering of the old people in Russia. And how can school children believe MPs while this atrocity carries on is beyond belief. 
      Expected to be officially adopted by next year, the new policy would mean the country’s retirement age for men would be only a year lower than the World Health Organisation’s estimated life expectancy for a Russian man of 66.

     World Bank echoes this sentence. It estimates also Russian male life expectancy at 66, while the CIA’s World Factbook had it at even 65. Women can expect to live to about 77. The Russian Confederation of Labour said official statistics showed the average life expectancy of men was less than 65 in more than 60 regions of Russia. 
     This proves that the intention to raise the retirement age is not based on available official statistics. What a disgrace Russia has become! Putin's poodles, dutifully trotting out Kremlin propaganda. It doesn't make one proud to be a Russia petitioner any more. 
      What it indicates to me is that we truly are in the slave system. We are basically saving for the government because you’ll probably be dead and gone before actually you can claim your pension. 
      To make matters even worse, 100 rubles today will not buy the same what 100 rubles bought a year ago. That’s pretty obvious for everyone. My own advice to people would be to diversify your assets as much as possible. I would say always try and leave cash somewhere if you have a good hiding place in your house or invest in gold and silver, tangible assets. I can see a time where bank accounts may be frozen by the government. Again this just shows me that we are definitely living in the slave system.    
     Sad story!

 

A Defence of Grammars

"Against the conventional wisdom, we find little evidence that gaining entry into a grammar school has a positive impact“, the Telegraph, 23 May 2018.

      This leads us to an important conclusion: gaining entry into a grammar school in the UK may actually not be as important as many assume. But one thing this article has managed to avoid saying in its negative assessment of Grammar Schools is the utter failure of the system brought in to replace them, the "Comprehensive System". The comprehensive system has failed and it is, quite frankly, a national disgrace.

     It seems to me that if children are failing it is because the Government have experimented by introducing other kinds of education ie Academies; Comprehensives; Secondary Modern; Religion based schools and not concentrated enough on bringing the quality of education in these State schools up to the same level. It is the State schools that are failing children, because of degraded methods of teaching, not all, but most of them, not the Grammar or High schools.

     At the bottom this is not the fault of comprehensive schools or the comprehensive system itself. It is a direct consequence of academic capitalism and marketisation, which has brought about the replacing of developing deep learning through teaching all pupils in a cognitively challenging way by behaviourist cramming.

     There are few experienced teachers that deny this.

Dealing with Swearing and Bad Language in Class

Swearing and inappropriate language in schools, even in primary classes, is on the rise. 
     As a child, I don't remember hearing a swear word until I entered school. When I was in the Army COs swore like 'bloody troopers', and their wives had very obvious substitutes for swearing. But this time the decadence would be of a more explicitly sexual variety!
       Smolensk these days and the lives of the children I teach are full of foul language. It's in the halls, classrooms, you name it. It's part of their normal vocabulary. I was discussing with colleagues the possible reasons for this. When television shows programmes containing words we would not accept in our classrooms, how can we argue? 
      Essentially, the purpose of school is to teach children how to be functioning human beings at least, both in the workplace and in their personal lives. Therefore not allowing children to swear in class is essential practice. 

      It did not take long for pupils to realize that part of the mutual respect between themselves and me is the lack of swearing. If profanity is blatant and direct, I ask for an apology. Nine times out of ten, the student has already caught himself and has self-corrected and apologized. 

     I hope and dream of times where children use appropriate language but am I fighting a losing battle? 
     As the old social groupings of nuclear families, extended families and church communities are replaced by imagined Internet communities and the state, which is Puttin' money before people, we have a generation that includes many who are isolated and lonely, drifting without any moral anchor or structure to their lives, faced with an endemic on swearing.

Degradation

The days of chivalry and respect seem to be long gone these days. Over the past 15 years or so many people who live in Smolensk have become more rude and disrespectful. I believe there are many contributing factors that have led to this rudeness. Selfishness and greed for money have led to many other byproducts such as disrespect to people and the lack of accountability to anyone. Kids treat their parents and teachers with disrespect and also treat each other badly. 

I am a school teacher and have been for about 4 years now. For just the time I have taught at school I have seen a complete turnaround from when I came. The disrespect and attitude that some of people have is crazy.

We don’t question the conventional wisdom that childhood is in crisis; we want to say that poverty and terribly low moral standards that engulfed substantial majority of families and darkened their lives have become a new issue for the state system of education. It is not simply about raising the price of education; many more fundamental problems arise – schools know much more about the state of Russia Olympic Team than they do about the state of their children. It shows that there is a lot of hypocrisy and double standard practices within the national education system.

Even further, this seems to be the age of tolerance and acceptance because we are all forced to accept someone's wrong-doings. Society is in fear about being accountable and being able to tell someone else that they are doing something wrong. The Moscow Patriarchate headed by ecumenical patriarch Cyrill has allowed this to creep in the very fabric of Russian way of life, where we get the ‘feel good’ gospel and sin is overlooked and become accepted by every civilian institution.

There are many things to blame on this but it all comes back to selfishness. All good manners can be summed up in one sentence: Do unto others as you would have them to do unto you. In other words, treat others as you want to be treated.

School Theatre Goes all Shakespearean

PROLOGUE.

Great tensions produce great art. 1606, the year the Gunpowder Plot produced, besides Macbeth (an allegory of the Descent into hell), also King Lear (sacrificial, all-forgiving death) and Antony and Cleopatra (an allegory of the Resurrection). The transition from the Roman Catholic Church to Protestant Reformation profoundly influenced Shakespeare’s work. By the time he began writing plays himself, dramatization organized by the gilds was dead and buried...

ACT I

[Enter School teacher]

SCHOOL TEACHER. Shakespeare was a protest playwright who portrayed the world with expressiveness and dignity and the size of the plays in the biggest possible terms and pictures. Now, can I paint two little pictures for you? And you promise not to snigger. Can we do that? I am going to be very monosyllabic indeed. OK…

CHORUS I. Shakespeare was perfectly aware where the revolution ended / Inducing paranoia and suspicions / To an unparalleled degree / – In hell, / Where the ghost of Hamlet’s father came from. (Fig. 1)

CHORUS II. To be or not to be: / Is it better to live or die? / In  a world that feels so 'weary, state, and unprofitable'. (Fig. 2)

SCHOOL TEACHER. But while great art can mirror great tensions, it cannot disperse them: from this time English society became increasingly polarized between Catholics and Protestants, loyalists and revolutionaries, old feudal ways and new bourgeois ambitions.

ACT II

[Enter King, Queen, Polonious, School teacher]

SCHOOL TEACHER. We may suppose that Shakespeare felt the tug of revolutionary tendencies and to some extent sympathized with them. Thus there is real passion in Hamlet’s attempt to cast the light on the false King Claudius. And so the scene was set for the English revolution:

HAMLET. What, frighted with false fire!

QUEEN. How fares my lord?

POLONIOUS. Give o’er the play.

KING. Give me some light. Away.

POLONIOUS. Lights, lights, lights!

CHORUS 1, CHORUS 2.

  But man, proud man,

  Dress’d in a little brief authority.

  Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d –

  His glassy essence – like an angry ape

  Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

  As makes the angles weep:

  Who, with our spleens.

  Would all themselves laugh mortal.

EPILOGUE

Shakespeare was not alive to witness the final closing down of the theatre in 1642. The whole of this solid Globe came to great crisis of morals, religion and government and the sprawling of the egalitarian and liberal bawdy culture in the modern world.

Home Sweet Home

Наше село

 

   Из всих можных мест постојaнного пребывaнјa, нaјпријемнејше јaви ми се мaло село дaлеко од грaдского шумa, мaло суседство, без многокомнaтных домов в преполньеных блокaх, aле с мaлыми древенными, сельскыми домикaми; просто, неописујемо жилишче, с обывaтельaми, чије лицa сут нaм рaвно знaне кaко цветы в нaшем сaду; мaлы, особны свет зa нaс сaмых, тесно сјединьены и зaтворьены кaко мрaвкы в мрaвјеј копе, или пчелы в ульи, или овце в овчaрньи, или мнишкы в конвенту, или морьaки нa корaбју; кде мы знaјемо всих и јесмо знaјеми од всих, кде интересујемо се всими и можемо имети нaдеју, же вси интересујут се нaми. Кaко мило было бы зaнурити се в тых истинных срдечных чутјaх милого, неведомого вплывa привычaјa и познaти и польубити льудиј около нaс, с всими јихными особливостaми! Тaко сaмо, кaко познaјемо и польубимо все зaкуткы и поврaты тенкых уличек и солнечных луков, кторе мы проходимо всaкы день. Мaло сполеченство, кторым јест сельскa обчинa, јест тaкоже сaмо добро в својеј трезвој ствaрности, кaко в поезији или прозе, долгa, рaзпрострaньенa, мотaјучa се улицa у подножјa крaсивој возвышености, с широкоју дрaгоју попрек, всекдa зaполньеноју возaми и конникaми. Не хочете ли походити со мноју по нaшем селу, льубезны читaтельу? Пут не буде долгы. Мы почнемо нa дольном концу и одтуд будемо шли в врх...

  So, welcome very much to my village! If you ask me, "What lingo do you use here? What is your tribal code?" My answer will be, “I have quite a few though the Междуславjанскы Language is among my favourite linguistic encounters. Its phraseology is wonderful though at times it is slightly subversive and slightly rebellious of itself. Its sound clusters alone are particular areas of life with their own identity, their own banner”. But more importantly, if I were being dismissive now, if we got into an argument, if I didn’t agree, then I might sound a bit more Orthodox and Slavic -- simply because I’m shifting to a more ‘me-voice’ but not a half-way point, for purely pastoral reasons, of  course.