Holiday Heroes And Animal Insecurities.

I have just returned from an interesting discussion with my favourite class of students. This particular band of smiling little scallywags actually seem to enjoy being in class and work incredibly hard.

The more they work, the less guidance they need, which means the less I have to work. It seems to be a fair trade off; afterall there is surely a finite amount of effort that can exist in a place of learning at any one time, and therefore if the limit is reached by dedicated children then who am I to risk upsetting scientific laws by also working hard?

Today I taught them about Christopher Columbus and we debated whether he was a great man or a slave driving, Christian fundamentalist with the navigational skills of a blind man whose guide dog was replaced with a mole.

They decided he was great and that without him there would be no President Obama. Whatever kids. Anyway, the final presentation involved them inventing a new national holiday based on famous people from either the past or present and explaining why.

I gave them a quick introduction to the idea and then asked them to give me some names of famous people who changed history. It rapidly became apparent that Christopher Columbus' transgressions were never going to shock my hardened band of pupils into denouncing his right to hero status. Oh no, because the first two names suggested for a national holiday packed a little more punch than our sea faring Italian chum.

The most vocal student in class, a girl named Sollia, spoke first...

Sollia: "Genghis Khan"

Me: "Genghis Khan?"

Sollia: "Yes Mongolian teacher"

Yes I know where he is from you patronising little squirt, I was just questioning whether a man who butchered millions and spent his life pillaging and enslaving really needed a national holiday.

Me: "Well he did change the world, but he killed a lot of people too"

Sollia: "I read he didn't kill many people"

Since when has not killing many people been so worthy of praise?

Me: "Well he did. He killed millions and sometimes had entire cities destroyed"

The class laughed. A hearty laugh. The sort of laugh one might have as they razed a city to the ground and watched its people run screaming from the flaming ruins.

I shook my head and thought to myself "Sure and while we're at it, why not have a Hitler day?"

At which point a boy called Neo piped up "Maybe Hitler teacher".

Great.

I have now got Genghis Khan and Hitler written on the board. This lesson is being filmed on CCTV and will be watched by my head instructors. I realise these two guys were a little misunderstood but I just can't promote national genocide day.

Me: "Guys, look I know these people were famous and changed a lot, but this is for a holiday where you all celebrate them, so they need to be good people okay."

It worked. And I ended up hearing about a Korean ice skater and Manchester United player Park Ji Sung. These two heroes of Korean culture may never know that they were second choice to good old Genghis and affable Adolf.

If they ever knew I'd imagine they might be mildly traumatised but not as traumatised as some animals apparently feel. That seamless link brings us smoothly to another class presentation from the same group a couple of weeks back where their projects were based on the concept of Dr Doolittle.

Each group had to choose animals that may have issues of suffering and then imagine that they could relate them to Dr Doolittle.
I was not expecting the list of insecurities that appeared. Animals I had previously believed operated on instinct alone are actually quite self concious and often depressed.

What daily worries do you think affect the life of a worm? Being eaten by a bird? Wrong. Being sliced in half by the spade of an enthusiastic gardener? Wrong again. No, a worms main concern is that due to having no legs and thus no feet it can never purchase shoes.

Without wishing to stereotype too heavily, this point of trauma was unsurprisingly raised by the girls. Oh the woes of being a worm and not being able to go shoe shopping.

I tried in vain to steer the discussion towards more advanced forms of life, the chimpanze, the dolphin, even a dog. Nobody seemed interested. Well come on, at least give me a vertebrate form of life.

Mike: "An ant teacher, many problems"

Of course an ant.

Me: "Fine an ant, and why would an ant be upset?"

Jenny: "Because he cannot sing"

So the inability to engage in karaoke was the major stress in the life of an ant. I wanted to know if this was a problem specific to ants in the kingdom of insects. Perhaps my ears are not what they were and wasps, beetles and flies have all mastered the art of song in the past few years. Whistling moths, cockroaches humming to their I-Pods and the poor, forlorn ant sat atop of his ant hill tone deaf and unable to hold a note.

It puts my own problems firmly into perspective. Why, I bought some shoes only a couple of months back and I do believe I was singing to myself in my monotone drone only last week whilst having a shower.

Life is good afterall.