The Knight is a Lady
The Feast Day of Joan of Arc is coming up soon, so in her honour, I made this week's saint Joan. Also Joan kicks ass.
If anyone is in any doubt of how lucky we are to live in the times we live in, then please read about what 14th century France was like. Mostly an abysmal mess of families fighting it out and sleeping with each other. Kidnappings of royal children, affairs, insanity - and that was just the monarchy. It sounds exactly like the Game of Thrones actually. Then there were the English who adopted a scorched earth policy on everything which opposed them. Joan's village was burned twice. They were also trialing witches constantly. It must have been great to be a woman.
A typical day at school, such as this one consisted of doing some maths, listening to some stories, drawing, baking cupcakes for selling to raise funds for seeds for a little nursery school in a reforestation project in Kenya, playing the recorder and reading. I've added in reading because the children really WANT to read. It's not like it is work at all. I am not teaching them, they are dying to read and so i am reading from the Griffin Pirate series with them for about fifteen minutes - as a break.
As i sat on the steps, after we had run the seven times tables in the pattern of the number stars, i just thought, this is pretty amazing.
So the reason why Joan looks unfinished is because she is. Over the next few days she will take on more and more of a form. This is to show the children that we need to work at things until they are done. Sometimes it is important for them to see that things take time... like the recorder playing. Most of them are now able to play the lower register of the pentatonic scale. I love sitting with them and they see, yes, we are actually getting better everyday.
I love Joan. I did not know though she was killed when she was 19. I can't quite understand what kind of society was it that they would have allowed the institutionalised murder of a 19 year old girl who actually was on their side? How did they feel when they watched her suffer through the trial, knowing she was innocent, that this was all politically motivated and then see her burn at the stake. Often with saints as well, they will say to them, look just say that you were wrong and you get off the hook. But will the martyr they are wrong? No, they will say, this is not right, you are all horrible horrible people and you need to realise that what you have done is a big mistake. Also i have God on my side. I have no idea who is on your side. This is not a good recipe for getting out of a killing.
Perhaps, i think, it is because i was brought up in a Catholic school that i am such a mouthy bitch you know. All those female saints just set such a poor example to the simpering consenting image of a woman. Often they say that convent girls are loud-mouthed bossy women - perhaps that is what those female saints were like.
Imagine the poor fathers and mothers going really, do you really think that Archangel Michael is talking to you and that you are going to lead the armies of France into battle with the English? Really? Is that a good idea? Imagine the health and safety implications. Or, why don't you get married? Is that really so bad? He is the King of the Roman Empire after all. It can't get better than that no? Do you know they are going to attach you to a wheel and roll you down a hill as they set the wheel on fire if you refuse?
I suppose what i received from my own knowledge of the saints is that if you believe in something then you need to follow it. That living a lie, living an untruth is simply put, not worth it. Because in the end, if you lived the lie the question will always be what if? What if i was braver is often the question i think. What if i was just able to be myself? And then perhaps by the time you have finished living the lie, the question will be Who am i? What did i stand for? What did this life mean?
Right now, in the mid-forties, there are many things which seem to be returning. Sort of leitmotifs. There seems to be a surge of criticism about policies which the government in Singapore has had which really, come as no surprise to many of us who have long been critical of them. This mostly revolved around the poor redistribution of income - or, if you like, the lack of social mobility. It does not take a genius to work out at meritocracy is a myth. Or at least meritocracy in Singapore is a myth. It was true twenty years ago and it is much worse now. That the education system is bust. It is not worth the paper it is written on if you raise a class of entitled, inexperienced, arrogant academics to become your chief administrators. It simply does not work especially if the main motivator seems to be a very high income. The kind of people which you will attract will, by and large, tend to be self-serving individuals - which may be ok in a business but really not ok in the government. As a civil servant your task is to serve the people - to make their lives better. Not make the lives of people already milking them for all they are worth better.
Of course i said all of this to various people are different times who did think i was nothing more than a mouthy bitch. My worry though all this time was simply this: the kind of system which Singapore had then and which it has now is just not sustainable. It cannot continue. The thing now though is this, it has travelled so far down that road that really there isn't any way back. That is the worry now. Maybe it had some hope back then, but now... i think it has passed the point of no return. It will probably go into some kind of meltdown before things are able to become sustainable, if it is able to return to that... i know it is crazy talk.
Perhaps that's why i love Joan. She just does the crazy talk too....
If anyone is in any doubt of how lucky we are to live in the times we live in, then please read about what 14th century France was like. Mostly an abysmal mess of families fighting it out and sleeping with each other. Kidnappings of royal children, affairs, insanity - and that was just the monarchy. It sounds exactly like the Game of Thrones actually. Then there were the English who adopted a scorched earth policy on everything which opposed them. Joan's village was burned twice. They were also trialing witches constantly. It must have been great to be a woman.
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| Joan and place value |
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| More place value |
As i sat on the steps, after we had run the seven times tables in the pattern of the number stars, i just thought, this is pretty amazing.
So the reason why Joan looks unfinished is because she is. Over the next few days she will take on more and more of a form. This is to show the children that we need to work at things until they are done. Sometimes it is important for them to see that things take time... like the recorder playing. Most of them are now able to play the lower register of the pentatonic scale. I love sitting with them and they see, yes, we are actually getting better everyday.
I love Joan. I did not know though she was killed when she was 19. I can't quite understand what kind of society was it that they would have allowed the institutionalised murder of a 19 year old girl who actually was on their side? How did they feel when they watched her suffer through the trial, knowing she was innocent, that this was all politically motivated and then see her burn at the stake. Often with saints as well, they will say to them, look just say that you were wrong and you get off the hook. But will the martyr they are wrong? No, they will say, this is not right, you are all horrible horrible people and you need to realise that what you have done is a big mistake. Also i have God on my side. I have no idea who is on your side. This is not a good recipe for getting out of a killing.
Perhaps, i think, it is because i was brought up in a Catholic school that i am such a mouthy bitch you know. All those female saints just set such a poor example to the simpering consenting image of a woman. Often they say that convent girls are loud-mouthed bossy women - perhaps that is what those female saints were like.
Imagine the poor fathers and mothers going really, do you really think that Archangel Michael is talking to you and that you are going to lead the armies of France into battle with the English? Really? Is that a good idea? Imagine the health and safety implications. Or, why don't you get married? Is that really so bad? He is the King of the Roman Empire after all. It can't get better than that no? Do you know they are going to attach you to a wheel and roll you down a hill as they set the wheel on fire if you refuse?
I suppose what i received from my own knowledge of the saints is that if you believe in something then you need to follow it. That living a lie, living an untruth is simply put, not worth it. Because in the end, if you lived the lie the question will always be what if? What if i was braver is often the question i think. What if i was just able to be myself? And then perhaps by the time you have finished living the lie, the question will be Who am i? What did i stand for? What did this life mean?
Right now, in the mid-forties, there are many things which seem to be returning. Sort of leitmotifs. There seems to be a surge of criticism about policies which the government in Singapore has had which really, come as no surprise to many of us who have long been critical of them. This mostly revolved around the poor redistribution of income - or, if you like, the lack of social mobility. It does not take a genius to work out at meritocracy is a myth. Or at least meritocracy in Singapore is a myth. It was true twenty years ago and it is much worse now. That the education system is bust. It is not worth the paper it is written on if you raise a class of entitled, inexperienced, arrogant academics to become your chief administrators. It simply does not work especially if the main motivator seems to be a very high income. The kind of people which you will attract will, by and large, tend to be self-serving individuals - which may be ok in a business but really not ok in the government. As a civil servant your task is to serve the people - to make their lives better. Not make the lives of people already milking them for all they are worth better.
Of course i said all of this to various people are different times who did think i was nothing more than a mouthy bitch. My worry though all this time was simply this: the kind of system which Singapore had then and which it has now is just not sustainable. It cannot continue. The thing now though is this, it has travelled so far down that road that really there isn't any way back. That is the worry now. Maybe it had some hope back then, but now... i think it has passed the point of no return. It will probably go into some kind of meltdown before things are able to become sustainable, if it is able to return to that... i know it is crazy talk.
Perhaps that's why i love Joan. She just does the crazy talk too....
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