Predictably, Senioritus has fallen

It is ever so predictably time for senioritus to run rampant throughout the colleges and high schools of America. This plague of apathy has by no means passed over Thomas Aquinas College- no! rather it has struck the seniors with unparalleled force.

Tutor: “So who wants to demonstrate this fun Lobachevsky prop?”

Class: bleak silence.

Tutor: “So who even read this prop?”

Class: more silence.

Student: “I forgot how to read.”

Today someone suggested that they just let all the seniors stop pretending to pay attention in class- but then we would just stop paying attention earlier…

I would, however, propose as a remedy- that we substitute all the curriculum books with children’s books and continue to discuss them seminar style.

Which would look something like this:

Tutor: Who fell into the well?

Student1:  Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo

Student2: I believe this story indicates a limit to the way in which personal names can be used effectively. If you choose to signify your children by incredibly long names they will have trouble getting help in a timely manner – and also have a terrible time learning to write their name in kindergarten.  

Tutor: “What do you think of Madeline as a character? What are her personal struggles and virtues?”

Student1: “I think that Madeline represents, and could even be said to embody courage- which we can see in the text where it says, ‘to the tiger in the zoo, Madeline said Poo-poo’. Which is very courageous especially seeing as, it looks, from the illustration…uh, like the tiger could pretty much walk out of the cage if he felt like it.”

Student 2: (which in this case is going to be me): And this corresponds with a common experience of red headed people, you know…that they are courageous. For example over Spring Break, which I like to call: “Netflix and Netflix Alone Time”, my red-headed friend said something brave like “you should put down your laptop and step outside.”

[This is very close to a real life situation and in fact a friend of mine succeeded in getting me to leave the house and go to the Norton Simon- to which I said something like: “I hate….going.”]

 Student 2: That personal digression was intended to show that Bemelmans is really pointing out a universal truth about the courage –or even rashness- of redheads.

Student 3: Buuut she does have a sort of rebellious attitude, and one might say that it is not virtuous.

Student 2: Well if you had to do everything in two straight lines, and speak in a set metrical pattern- you might get kind of rebellious too.

Tutor: “Lastly I wanted to ask two questions about the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar,

First, how long did it take him to chew a very precise circle in a lollipop?

And second, why do these illustrations made out of cut up paper look so tasty?”

All this reminds me of this random thing that I painted on a T-Shirt once:

Which is the Hungry Hungry caterpillar eating a hole through Madeline.