At the age of seventy, I have discovered something new and wonderful -- iPods ! As a high school teacher, I spend a lot of time getting students to put away their Ipods in class and to pay attention to their school work. The school I teach in being a ghetto school (sorry not to be politically correct about this, but I am calling it what it is), the students listen to an immense amount of rap crap.Would I feel the same way about them listening to lectures from Stanford or MIT professors, or symphonies ? In some cases yes, in some cases no. The yes cases would be when I were dealing with students with low grades who didn't want to learn anything anyway. I would insist on them paying attention to the material we were supposed to be studying,. so they could pass their exams and graduate. The students I would be tempted to allow to listen to anything they wanted would be the students on the honor roll.
Lucky I am not really put in this sort of situation -- since I am a substitute teacher I don't know most of the time how proficient any given student is academically. With the discriminatory system I have outline above, I would be endlessly accused of unfairness and inconsistency.
As I have been writing this, I have been listening to Mahler's 6th Symphony. Long live the iPod !
[About the photo: This is one of our dogs, "Peeps" for short but actually "Pee-Pee." You can guess why the name "Pee-Pee." At some point in this blog I shall write about mdogs. For now it is enough to say that Peeps is loving, intelligent, fiercely loyal, sleek (you should feel the sleekness of his fur), and affectionate. He is a rescue dog who was considered unadoptable because he is a "fear biter." He is slowly getting over that. Incidentally, on a cold winter's night (yes, we have chilly nights in wintertime here in California) it is great to have his hot little body snuggle up to one in bed.]
