Did you ever sit up in the back row of the classroom, pretending to pay attention to the teacher? The technique was simple. You would gaze adoringly into her eyes, pen in hand, and every so often, as if inspired by great teaching, you would apparently write something down on the piece of paper on your desk.
But you weren't hearing a word, in fact you were writing notes to your friend next to you, who was putting on a similar performance. Notes about the blond girl two rows further forward, notes about a football match, notes about arrangements to meet on the weekend. In fact you were dealing with what you thought were the important matters in your life. Left free to do so by your masterful acting, while the teacher droned on about science or geography or history, some unimportant rubbish, always was.
I was reminded of these oh-so-far-away days when I watched George Bush and John Howard both giving press conferences about global warming recently. Young George and Little Johnny of course have long been as thick as thieves on this as well as Iraq. Johnny is the last person in the world (6.5 billion remember) who still looks up to George as a hero in the schoolyard. And the two of them, one with the worst total score on greenhouse gases, the other with the worst individual score, have been sitting up the back of the class for a long time. Ignoring the lessons and disrupting the work of the other children by letting off stink bombs, making the fire alarm ring, throwing spitballs or paper darts every time the class tried to get down to some serious work.
Very disruptive they are, the pair of them, giggling away, calling out 'Yo, Blair' to goody goody Tony, rubbing the shoulders of that new girl Angela when she was trying to finish her essay. So the teacher, Mr Gore, was pleased when he could see them sitting quietly at the back, gazing at him and apparently absorbing every word, every so often writing something down. At last he thought, something has sunk in, they are paying attention. 'Come on up to the front George and John', he called, 'come and read out your notes to the class, tell us what you think we should be doing to reduce greenhouse gases'. The whole class turned around, amazed that the two naughty boys were being called up to show their work.
But when they got there they were both silent. 'Come on' said Mr Gore 'Global Warming'. 'Global warming' they repeated in a whisper. 'Speak up boys' said Mr Gore, 'Global Warming is real'. 'Global Warming is real' they said, in chorus, but so softly that even the girls in the front row couldn't hear them. And then they refused to say another word. Finally Mr Gore took the pieces of paper from them. There were notes about football, and baseball, and something called 'cricket', which made no sense, and there was a rude limerick about Angela and an even ruder one about Tony, and there were pictures of jet fighters firing rockets, and of train crashes, and gas pipe lines exploding, and coal miners, and soldiers, and oil wells, and in the middle of the page they had each drawn a big mushroom cloud from an atomic explosion. As usual, one had copied the other's work, but you could never be sure which one had done the copying.
'Go back to your seats boys' said Mr Gore in disgust, 'and put your hands up when you are prepared to contribute to the class lesson.' But he knew they never would be, and even as he spoke he could see George nudging John to show him another mushroom cloud he had just drawn.
'Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten' (Skinner). Come and see what has survived of my education on The Watermelon Blog.