I’ve dedicated about a decade of my life to teaching and it has been about a year and a half since I’ve stepped inside a classroom. I’ve seen and heard some outrageous things(ask me out for tea and I might just spill) but I’m feeling some second hand embarrassment at the whole CCE lesson package with regards to the conflict or rather genocide in Ga$a. (If you’re not from SG, just google Singapore-CCE lesson). I can’t begin to imagine how difficult and uncomfortable it must have been to have to share such a blatantly bias version of facts in a classroom, let alone encourage and facilitate discussions on it. I know of many that politely declined the task of conducting that lesson. It’s giving a slice of 1984. Don’t you think?
It seems almost distasteful to be indulging in fun food experiments and thinking about clay forms when we are made privy to atrocities happening everyday. We are living our history textbooks. Events are made uncannily close yet distant. Mythical norms and definitions are being rocked and challenged. (As it should)
I’m currently setting up my mini studio slowly while pondering several questions. What is a saviour? Who is a terrorist? What is a genocide? Who gets to defend themselves? How do parents deal with scenes of someone else losing their child? Why are most of the posts on P@lestine coming from my Muslim friends? Why could we put up the Ukrainian flag but not the P@lestinian one?
My biggest fear is that we have been effectively siloed into rigid categories that we only feel or think that we should feel for people and situations within our prescribed categories. Care but not too much.
Conversations are so important. Keeping quiet in fear that you might say the wrong thing or god forbid influence change is mind numbingly agitating. I’m not entirely sure what I would have done in the classroom and how I would have handled that CCE package other than to ask them to read. Read and watch things from a variety of sources. At least 10 for the ones who always need a precise number. I’ve been counting the times I’ve wedged my clay balls to get them well incorporated with the new stains I just got my hands on, knowing well that it’s going to be different for each ball of clay.
It’s been a slow start to getting Paati’s mini studio up and running but expect some radical pairings because we weren’t just made for babies, BTOs & bootlicking.