A five year old told me that same week: “teeeacher, if you want to kill a cockroach you need to cut it into six pieces with scissors, and then flush it down the toilet” … One of my most fruitless battles and personal gripes in Taipei has been the intense DETACHMENT FROM NATURE. In all fairness to Taipei’s city slickers, not even pigeons want to live here, so I guess it’s pretty hard to be ‘attached’.
The most reactionary I ever came to this nuance of Taipei culture was during a grade four class in which we read a poignant Amerindian selection: In Charge of Celebrations. The protagonist of this extended poem was a solitary dreamer who spent her days lost in the wild beauty of the Arizona desert, fashioning festivities. There was Dust-Devil Day to twirl and whirl in dust storms, Green Cloud Day, Coyote Day, Triple Rainbow Day, and The Time of Falling Stars. Of course I should have been clued in enough know that on no tenet could they relate to this story; especially when their text responses were along the lines of: “What?? Living alone with no TV?? Sooooooo boring.”
Still, I persisted, and instructed each child to write a composition creating their own ‘celebration of nature’. Every single composition involved destruction, killing, or shopping. The first handed in was the ‘fear of nature story’ – in which entire forests were burnt down by raging lightning. Henceforth, we have Lightning Day – a day for extended prayers that no lightning will ever strike Earth again.
The highlight came though in a story about visiting an aviary of brightly-feathered birds - each bird was intricately described, and I felt hope. The story then moved to a point outside the aviary where a wayward bird stole the favourite pen of the student, and dropped it into a lake. The bird was promptly stoned by the child. So we now have Bird Day – a day to kill birds, because as the student concluded: “I hate birds soooo much!”
I was then given: Buy a Cactus Day and Squirrel Killing Day. On this day at school, I seriously lost it!
*
The most reactionary I ever came to this nuance of Taipei culture was during a grade four class in which we read a poignant Amerindian selection: In Charge of Celebrations. The protagonist of this extended poem was a solitary dreamer who spent her days lost in the wild beauty of the Arizona desert, fashioning festivities. There was Dust-Devil Day to twirl and whirl in dust storms, Green Cloud Day, Coyote Day, Triple Rainbow Day, and The Time of Falling Stars. Of course I should have been clued in enough know that on no tenet could they relate to this story; especially when their text responses were along the lines of: “What?? Living alone with no TV?? Sooooooo boring.”
Still, I persisted, and instructed each child to write a composition creating their own ‘celebration of nature’. Every single composition involved destruction, killing, or shopping. The first handed in was the ‘fear of nature story’ – in which entire forests were burnt down by raging lightning. Henceforth, we have Lightning Day – a day for extended prayers that no lightning will ever strike Earth again.
The highlight came though in a story about visiting an aviary of brightly-feathered birds - each bird was intricately described, and I felt hope. The story then moved to a point outside the aviary where a wayward bird stole the favourite pen of the student, and dropped it into a lake. The bird was promptly stoned by the child. So we now have Bird Day – a day to kill birds, because as the student concluded: “I hate birds soooo much!”
I was then given: Buy a Cactus Day and Squirrel Killing Day. On this day at school, I seriously lost it!
*
