So, I've been reading more scientific articles online, for fear that Trumpfuck might take down all the educational sites in the whole of the internet before we can say "Make America Hate Again"....two things: 1) LSD stays in your serotonin receptors for 12-18 hours even though it is only recognisable in your blood for up to one hour after taking it! Mental. It gets stuck on the side of each receptor, basically lingering in there for hours like a 1990s Cranberries pop single! I mean, I didn't read this because I'm thinking about doing it...I'm Velcro-ed into the basic bitch constructs of this meagre dimension, and I'm way too fucking scared of that shit. Waaaay too scared. The other article the boy showed me was 2) Scientists have figured out how to transform hydrogen into metal. No. Fucking. Way. This could save the fucking planet, people. It could also devastate the steel industry. But overall, what a good day yesterday was for science, right?!
Hence my light-bulb moment of the day....
Whilst driving this morning in the cold, frosty morning fog...I thought: let's use the internet to educate not to numb the brains of future generations!! Just like I use it for!....You're all sat there going, "Derrrr, that's what I said, like, 5 years ago." And of course, that is absolutely the answer....but how do we do it with all the shite out there?? Ya know, sexual predators named Heather who are really 63 year old perverts called Frank, adverts for black magic pore masks (which I'm totally going to buy!), vloggers and tweeting fucktards like the Kardasians....How do we bypass the crap?! But the even bigger snag is, ok...let's say we do use the internet/technology to educate, which a lot of great practitioners already do....how do we get young people to "buy in"? How can I, a corn-fed, middle class, white chick from Nebraska, get masses of British-born, multi-cultural teenagers from all over the world to want to use the internet to promote good, to promote intellectual growth? How can I make them understand that using the internet to educate yourself on worldly issues is useful for their lives? How do I make them see that reading an article on LSD may one day help them integrate better into a social situation or make them sound really smart whilst they're blogging? Maybe I tell them it could help you get really good a pub quizzes, because that's probably the only form of mental stimulation most of them will have in their unpersuadable, BREXIT lives. I haven't a clue.....But, we know what we need to do....it's just never going to work unless this generation of young people see a need for it and "buy in".
So, what I'm really facing at school is this: children obsessed with their phones, the internet, gaming, and celebrities, living their lives "always on" and through an app...And when I'm challenging their behaviour (usually for disobeying the simplest of rules: put your phone away), they are seeing it as an attack on their lives. Because it's all they know. They are taking it personally. You'd think that I trapped their pet hamster in an Asda bag and suffocated it to death! This is then having a spiral down effect and they are losing the ability to be respectful....And never-mind being respectful, they struggle to be in most social situations and have conversations with people not of the same age as them! The relationships I'm trying to form with these young people do not stick. We have some good days, but mostly really bad days. Tables being flipped over, screaming, kicking in doors, and lots and lots of "fuck you" s being tossed around. Our relationships have life spans much like their attention spans.
There's loads of research out there about measuring the closeness of relationships, the different realms or levels of friendships people have in this day and age, as well as work done to categorise the types of internet users. Perhaps it's within research like this I can find my answers--Cos I know it ain't at the workplace!! Everyone keeps saying to me at work, "Oh, it [the children's behaviour] doesn't even faze me anymore" or I'm hearing this, "Like water off a duck's back" and "If you can't beat them, join them." I feel that statements like these make the teachers part of the problem; allowing young people to suck at holding real life conversations, not making them face consequences for misbehaving, and it's this complacency that's making me want to quit being a teacher...
I'm off to use the internet to make myself understand what the fuck is going on with this generation.
Happy Friday, bitches.
**Jesus Christ on a bike! I just tried to get a pic of water off a duck's back, thinking I'd get only pics of a duck....NOPE, just found out that a drag queen has tagged that as her bloody motto, hasn't she!! She's everywhere. The internet is fucking insane.
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