Yesterday we saw Detachment, starring Adrien Brody, at the International Film Festival. Brody plays a substitute teacher in a school full of aggressive, foul-mouthed, ignorant students (except for the sensitive one who commits suicide) and burned-out teachers. I forgot to bring tissues.
Look at this face. Isn't he perfect for the part of a detached substitute teacher? Or front man for an emo group? I love the way his nose kind of tilts to the left:
Later, Skyping with my sister, we discussed how different this picture of school is from the schooldays we remember. Back then the teachers were in charge, for better or worse. My sister got spanked with the "board of education" in front of her class in third grade. I had a male teacher in junior high who would drag girls by the hair from their seats to the classroom door for talking in class. No marks resulted from this treatment, so the teacher was able to get away with it. The math teacher went off the deep end and threw a kid in the trash can in front of a room full of students. He, at least, was fired.
Pete, my brother-in-law, went to St. Cassian's in NJ. His classmate, Howard Cavallero, had his head banged into the chalkboard numerous times by a nun for not doing his homework. When Sister Mary Kevin, a/k/a Sister Tank, threatened to beat up Tim White, he called her a brute and walked out of the room and the school, headed for home. His parents went to the diocese and that was the end of beatings at St. Cassian's.
We finally got our new, mostly transparent, shade-providing, rain-defeating roofs (see top of photo). That's the contractor in the middle distance. Next he's going to replace our skylights:
Pete, my brother-in-law, went to St. Cassian's in NJ. His classmate, Howard Cavallero, had his head banged into the chalkboard numerous times by a nun for not doing his homework. When Sister Mary Kevin, a/k/a Sister Tank, threatened to beat up Tim White, he called her a brute and walked out of the room and the school, headed for home. His parents went to the diocese and that was the end of beatings at St. Cassian's.
We finally got our new, mostly transparent, shade-providing, rain-defeating roofs (see top of photo). That's the contractor in the middle distance. Next he's going to replace our skylights:
Speaking of my sister, she knows a jasmine from a jasminoid, so the following photos are close-ups so she can tell me what we have:
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