Substance just can't catch a break

A deeply entrenched bureaucrat dragged me down to court this morning, so I was listening to NPR on the radio there and back. On the way there, I heard a very interesting discussion about the fact that after thousands of studies, there is no empirical support for the concept of homework benefiting students. It was facinating to hear the author support his thesis against a PTA president who espoused the virtue of homework. I've never been a fan of busy work and I certainly never got anything out of homework, but the PTA president steadfastly argued that since more homework would be required at the next level (middle school), the elementary school should assign more to prepare the students. The author said how can that be a justification: Do more of a meaningless thing younger to reinforce doing more meaningless things later. I know that he didn't even make a dent in that PTA president' pysche. Getting rid of homework (busy work) doesn't stand a chance in hell.

On the way back from court I heard a story about a female educator in Afganistan who was killed. The news commentator talked about how educating women was outlawed under the taliban and there was an in depth report exploring how strong the taliban was once again becoming in Afganistan. Then the commentator interviewed their reporter in Afganistan about the woman who had been killed, asking if it was part of the taliban effort to keep women from acquiring an education. The reporter in Afganistan said, no body liked this woman--her idea of educating women was to run a sewing shop in neighborhoods that had no need of tailors. She (the woman educator who was killed) was wildly prejudice against the people in the neighborhood she served. It is more likely that if she was killed by the taliban, it was because her title had to do with female education. Martyr or not, that is the question. I'm guessing we have to go with form here, because the greater issue is just too important. But this gal as a martyr, yuck.

Form over substance was exactly what that bureaurocrat wanted at court too. He's rejected my papers three times and each time was for a more outlandish excuse. I really wanted to scream. But I did it over. I hand delivered the documents and offered to wait for him to complete the paperwork (and to be there to answer the next outlandish thing he could possibly come up with), but he declined and I felt it prudent to pretend to trust him and show emense gratitude that he'd brought all the previous problems (ridiculous and extreme nitpicking) to my attention.

I've been thinking about Vonnegut lately--he has a story about the purpose of someone's life is to be at precisely the right place at the right time for something to occur just right (All form, no substance). Afterwards, nothing that person does matters, because their purpose has been acheived, but up to that point there are a miriad of small events that must happen just so they'll be at the right place at the right time. Was I meant to bump into my bureaurcrat so that I would hear those particular stories on the radio and internalize these thoughts and regurgitate them out in this blog....