.... among the leaves.
A sad complaint on a mobile on the train: "Hullo, Bruv", says the phoner, a young man in his early 20s, I think,"I'm going home. I can't learn nothing. I said to the teacher, 'you're not teaching me nothing'... They kept putting me on to the Internet... I can't work there. I can't work the Internet thing. They said 'calm down' so I'm going home to calm down." There is something deeply sad in any failure to help someone to learn who finds learning difficult, and who wants to learn. For a few minutes, I feel that I need to calm down too.
A neighbour returns from Menton on the border of France and Italy and brings us shiny black olives and some slightly squishy Gorgonzola, which though, it is nowhere near me at the moment, I can smell as I type.
4 comments:
Fascinating photo - the blackbird seems to be enjoying a kind of camouflage amongst the blacks and greys and burnt-out browns of the dead foliage.
Learning is always difficult, if it means anything.
A slow learner myself, I am, I suppose, particuarly touched by good teaching, where the teacher enters into the mind of the pupil and responds to the obstacles to understanding which are there. Quick and intelligent people are not always good teachers because it is more difficult for them to recognise the problems of those who may be slow to grasp abstractions and complexities.
Those who can, do. Those who can't teach. But often, those who can do, can't teach.
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