The Nice Age
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While helping my son with his homework I was shocked to discover that when it comes to maths, most of what I learned at school appears to have evaporated. My husband tells me that the human brain must dump old information in order to make room for the new, in the same way that I periodically purge my phone of cat photos, taken by my daughter. Still, I was once a conscientious, swatty student, and it’s depressing to realise that most of what I worked so hard to learn has been completely forgotten.
Of course there are some things that have stuck with me. Being warned by the school librarian that books don’t always tell the truth, for example. That comment sparked a lifetime of healthy scepticism for which I am eternally grateful. My biology teacher, a nun, telling our class that touching ourselves in the shower was sinful. Up until then I’d never thought of touching myself in the shower, but once she’d put the idea in my head I never looked back.
Illustration for Monica Dux column, Spectrum, February 2, 2019.Credit:Robin Cowcher
Then there was my Year 7 English teacher, who was so appalled by the word “got” she attempted to banish it from our vocabularies. And if “got” was bad, “nice” was even worse. A bland, limp, uninteresting word, she said, the use of which was a sure sign we had nothing, well, nicer, to say.
And she did have a point. After all, who wants to be called nice? At best it suggests an insipid pleasantness; at worst it’s a thinly veiled insult. We ask our kids to “play nicely”, as a weak sort of compromise, when we know that mayhem is inevitable, but will be satisfied if they simply refrain from stabbing each other. And women are expected to be nice all the time, which is sexist and exhausting.
Article source: https://www.watoday.com.au/sport/racing/race-by-race-tips-and-preview-for-tamworth-on-monday-20181028-p50ch8.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
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