{"id":16133,"date":"2016-12-05T19:57:56","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T02:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=16133"},"modified":"2016-12-06T17:42:58","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T00:42:58","slug":"murkiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2016\/12\/05\/murkiness\/","title":{"rendered":"murkiness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

#1:\u00c2\u00a0 The author John Green is evidently the huge name in the “Young Adult novel” market.\u00c2\u00a0 I have heard any number of late teenagers on to 20 something years bad mouth the author as being disconnected from any high school life they know, sending\u00c2\u00a0 out a false message in propelling yet another variation of the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” here, treating issues of teenage depression wholly wrong-headedly there, and in general lobbing out too many trite cliches.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t really understand any animus, though.\u00c2\u00a0 I looked through a couple of his books and see that they look horribly uninteresting — so I’m not reading them.\u00c2\u00a0 Which I think would be enough to solve the problem.<\/p>\n

#2:\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder if there’s not a more compelling narrative they might’ve focused in on going on elsewhere in the background.\u00c2\u00a0 No, I really wouldn’t have wanted to spend time with the “lurking killer” here, who obviously needs to stay in the background in order retain the premise.\u00c2\u00a0 But maybe over on the side of our dueling protagonists there’s a Max Fischer, a Jughead Jones, a Buffy Summers … ?<\/p>\n

#3:\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t this a rip-off of Gus Van Sante’s Elephant movie?<\/p>\n

#4:\u00c2\u00a0 We see the warning signs of a school shooter being established.\u00c2\u00a0 They also happen to be — largely — warning signs for non-school shooters.\u00c2\u00a0 Such as the one where the lurking killer sticks his middle finger at the girl –\u00c2\u00a0 more a sign of sullenness than anything else.\u00c2\u00a0 From there, we do end up with maybe issues and concerns in their own rights that can more productively be addressed sans the worst case scenario presumption.\u00c2\u00a0 So I’m wondering if maybe,You can proceed accordingly with an alternate script.<\/p>\n

#5:\u00c2\u00a0 Take bullying, for example.\u00c2\u00a0 This does not strike me as a matter most productively addressed with the “lurking killer” angle, being the universal experience of bullying, as opposed to the mass shooting which is statistically submerged by other matters (suicide, for instance — to their credit an issue dropped in in the organization’s press releases on this ad), hence quite a burden to drop onto the bullied kid, and in fact not really an issue with quite a few of the mass shooting incidents.\u00c2\u00a0 If I recall right, not Sandy Hook.\u00c2\u00a0 (At the very least he wasn’t killing from any a group of kids he was aware of.)<\/p>\n

#6:\u00c2\u00a0 Okay.\u00c2\u00a0 The one where he has the text message where he’s pointing a gun forward with the words “See You At School” — that’s a little clearer and cleaner.\u00c2\u00a0 We can proceed with that one.<\/p>\n

#7:\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know what the ad is advocating, and to whom.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes.\u00c2\u00a0 Teachers and administrators should build and keep connections with all their students.\u00c2\u00a0 And –?<\/p>\n

#8:\u00c2\u00a0 If there’s something they want us to do about guns, could they please spell it out?\u00c2\u00a0 Lest the NRA chime in by saying the lesson is that Evan should be packing to take care of this situation, and also win the girl.<\/p>\n

#9:\u00c2\u00a0 I remember I once leafed through and read some of a teacher’s classroom planning book from my mom.\u00c2\u00a0 The book was out of my mom’s teaching range — jumping from elementary school to middle school, but for whatever reason… It addressed various concerns of behaviors of middle schoolers as the hurdle through adolescence.\u00c2\u00a0 A case study which struck me:\u00c2\u00a0 this kid was not associating much with the kids in the class, and he was of the type who wore a lot of heavy metal t-shirts.\u00c2\u00a0 The solution proffered struck me as circular — answering the problem by restating the problem — to get the kid to relate and associate more with his classmates, you get him to relate and associate more with his classmates.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think it gave a clear answer on the problem of him wearing Heavy Metal t-shirts — the shortest answer would be to buy him a bunch of shirts the other boys in class would wear (Popular sports teams?), but I don’t think that would work.\u00c2\u00a0 It did seem to imply that should the other problem be solved, the heavy metal t-shirt one would end up solved as well.<\/p>\n

#10:\u00c2\u00a0 I remember once, 8th grade, a kid was pulled aside by the science teacher — who, in a very sincere and concerned manner asked him to please write out these song lyrics a bunch of times.\u00c2\u00a0 It was from Mariah Carey’s “Heroes”, and concerned finding that hero that lies in you.\u00c2\u00a0 The student dutifully did as he was told, and I scratched my head alongside him in murmuring our “what — ?” for one more reason we’re waiting out the year to be done with this teacher.<\/p>\n

They mean well.\u00c2\u00a0 Might do some good.\u00c2\u00a0 Just… a sense of claustrophobia may sneak in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hm. #1:\u00c2\u00a0 The author John Green is evidently the huge name in the “Young Adult novel” market.\u00c2\u00a0 I have heard any number of late teenagers on to 20 something years bad mouth the author as being disconnected from any high school life they know, sending\u00c2\u00a0 out a false message in propelling yet another variation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16133"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16141,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16133\/revisions\/16141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}