School is very demanding these days.
Generosity is something we learn, from our parents, schools and community.
What's always got me is the fact that when people talked on the telly about Iraq, before Afghanistan kicked off, you'd get only these public-school-type army officers talking about what was going on out there. I kept thinking, 'Why don't we get the true voice of the squaddie? Why don't we hear from the lads on the battlefield?'
The words of musicals were the moral codes that I lived by. I found meaning and messages in musicals that I didn't find in churches or school books and it really made me come alive in a way.
A New York friend said that visiting the South reminded her of nothing more than being in high school again.
I'd never even seen orange cheese. I mean, who decided to make that orange? And so there was something different about me that they wanted to crush. I don't think it had anything to do with my physicality, but every single day in school it was, "You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
Since I didn't grow up going to school dances, etc., I didn't have the normal . . . I grew up in a very different way so a lot of the childish concerns or teenage concerns weren't my concerns. My concerns were survival.
When I was 18 years old, I went on the road with my dad after I graduated from high school. And we were riding on the tour bus one day, kind of rolling through the South, and he mentioned a song. We started talking about songs, and he mentioned one, and I said I don't know that one. And he mentioned another. I said I don't know that one either, Dad, and he became very alarmed that I didn't know what he considered my own musical genealogy.
See, at a certain point it becomes cool to be boy crazy. That happens in sixth grade, and it gives you so much social status, particularly in an all-girls school, if you can go up and talk to boys.
There are complaints that it's hard to remember what you can say and what you can't, which words are 'in' for certain groups and which words are not. And yet we started out learning that the 'kitty' on the sidewalk was actually a squirrel, we learned to differentiate between fire trucks and school buses, and many people today know the difference between linguini, fettucini, and rotini. The same people who say they can't remember the 'right' terms in referring to people are often whizzes at remembering which professional sports teams have moved where and are now called what.
Absolute freedom doesn't exist and never did. Just as we don't spit on the floor at work, swear at customers, or send out letters full of misspellings, so too we might have to 'watch our language.' It is odd that the request for unbiased language in schools and workplaces is considered intolerable when other limits on our freedom to do whatever we want are not.
Because I lived so close to the school and walked there every day, I used to enjoy the school bus trips.
In all honesty, I never actually did anything wrong (in my eyes, at least) at school or misbehaved in any big way. If it was anything, it was probably just a lot of clowning around.
It may come as a surprise but I also really started to get into history while I was at school. I found the projects about World War Two fascinating - perhaps when I get the time again, I could pick up where I left off.
By the time I was about ten, I had started to lose faith with church ways. I was educated in some ways by my high school government and history teachers.
I would like to dissolve the $10 billion national Department of Education created by President Carter and turn schools back to the local school districts, where we built the greatest public school system the world has ever seen. I think I can make a case that the decline in the quality of public education began when federal aid became federal interference.
I've done millions of mediocre movies. I've done way more than my fair share. You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school.
Close Dept. of Education, but don't dismantle public schools.
I think I was quite lucky in that I went to an all-girls school. I was never put in an environment where I had to be the other - the woman as opposed to the man - all the way through my education. I was never made to feel that way at home.
The more you travel, the better you get at it. It sounds silly, but with experience you learn how to pack the right way. I remember one of my first trips abroad, travelling around Europe by rail, fresh out of high school. I brought all these books with me and a paint set. I really had too much stuff, so I've learnt to be more economical.
Rarely do outside of school remedies work their way into the fabric of the schools or into the teachers lives, and more rarely into the classrooms. Therefore they only offer a modest hope of influencing the basic culture of the school
I met my wife when we were both 19 or 20, at a music school where she was taking voice and piano lessons and I was doing classes in music theory and composition.
I walked among Shadows, and found a race of furry creatures, dark and clawed and fanged, reasonably manlike, and about as intelligent as a freshman in the high school of your choice-sorry, kids, but what I mean is they were loyal, devoted, honest, and too easily screwed by bastards like me and my brother. I felt like the dee-jay of your choice.
American missionaries have free rein in Uganda. They can go anywhere they please - schools, hospitals, parliament.
It's like the high school production of something you saw at Steppenwolf, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the John Malkovich and Joan Allen roles.
