A Life Of Law: The Power Of Parents

The More time I spend with these people, the more overly influenced I think they are by their parents. I think for all human beings to develop to their fullest capacity, the souls of all folk have to be allowed a certain level of freedom to roar and explore.

The irony of the particularities of what I've been watching of the last few weeks and months (namely over bearing parenthood) is that it is meant to help the "child" become successful in life by focusing them completely on what is meant to be important. But even this is almost irrelevant because what is meant to be important is entirely from the perspective of the parent and not the "child".

I use the word "child" mockingly in the above paragraph, because the human beings in question are actually over the age of 18. They are men. Men in numeric terms, but remain mere toddlers in terms of thought process, ideals, lifestyle and soul. They remain unable to think for themselves with regard to anything important or culturally significant, and for all their lives have been unable to make life changing decisions on their own.

They have gone to university, but lived at home -- with their parents. They live by the strict rules their Mums and Dads set down. What is in some ways more worrying is that they are not able to viably question any of the boundaries they live within, but shirk and tremble when they get too close to the edge.

I am of the strong opinion that a certain amount of rebellion, pointed in the right direction and with the right force, can make an adolescent a stronger and more rounded individual. The alternative to this is living forever by unquestioned rules, never wondering what "different" may actually mean.

The setting for such a baffling childhood is the great English countryside. Rolling green hills surround what would be a quiet little village, if this place was not without shops and community areas. Indeed, what it actually is, is close to a large housing estate, but without the inner-city trouble.Imagine your typical 2.4 children nucleus of a family. Now imagine it with Mondeo man. Now imagine it with Mondeo man voting conservative, and now you get a better picture.

The rules are the house are strict, and the two children are taught from an early age that the word of each parent is to be obeyed at all times.

By the time the children are teenagers, they are too scared to rebel in any way shape or form, but unquestioningly follow the rules set out by society: at school, and soon at university.

One reason they probably follow the rules so closely is because there is no need for rebellion. They have had a very comfortable upbringing, remember, in the English countryside, with all the mod-cons and materialistic goods of the twenty-first century.

And then I meet them.

I'm not from "the wrong side of the tracks", but I know what it's like to be poor and I know what it's like to live in an inner-city area. My family wasn't exactly poor when I was growing up, but I do remember a few months when money was a little hard to come by. At university I lived, for about 18 months, in the centre of Liverpool. While at university, I studied American Studies, and tailored my course to learning as much as possible about African American history -- the history of a striving people divided from their homeland and all the historic and contemporary hardships they faced. Basically, I know the score.

I say to these people, "you know, about half the Africans who left the west coast of Africa on slave ships didn't actually make it to the New World. No, they were thrown overboard by the slavers, so they could claim on the insurance." The response I usually get is blank one, of no emotion. "Oh, right." And then they'll usually start talking about something like a new movie or a song that is in the charts. Sometimes I might follow them. "You know what one of my favourite movies is? 'Empire', by Andy Warhol. Yeah, I like it because he broke practically every rule of film-making. He didn't move the camera at all for eight hours, and just left it pointing at the Empire State Building, until all the lights came on." The response is void of any conception of how dramatically brilliant the film is. They've never heard of it and just dismiss it as something else. They don't question it in any meaningful way.

The same is the case when I try and discuss politics. I could spend hours explaining my theory of socialism to them, and they wouldn't know which bits were slightly Marxist and which bits verged on liberalism. Instead, they just accept it as it is and don't make me think of how right or wrong it might be.

Sometimes too much mothering can be a lot worse than too much freedom.

Give a child too much freedom and he might wander about the inner city streets dealing marijuana and talking gangster, but if he's smart he'll soon realise that education is the way forward, and he will be stronger for what he has seen out on the streets. The child who is forced to read for reading's sake by his father for three hours a night cannot gain life experience that way.

And there it is. These people loose out on valuable life experience because of over bearing parents.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Lives of Work and Days of Wonder

Having finished university sometime in May, I am yet to find suitable employment.

I still work one day a week in a garden centre, a job I've held now since I was in the sixth form. At work on Sunday, I was the longest serving employee out of everyone there. Since I stared there, I have seen employees come and go, and during that time I've graduated from university with a 2:1 degree in American Studies and Imaginative Writing, but the fact that, at the end of it all, I'm still doing the same job I was before I even entered university makes me feel like I have gone no where in three long years.

I did once quit my job, during my third year at university. During that time I lived away from home and struggled for money. I eventually moved back home and once more went back to work there.

During the week I've been looking for work, but as I said at the top, I am yet to find any. This is probably through lack of effort in looking on my part, and I am finding it difficult to pluck up the energy to put some serious effort in. Every Sunday evening, after work at the garden centre, the desire to find work during the week (and perhaps continue working at the garden centre on Sundays) is most definitely there, but the energy is not. By Monday morning, the desire for work during the week is usually weakening (no pun intended) by the minute.

My situation is perhaps somewhat different to most other students because I am not looking for work which is potentially going to entertain me for the rest of my life. I need work for about twelve months to get me to King's College, London, so I can do a Master's. At the moment, that feels a million miles away, but it really isn't.

Hopefully well-paying employment is not far away either, but it really is up to me to pull my finger out a bit more than I am doing at the moment.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

"It's Not Home Economics -- It's Food Technology!"

Myself and a good old school friend sat reminiscing about days gone by last night: the sort of thing which is highly enjoyable having just graduated after three long years at university. While Rick is now a Bachelor of Science after working damn hard for a First Class Honours Degree in Music Technology, I am a Bachelor of Arts having achieved a Second Class Upper Honours Degree in American Studies and Imaginative Writing.

The point of the above is not to brag and wallow in one's own successes, but to merely make the point that both Rick and myself went and studied a subject that interested us at university. I would venture a guess that if we had been able to, we would have studied these subjects all day, every day at school, as well. Sadly no school offers such an opportunity, and probably quite rightly so, but the problem remained that Rick, myself and a great many of our other friends were left to study subjects we found no intellectual stimulation in.

There was a stipulation at our High School that every pupil had to study a technology at G.C.S.E. level. The absurdity of such rule still fascinates me; I am sure it was in place to ensure the survival of certain wilting departments. Looking back now, I wish I had fought the system more and pushed to study History instead of 'Food Technology'. I would have liked to have learnt to cook, but that was never the ultimate goal of F.T.

Right from the first lesson I never cared for F.T. I never paid much attention in class, but from what I remember we were taught of the food industry: how to make food en-masse. "The production line". "Quality control".Personally I do not think such things are worthy of being taught in schools.

The thing which summed it up for me was Rick's front cover for his file. We had to produce large A3 sized dossier of work, containing what, I'm not exactly sure. I myself never even finished the front cover, and I am not sure whether or not Rick finally got it right either. By the first lesson he had finished his front cover, but instead of having "Food Technology" blazoned across the front, he had written "Home Economics" (The subject actually was Home Economics years seven through nine, but we were seldom cooking.)

Seven days later Rick's folder still had the same front cover. The teacher told him to change it. Twelve months later, at the start of year eleven, Rick's folder still had the same front cover, and every lesson the teacher (a large beast of a woman) shouted at him "it's not Home Economics -- it's Food Technology!"

And that typifies the problem, really. The name of the subject is not even right, never mind the academic content. It was understandable that the subject should initially change its name from Cookery to something else in order to distance itself from the sexist academic practices present in British schools in the 1950's and 60's, but it has certainly gone too far. In the lesson where we learn to cook, we do not even learn to cook anymore. When I was doing Food Technology, we were supposed to be making something every single week, but we had to cook as if on a production line. It was absolutely crazy.

Thankfully now, this Labour government seems to be correcting the problem. It recently suggested that every pupil leaving school should have good knowledge of ten to fifteen recipes. After my experiences, I consider that a bloody good idea! I left for university not knowing even how to make something as simple as pasta. Hopefully that will not happen in the future.

As for Rick and myself, Rick I think scraped a 'C' grade, though he probably lost marks for his front cover. I, however, did not fare so well. I was removed from the course, shall we say, about a third of the way through year eleven. I had done no work, had no enthusiasm for "Food Technology", and had no intention of making a career out of the food industry. I just did not care. If we had actually been learning to cook, the story would have been very different. I did, though, take one thing from the course. It was my one and only experience of getting shouted at in front of the entire class. The large beast of a teacher really let me have it. Over a twelve month period I had done absolutely no work. She shouted until she was red in the face. I just stood there in the middle of the room, and that experience strengthened the resolve in me to genuinely achieve some thing in my life, just so as I could stick it in the face of every person who ever suggested I would amount to nothing.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Seven Days of Poetry: Days Five, Six & Seven

A brief note to all;

Seven days of poetry ends with day four in the hope that days five, six and seven will occur differently in the mind of each individual reader.

Yours, whever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright