I was just watching a bit of HBO’s Hard Times at Douglass High, about the problems of an inner city school.
I’ve always sort of wanted to work with kids in the inner cities, but I haven’t exactly figured out a way to do it. I went to school to be a teacher once, but I kept falling asleep in the library while I was a student teacher – I have sleep issues.
We used to student teach at a swanky private school, but once a week they’d send us to Cleveland Heights High School, which was more urban.
One time I was in a social studies class at Heights. The teacher told the students that they had to pick a profession and make a simulation of a budget for their future family. She told them that they weren’t allowed to pick drug dealer as a profession.
A kid immediately raised his hand and said, “Can we be pimps?”
How can you not dig kids like that?
Hard Times shows a kid giving a speech on MacBeth “Lady Macbeth is evil – I don’t know what her problem is.”
Probably not A material at most schools, but basically as good a summary of that play as I’ve ever heard.
