Archive for October 2015

Home Archive for October 2015

Ok wow. In desperation to do at least one post that isn't based completely on bloody education, for once I figured I would just discuss some of my all time favourite book quotes. For anyone who has spent about a week in my company, you'll be able to guess at least half of the books these quotes will come from because I probably don't shut up about them. (Sorry?) (But not really.)

Obviously, the first simply has to be from one of the most wonderfully written books I have ever read and will continue to read over and over until I tire of it - which won't be happening soon. My first copy of this book has been in my house as long as I can remember, my second copy is a first edition and a gift from my brother and my third copy is a beautiful hardback which I received from a friend for my 15th birthday. Don't ask why it's necessary to own 3 different copies. It's not. Without further ado the first book featuring in this post is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. (A thousand avid YA readers hearts fall. Just kidding. The only 3 people who read this must have at least read Pride and Prejudice, if not adored it at the extent to which I do.) There are so, so many different quotes I could pick from and have reasons for doing so, and it's really quite hard to choose just one. The thing with this book is that I actually prefer the plot and general story of Northanger Abbey, but I fell in love so hard with Lizzie and her funny little experiences and I can't go back on that now. I'm going to cheat a little bit here and list which parts of Austen's novel I was torn between, as there is so many... First of all; "I must learn to be content with being happier than I deserve." It can be interpreted in so many different ways according to each individual's situation and I actually have this quote on my bedroom wall. Another I had to tuck away instead of presenting it in my top five is "But people themselves alter so much that there is something new to be observed in them forever." I think that it's just a really nice phrase and that it's very valid in assessing the intricacies of human nature. Alas (now I'm writing like Austen) I have reached a conclusion. "Till this moment, I never knew myself." Other than being wonderfully poetic in its arrangement, those who have read the book will be aware that this epitomises the title "Pride and Prejudice" and as a self-destructive hopeless romantic this quote particularly is equal in weight to either of Darcy's proposals. Lizzie realises here that she too has been guided by her own pride and prejudice and it is this which allows the entire story to progress. While I adore Darcy's first proposal in all its angst and glory, I love that this quote is a product of his apology in repose to Elizabeth's reasons not to marry him. There are so many lines in Pride and Prejudice which hold so much personal worth to me and I could write a whole post on the first chapters alone. Read it!!! If you know me in person then I would even lend you one of my three copies of it, and people know what I'm like when it comes to lending my books...

If you've read A Little Princess, by France's Hodgson Burnett, there is probably a couple of famous quotes which spring to mind. I do love the well known ones about being a princess even in rags, and especially the one about suppressing anger in the face of your enemies. The thing with this book, and with the main character Sara, is that if her personality was applied to anyone else I would find her completely and utterly insufferable. She is the epitome of morally good and makes you feel awful about every life decision you've ever made and yet Burnett still manages to make you adore her. Perhaps it's in the way she is so young and innocent yet more aware than anyone else featured, but she is really quite likeable. At one point in her little attic she tells her friend that "Everything's a story. You are a story--I am a story." This speaks so many volumes, especially in the book where little Sara clings for her dear life to the art of storytelling in order to survive all the hardships she is subjected to. But beyond that, in reality, she is very correct. Whether you take it from a parallel dimension type realm and make it more eccentric, or just from a sweet, romanticised view of the lives of people around us, the quote is really beautiful. I wish I was saying such profound statements from a tiny attic aged 8.

Sara's insight leads me on to quite a juxtaposed one that came from Briony, one of three narrators featured in Ian McEwan's Atonement. It's quite a pivotal moment in the novel but out of context it won't spoil too much. When I first read this part I had to actually mark my page and contemplate exactly what Briony was facing at that moment, because it was a thought I had ruminated on other occasions previously. She asks herself as a fourteen year old: (I think? Roughly around that age...) "Was everyone else really as alive as she was?...If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone's claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was." I have seen people analyse this and suggest that it is here Briony matures, when realising she is not the centre of the universe and all does not revolve around her. But I didn't see it like that at all. I actually identified with it a lot and it is not a childish thought to wonder how there is enough space for everyone to think and live and just be. I don't think Briony was being immature and realising that she is not God's gift sent from Heaven. I think that she is grasping at intensely overwhelming emotions and struggling to understand how this all-consuming, encompassing feeling could possibly be applied to billions of people when she herself feels suffocated by it. I adored Atonement when I finally forced myself to devote time to reading it, which was bazaar considering how irritated I gradually became by every single character in the book. With at least the three main narrators there were times when I shouted out loud to the pages trying to talk sense into them. I honestly threw the book at one point in a soliloquy of Robbie's. Generally, I loved how it all played out and how cleverly the story was told. McEwan has a wonderful way with worlds that I doubt I will ever tire of.

The fourth quote I'd like to mention comes from a book that I only finished a couple of days ago, but am totally besotted with. It would be impossible to sum it up in sentences and I'd never be able to do the book justice but I'd recommend it to absolutely everybody any day of the week. It was totally captivating from start to finish and I refused to let it out of my sight until I had finished. The quote itself reads: "If there are some things inside us too tiny to see, might there be things outside us too big to see?" Like, what? Wow? If you consider it, just sit and think about what is trying to be conveyed without the context of the quote, it's saying a lot. What I love so much is that it probably means so many different things to different people, and if I were the type of person to get quotes or lyrics tattooed on myself you can bet this would be in block capitals on my forehead. I feel like this blog post is getting very lengthy and it's taken me a solid week to compose, so I'll show just one more quote I love, and probably do a part two of this when I run out of ideas again. (Expect it next week.)

So finally, I have to include at least one young adult book. For all the stigma associated with them, some are executed brilliantly and those with true individuality are some of the most captivating books I own. I have two YA books which I would rave about for hours, but I do not think individual quotes can reflect everything else which is inside them. Instead, I'll go for the superficiality of a very "Tumblr" quote from All The Bright Places by Jennifer Nirven. This book was absolutely lovely to read and touching from front cover to back. There are two quotes within this book that caught my attention and instead of giving my thoughts, I'm just going to let them run wild with you. The book is really rather wonderful. Without further ado (how cliche), here they are:
"You are all the colors in one, at full brightness."
"We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial."

There! 5 books which I adore and several quotes which I'll always love from them. I could do this post another seven hundred times and fill it to the brim with books and quotes galore, but for the sake of mine and your sanity, that's all. I'm really, painfully stuck for inspiration on what to write which is rather tragic considering I'm obliged to keep this up for six whole months. (Hint hint, inspire me with some suggestions. Thanks.)

PS: Sorry to disappoint. This isn't a political rant, however I have a whole string of those stored in my cramped little head ready to whip out next time someone provokes them, so... Just hold your horses.

EDIT 21/10: Since writing this I think that it came across a lot harsher than I intended. Shockingly, I really do enjoy school. Don't hold me to this, it was a spur of the moment anger thing and I don't believe all of these things, especially not to the extent I gave the impression of.

It seems a bit ridiculous that out of the select few things I have chosen to post, the vast majority have been about education. (So obviously this is going to be too.) I feel it's kind of necessary to add that this is by no means an outright attack on my own school - which of course it's going to appear, as my only experience of the school system. But at the same time, I'm not stupid enough to believe that every other school in the country isn't run under a similar, if not identical, regime. With that said my views on the British school system won't apply to everyone and it is honestly just how I feel at the time of writing (usually in stupid hours of the morning.) It feels wrong, too, that my sole purpose of writing this is because of school/D of E and that my assessor is one of my own English teachers who I value really quite highly. At some point I'll consider writing what I actually enjoy in terms of school, which is the fundamental concept of learning. (That's for another day, I have grievances to alleviate.)

Every Monday I help with the local Rainbows unit spending an hour and fifteen minutes entertaining girls from about age 4 to 7. Out of every adjective going that could be applied to them specifically I'd have to go for the lexical field of "energetic". It's a pleasure, of course, and always significantly uplifting, but consistently a shock when you consider the contrast between their endless excitement and my own somewhat vacant motivation. To hear from one of the leaders of the group, who doubles as mum to two of the loveliest girls, that she wants to homeschool her children, is hard hitting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with homeschooling, that isn't my point in the slightest. It's that she feels already, with a daughter who has been in Reception for one month and another who had just started Year 2, that they're being limited. She knows that their blossoming creativity and passion might get crushed and moulded and twisted until they're well and properly prepared for working life.

My issue with the education system (today) is that it often leaves very little room for individuality. You could be the most animated, vehement, zealous person when it comes to your favourite subject and love it wholeheartedly but that really isn't all that relevant. Yes, it might drive you to study hard for it and focus all your attention on doing well in it but your "cleverness" is eventually just determined by how well you can manipulate a question to fill criterium. Exam boards limit the topics you study and so often times you have to go out of your own way to educate yourself on what it is that you're interested in. It's just about the testing. And I am sure that a lot of people would love to beg to differ. It's a love for the subject that drives us to excel, we are only limited by exams and curriculum if we adhere to that belief. Honestly, I do agree in many cases and would love to do so wholeheartedly.

I have veered off the point to a ridiculous extent when all I really came to say was how sad it must feel believing that your child is going to have to change themselves and restrain their blossoming creativity for the sake of getting a handful of good grades which are considered worthwhile.

I can't help but feel like the value of an occupation in each society dictates the weight it holds in our education. We have to be taught the Sciences and Maths and English but subjects like Art and Drama are optional. How "academic" you are is defined by how well you do in predetermined classes. Your own worth as a future component of the workforce is presented to you on a sheet, or through an email, in the form of ten or so letters. And what do they really mean? Besides dictating your future. Do As across the board equate to cleverness? Or realistically, in a lot of cases, does it just mean you worked out the way things have to work, worked out that you need to memorise the facts and commit to memory what the mark scheme requires you to write? Is that selling out to the system? A letter grade doesn't necessarily show ability to learn, rather obedience. Everyone is born with the ability to learn, there isn't a graduating scale of how well you can do it. Perhaps it's even showing your ability to conform. (I know this doesn't apply to all subjects which is one of the reasons I love English and Sociology so much.)

The worst part of all of this when it's consuming me at ungodly hours of night is how helpless I feel. Even if I did have a real, practical solution that solved every problem which arises from our current state, and combined the reasons we have schooling like we do now, it's just not going to be enforced. The process would be lengthy and far too controversial to be considered as a genuine proposal. Really, I'm content with complying if that's what has to be done to get to a position where I can inspire social change, or even just be content doing whatever it is that I love. I just wish there was more honesty in modern education, admittance that what you have to do is adapt to an exam board to succeed.

It feels less like learning everything that the world has to offer and a lot more like being programmed to live inside accepted roles.

As time passes I'm regretting more and more putting blogging as my DofE skill. Not because I have a lack of things to talk about, anyone that has had any contact with my in any way whatsoever will understand that could never be the case. But it's very hard to translate verbal language into coherent sentences that enforce my point under the pressures of the finality of publishing content online. I could easily rant for six or seven lengthy posts about how the connotations of western feminism shouldn't hinder your want to identity as an intersectional feminist, how reverse racism cannot and does not exist in this modern context, I could even discuss why and how I joined the Labour Party but I don't think that I could capture the constant reel of thoughts in my head well enough to do them justice.

If necessary I could talk for hours and hours on end about my favourite novels, about book quotes or about musical theatre if only as a personal outlet for what is always present in a corner of my mind somewhere. Really, this isn't me asking anyone for ideas or inspiration or even for consent because, as you may have a realised, this is my blog and I'll do with it what I choose to do. But within that I have to dedicate an hour of my time to it per week starting from the 9th October so take this as a partial warning to expect the bare minimum and please, please do not hold me to anything I state here.

Which leads me on nicely to a train of thought that's been tugging at my brain recently; the concept that your beliefs and opinions are rigid, cemented and unchanging. Or rather, you are not entitled to backtrack and have a different approach to a situation than say, a month ago. For so many people, this is their strongest argument against giving 16 year olds the vote. Personally I still have no idea where I stand on this issue yet, but I do know that I find it easier to debate with people who are against such a problem. Readdressing the point, it's completely obvious that opinions are susceptible to change. Our opinions are products of the context in which we live our lives, it's the setting and environment and people that influence our opinions. And these things change! Everything around you changes, so of course your opinions, which are guided by your life's context, are going to adjust and change accordingly to such a context. Of course, under 18s are probably going to change their minds a lot more, but how in any shape or form does this mean they are unworthy of voting?

I could easily argue against the 16/17 year old vote, don't get me wrong. But I don't agree with using the point above as a reason for them not to have it.

So, this kind of turned into a sneak preview of a tiny, irrelevant corner of my head right now which is... good. I don't really know how to finish this which my train of thought is still running unfailingly. I hope you have a lovely week.

Charlotte

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Books I Want To Read Before I Turn 18!

A Handful of Quotes (+ my first rant-free post!)

(Another) Rant?

Notes To Self + A Small Train of Thought