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Authors: Bentley Little
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Back in her day, a knowledge of obscure trivia was the key to intellectual respect, and she and her friends had attempted to one-up each other by finding the most arcane minutiae about literature or music and dropping them casually into conversation as though they were something that everyone should know. Such behavior had been silly but also exhilarating, as theyd explored new worlds and delved deeply into subjects to which they had not previously been exposed. Of course, shed learned as she got older that it was the experience of art that mattered, not the useless tangential facts that proved to peers that one had read a book or been exposed to a specific work. There was nothing phonier or more pretentious than someone posing as an intellectual by aping the opinions of others. But these days, the Internet seemed to have rendered even that trivial pursuit obsolete as students looked up information on a need-to-know basis, using it when necessary but making no effort to retain any of it. They lived in a Wikipedia world, where knowledge was no longer required and only the ability to access it mattered.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this was better.
But she didnt think so.
At lunch, Linda went to the teachers lounge, as she always did. The lounge was located in a windowless room adjacent to the Little Theater, which had always been an inconvenient pain in the butt to everyone except the drama instructor. But now she was happy about the lounges out-of-the-way location, because it meant that the administrators remained in the office to eat. And her goal this year was to avoid Jody as much as possible.
Steve Warren and Ray Cheng were sitting around one of the tables when she arrived, unwrapping their lunches. Yvonne Gauthier was heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Coincidentally, they were talking about the importance of art.
Had students in their classes brought it up? she wondered. Maybe her attempted discussion this morning had had some effect after all. The thought cheered her.
Her colleagues, however, were in the same frame of mind that shed been in after first period, discouraged by the current generations cultural illiteracy. Steve shook his head. Theres no intellectual currency anymore. The whole systems breaking down. Used to be that if you name-dropped the right authors and musicians, books and movies, you could fool everyone into thinking you were smart. Kids today dont even know enough to know what they dont know. References just fly over their heads, and theyre not impressed by anything. Its depressing.
Movies used to be cool, Ray admitted. Foreign films, old comedies. Very impressive, especially for a first date.
Remember, in the early seventies, when we were in high school? Steve asked. The two of them had grown up in Anaheim and had known each other forever. Remember how we used to go to that revival theater and see Marx Brothers movies and W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy?
Ray nodded.
Remember how old they seemed?
Ray chuckled. Yeah.
Well, there was only, like, a thirty years difference between us and them. The movies from that time, the new movies like Holy Grail, Tommy or Annie Hall ? Those are just as far away to students today as W. C. Fields was to us.
Youre right, Ray said as he did the math. He shook his head. Shit. We are old.
The conversation faded away as more teachers entered the lounge, and Linda missed the chance to jump in and add her own two cents worth. Suzanne Johnsonmentioned to someone, in a voice filled with barely concealed disgust, that she needed to ask Jody for a day off next week to attend her brother-in-laws wedding. Before this semester, theyd never had to ask permission to use personal days.
Has anyone seen Jody this morning? Linda asked. She was
Back in her day, a knowledge of obscure trivia was the key to intellectual respect, and she and her friends had attempted to one-up each other by finding the most arcane minutiae about literature or music and dropping them casually into conversation as though they were something that everyone should know. Such behavior had been silly but also exhilarating, as theyd explored new worlds and delved deeply into subjects to which they had not previously been exposed. Of course, shed learned as she got older that it was the experience of art that mattered, not the useless tangential facts that proved to peers that one had read a book or been exposed to a specific work. There was nothing phonier or more pretentious than someone posing as an intellectual by aping the opinions of others. But these days, the Internet seemed to have rendered even that trivial pursuit obsolete as students looked up information on a need-to-know basis, using it when necessary but making no effort to retain any of it. They lived in a Wikipedia world, where knowledge was no longer required and only the ability to access it mattered.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this was better.
But she didnt think so.
At lunch, Linda went to the teachers lounge, as she always did. The lounge was located in a windowless room adjacent to the Little Theater, which had always been an inconvenient pain in the butt to everyone except the drama instructor. But now she was happy about the lounges out-of-the-way location, because it meant that the administrators remained in the office to eat. And her goal this year was to avoid Jody as much as possible.
Steve Warren and Ray Cheng were sitting around one of the tables when she arrived, unwrapping their lunches. Yvonne Gauthier was heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave. Coincidentally, they were talking about the importance of art.
Had students in their classes brought it up? she wondered. Maybe her attempted discussion this morning had had some effect after all. The thought cheered her.
Her colleagues, however, were in the same frame of mind that shed been in after first period, discouraged by the current generations cultural illiteracy. Steve shook his head. Theres no intellectual currency anymore. The whole systems breaking down. Used to be that if you name-dropped the right authors and musicians, books and movies, you could fool everyone into thinking you were smart. Kids today dont even know enough to know what they dont know. References just fly over their heads, and theyre not impressed by anything. Its depressing.
Movies used to be cool, Ray admitted. Foreign films, old comedies. Very impressive, especially for a first date.
Remember, in the early seventies, when we were in high school? Steve asked. The two of them had grown up in Anaheim and had known each other forever. Remember how we used to go to that revival theater and see Marx Brothers movies and W. C. Fields and Laurel and Hardy?
Ray nodded.
Remember how old they seemed?
Ray chuckled. Yeah.
Well, there was only, like, a thirty years difference between us and them. The movies from that time, the new movies like Holy Grail, Tommy or Annie Hall ? Those are just as far away to students today as W. C. Fields was to us.
Youre right, Ray said as he did the math. He shook his head. Shit. We are old.
The conversation faded away as more teachers entered the lounge, and Linda missed the chance to jump in and add her own two cents worth. Suzanne Johnsonmentioned to someone, in a voice filled with barely concealed disgust, that she needed to ask Jody for a day off next week to attend her brother-in-laws wedding. Before this semester, theyd never had to ask permission to use personal days.
Has anyone seen Jody this morning? Linda asked. She was
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