Generalizations, certainly, but they’re probably accurate at least occasionally. I look in our cart and I can tell quite a bit. Of course, I have the Cliff Notes to my own life, so there’s not much guess work there.

More revealing, though, can be the conversations in the line. One of the reasons I prefer to Polish in public is the privacy it provides. I certainly wouldn’t want those around me to hear an exchange between L and me like the one I overheard yesterday.

A mother and her two children were piling up frozen foods at the checkout when the oldest daughter — probably around fourteen or fifteen — pulled a copy of Twilight from under a bag of frozen fries and asked, “Do I have to put it back?”

Mother’s response was stunning: “You won’t read it! I’ve never seen you sit and read anything.”

The girl turned the book over in her hands a couple of times, and with a sigh, trudged off to replace the book on the shelf.

The temptations: “Has she ever seen you sit and read anything?” “Wonderful job of encouraging your daughter to read.” The greatest, though, was the most dangerous: as the girl passes me, “Here — I’ll buy it for you.”

Instead, I whispered to my daughter, in Polish for added security, “I’ll buy you all the books you want.”

Shopping cart photo by Dan4th.

I found out yesterday how wrong that simplistic thinking could be.

My wife brought me a computer from her office some time ago. “It doesn’t have any memory,” she said, “And there’s no operating system installed, but maybe you can use it.”

Can I use it? Of course I can use it. No teacher complains about having too many computers for his students.

The plan was simple: at the beginning of the year, I would take some of the funding I get from the state for supplies, buy a half-gig of memory, load some form of Linux on it, and I’d have a new computer for my room.

In talking to a fellow teacher, though, I learned that it might not be so simple. I went to our school’s IT guy for clarification.

Short answer: sure, I can use it, but no student can touch it.

It seems we have a contract with a particular computer manufacturer that stipulates two things:

1. Each computer for student use must be purchased through through Distributor X. That rules out using my computer.
2. Each computer for student use must be running Windows XP. That rules out the closet full of laptops I discovered we have, sitting unused because they have Windows 2000 on them.

Now, it seems to me that if Computer Manufacturer X was really interested in educating students that they wouldn’t really care whether or not we use other computers or use other operating systems. It seems that teachers wouldn’t be punished for taking some initiative to get more materials for students.

But underlying that would be a mistaken understanding of the nature of the capitolistic drive, wouldn’t it?

Apologies about the language for those with sensitive ears, but there’s more truth in these four minutes than I’ve heard from the traditional media in years.