November 9, 2017

Somehow the "Ask Polly" answer to a letter that begins "I hate men" devolves into "Fuck dioramas, that’s all. Public school is a never-ending scourge of dioramas."

"They drain your fucking time and your will to live, and for what? So your kid learns that clay figures fall to pieces once they’re fully dry? So your kid learns how to cry big salty tears at the sight of a little polar-bear head rolling right off a little polar-bear body, and screams, 'THIS IS SO UNFAIR! NOW I HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN!' My husband is no help when this happens. He’s a professor of education, so he really fixates on the stupidity of these things. His ass drops out onto the floor every time he catches wind of another diorama assignment. That leaves me to coach my kid. And honestly, sometimes I just want to tell her, 'Look, the whole world is stupid and selfish and lazy and nukes are about to rain down on us, so why even make another goddamn polar bear? Maybe it’s time to start experimenting with getting less than an A. You know I won’t mind. See how it feels! Try it on for size.' But I do have some restraint. So instead, I tell her, 'Dioramas, like all arbitrary, tedious, pointless educational exercises, require a higher level of Zen. You must expect pain and ruin, toil and suffering, and you must let go. Surrender to the excruciating nothingness of the task at hand, and try to enjoy it, knowing it was designed to crush your will and render you enraged and jaded and all alone in your pain. The real point of this bullshit, at least the point as far as WE are concerned, is to find some way to enjoy it, in spite of how stupid it is. So take your time, and focus on savoring every hideous moment of this.'"

That's in New York Magazine. The relationships/diorama analogy.

I think it means: Drop out of school and embrace solitude.

74 comments:

Susan said...

I can't wait to see the letter written once she discovers that dioramas are some of the most worthwhile tasks her daughter is asked to do for school.

And who says only public schools are diorama driven? My niece goes to a private school and she seems to always be working on one for some class or other.

Jake said...

She sounds like a real neat person.

whitney said...

Seriously? I thought the diorama thing was just a joke from Community. People actually have to make them in school? I'm really having a hard time believing this

lonetown said...

First person I've seen from New York Magazine that seems to have their act together.

whitney said...

I just read that whole thing. And now my question is why would anyone ask Polly for advice? I would advise against it based on her answer

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

whitney said...
Seriously? I thought the diorama thing was just a joke from Community. People actually have to make them in school? I'm really having a hard time believing this


I have made them, for my older kids when they were in grade school. Doesn't seem to be a thing anymore. My youngest hasn't had to make one.

rhhardin said...

It's not either. It's an amusing writing exercise.

Take a simple thing and expand absurdly in a single direction.

rhhardin said...

We made pottery ashtrays in shop. Those suckers explode if you don't work all the air out.

rhhardin said...

The writing itself is a diorama gone wrong, so also self-referential, which is how it comes to be art.

rhhardin said...

Lautreamont chapters tend to be self-referential in the same way. Pointless unless you notice that they describe their own composition as well.

Anonymous said...

Wow ! There is a lot going on there. I am not sure where to start. Maybe the both of them need to start with the idea that their glass is always half full.

Darrell said...

The kids are supposed to make them on their own. Their teachers should fail them for cheating on the assignment.

Virgil Hilts said...

Advice to young parents - at beginning of school year tell your kids teachers that there will not be any dioramas assigned; if any teacher disagrees tell them you presume they are incompetent and request your kid get assigned to a different teacher. If there are any teachers reading this blog who still require students (meaning parents) to make dioramas, you need to quit your jobs. You are part of the problem.

Laslo Spatula said...

I wanted to see if there was a diorama of Ed Gein, and I wasn't let down.

Ed Gein's House -- Horror Diorama

I am Laslo.

Anonymous said...

I hear a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mqDsuhnnRk

traditionalguy said...

Handicrafts to keep the inmates occupied. It could be worse.

Wince said...

Reminds me of those creative but fake Amazon reviews. Very entertaining.

A verbal diorama, if you will. Better than the usual New York Magazine verbal diarrhea.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

rhhardin said...
We made pottery ashtrays in shop.


We made roach clips.

Darrell said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxTYWiasYE

Amadeus 48 said...

I just read the whole thing. WOW. Those are some twisted, misanthropic people--both the letter writer and Polly, the insult advice columnist. I particularly liked Polly's thoughts on rural, small-town life.

This whole thing shows how degenerate our society has become. I try to imagine my parents or any of their friends having a conversation like this, and it is impossible. The callousness, the self-pity, and the resentment that boil out of these two is appalling. Are any of my friends like these two? Not even when they are drunk.

Their hearts need to be touched by Jesus Christ.

Thanks for sharing, Althouse.



Oso Negro said...

Worse than dioramas are the dreaded science fair projects.

Amadeus 48 said...

Of course, Tolstoy covered all this in Anna Karenina. And at the end she falls under a train.

buwaya said...

We all liked making dioramas.
Kids were full of ideas, wife sews like a demon, and she's an expert with plastic clay besides, and I've been a model-making fanatic since I was five. Architectural styrofoam, I'm there.

It really is an opportunity for creation. Whether schools should be making kids do it, I dont know.

I kind of miss all that kid stuff, the costumes, the projects. One day they grow up and they're off doing their own thing, and you cant play with them anymore.

Laslo Spatula said...

"One day they grow up and they're off doing their own thing, and you cant play with them anymore."

But then one day the boys bring home the young hot girls.

So there is that.

I am Laslo.

buwaya said...

And the kids were competitive as $$%$& on science fair projects. My daughter was the most, non-techie though she is, she was the best organized. She kept notes, orderly experimental results, and presented them clearly.

Boys went for techno-dazzle. I persuaded one that it was probably unsafe to pull the magnetron out of a broken microwave to use for a gadget.

Clyde said...

Neither of those women sounds like a happy person, at all.

Henry said...

I could have written that. I'm going to print it out for my daughter and youngest son to read. School is not kind to the dedicated or creative.

My oldest son gets different feedback. When the question is "why are you getting a D in math" and the answer is "my teacher is lousy" the lecture is "tough shit."

Molly said...

God, I hope I'm not projecting too much here -- but what I see is "I'm really annoyed at my husband, but I dare not write about that; but here's something else I'm really annoyed about that I can write about, cleverly, and which will allow me to explore the reasons and justifications for why I'm really annoyed at my husband."

buwaya said...

The boss being on a spreadsheet thing (the famous spreadsheet of misbehaving MSM bosses), indicates that woman #1 is in the New York media industry, which on its own explains her problems. A hive of scum and villainy. And, very likely, the milieu in which she grew up.

buwaya said...

The public schools in CA all or mostly all had a customary fourth-grade diorama project. Or did, at least, until quite recently. Some may still do this.

Everyone had to build a California Mission.

There were styrofoam kits sold at hobby shops (when there were still hobby shops). And accessories, like plastic friars and indians.

Comanche Voter said...

The lady should also clean up her mouth. A good big bar of Lava soap is recommended since it appears she needs an industrial strength cleaning.

Henry said...

There's a lot of good advice in Polly's response. For example:

At least it’s clear that your dad shouldn’t matter for half a second. He doesn’t want to matter.

* * *

To be clear, I'm going to print out the part about dioramas for daughter and youngest son. I'll might invite my daughter to read the whole thing, but I think she's too kind-hearted to enjoy the hyperbole.

* * *

The "cranky old bitch" attitude has a lot of strength in it. For my own sanity I prefer the "mellow old fart" persona, but the two do have a lot in common.

Fernandinande said...

Dingoes ate my diorama. It's hard to disprove.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

I loved dioramas. I was hoping the whole year would be building them after we started second grade by researching and constructing one of the Spanish missions from early California.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya said...
There were styrofoam kits sold at hobby shops (when there were still hobby shops).


There still are hobby shops where I live. One advantage of living in a place with relatively stable real estate prices and population levels is that change is slow. People die every now and then and I guess their pets do too but otherwise not much changes.

Bob Ellison said...

My 7th-grade teacher assigned a "science" project in which we were supposed to test some commercial products and produce the results on the dreaded tri-fold display. I think the teacher admired Ralph Nader. Most of the kids did things like "How well do different brands of paper towels absorb liquids?". I didn't do anything at all and still passed the class.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

School is not kind to the dedicated or creative.

This is true. You have to be self-sufficient top survive school as a creative and advanced student. I would read ahead. Once I made up a history quiz for the teacher based on my reading of future chapters. She was polite but didn't need it. That wasn't a chapter she was going to assign. What did I care? I was in school, so I read the whole thing to fill the time. I did a lot daydreaming and doodling and eventually they routed me into a program where along with another small group of higher-tested students got to go to a different school one day a week and just spend a few hours doing whatever in this huge art room. We could use clay, posters, mixed media or just play paper football. That was cool. The principal drove us there in a huge Buick.

Bill Peschel said...

Had three kids go through the Hershey public schools, the last one in '16. Not a diorama in sight, far as I can tell.

Balfegor said...

But . . . but dioramas are fun!

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Bob Ellison said...
I didn't do anything at all and still passed the class.


Humble brag, your mother did your homework.

Henry said...

My daughter's bi-fold poster on Mt. Fuji is a keeper.

The biggest stupidity she currently has to put up with is "the reading log". All kids are encouraged to keep a log of the books they read for extra credit. Daughter reads three or four books a week and doesn't need an exercise in joyless accounting attached to it. But she is dedicated and ignores our arguments to blow off the assignment.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The diorama thing made me laugh. In the last 10 years, I've engineered, and done the lion's share of work, on a Washington monument, a pyramid, a Globe Theater, a Bridge to Terabithia, and a few I've either forgotten or can't properly describe. Apart from the pleasure of father/son time and showing my kids some problem-solving technique, these projects had very little, possibly no, educational value. Like showing movies in class, it's just teachers fucking off, as opposed to actually teaching.

Adina said...

Like many advice columns, you have to extract the good from the bad. Many of my peers in their 20s have been severely injured by the bad choices their parents have made. In addition to the culture which glorifies bad choices, such as trying to reform the bad boy. I think it's good to encourage people who have made bad relationship choices to get professional help to avoid unhealthy relationships and choose healthy ones. I think it's also good to encourage people to focus on what choices they have, not how they are constantly being victimized.
The last time I remember making a diaroma was in the 2nd grade. I was not skilled with clay, so it was pretty bad.
For kids who struggle in school, I think it's good to find some way to help them survive so that they can succeed in other areas. So many people think that because they don't do well in school that they should stop trying. There are also a lot of arbitrary tasks in life. If you can't figure out how to get through them, you will have some problems. That's what I have observed.

Mr Wibble said...

No discussion of dioramas without mentioning Community? For shame...

Anonymous said...

Polly's ranting, prolix screed is so suffused with anger and resentment that its hard to imagine she has had a sane moment in her life. She touts a book at the end. Apparently she can go on and on about anything.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Dioramas are a big step up from making turkeys by tracing your hand on a piece of construction paper and cutting out the outline.

CStanley said...

What a joyless parent.

I loved dioramas, and made them without parental involvemnt (beyond the procurement of materials.) I handled the disappointment of broken clay figures just fine, and learned that you have to start with the clay all in one clump and pinch off appendages. These are little tlessons but they're life experiences nonetheless.

Birches said...

Seriously people, stop doing your kids homework for them. Our school does a diorama in third grade. The kids pick a climate zone and then do a shoebox model with examples of vegetation and animals in their zone. The kids had at least three weeks to complete it. My son made stand up animals out of paper. He found rocks from our yard to decorate. I had zero input and did zero work for it. He received an A. My older daughter did something similar. She also received a good grade. Same thing with science fair. We don't help them at all. Get ahold of yourselves people!

JPS said...

rightguy2, 9:10:

I see what you mean, but I read it differently. She is prolix, but she actually does circle back to a point. I don't see her as angry, or anyway the anger is a rhetorical device.

Wm F. Buckley once posited a spectrum where A believes in preemptive war with the Soviet Union, B believes in tough and inventive opposition short of war, C is for detente, D is [I don't know - basically George McGovern], and E is for surrender. He made the point that A can argue with B, and might stretch over to C; A and E might as well not bother, they'll just talk past each other.

And I think Polly's just meeting her most of the way there, to be able to pull her in the right direction. If she came off more cheerful, more optimistic, less pessimistic and acerbic, that young woman would just say, She just doesn't get it. She thinks everything's great and I just have to see that.

Laslo Spatula said...

"Dioramas are a big step up from making turkeys by tracing your hand on a piece of construction paper and cutting out the outline."

Lobster Boy hated that.

I am Laslo.

Rick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ann Althouse said...

Why are parents doing their child’s homework?

Is the idea how to cheat, how to give more advantages to kids who already have advantages, or just, as I think the teachers think, how to level the playing field between kids who can learn from reading and writing and kids who who need to be spared from the pain of finding out that maybe they can’t?

tcrosse said...

There's the story of the Mom who proudly wrote a paper for her 5th grade daughter. The teacher wrote that she was suspicious because the writing was on a 7th grade level.

Rae said...

I think she has problems with things other than dioramas.

Gahrie said...


Why are parents doing their child’s homework?

Because it is easier than teaching the kids how to do it themselves.

Deep State Reformer said...

If this isn't satire (tl;dr) then it's a fine example of Cloud People problems in First-World countries. Dirt people just struggle with more basic stuff. Like survival.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Gahrie said...

Why are parents doing their child’s homework?

Because it is easier than teaching the kids how to do it themselves.

11/9/17, 10:16 AM


Oh, I thought that was why teachers *gave* children homework.

MikeR said...

Sad. I read as much as I could stand - about 10%, skipping.
Most men I know are decent husbands, taking care of their families. Maybe move to our neighborhood.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Why are parents doing their child’s homework?

Is the idea how to cheat, how to give more advantages to kids who already have advantages, or just, as I think the teachers think, how to level the playing field between kids who can learn from reading and writing and kids who who need to be spared from the pain of finding out that maybe they can’t?"

Where to begin? First of all, everybody (except the kids) understands that it's a bullshit assignment. Time that could have been spent drilling down on fractions or teaching legible penmanship is thrown away on a meaningless craft assignment without giving the kid the skills or the materials to credibly complete it.
And you're right about the more advantages thing and that's the rub. There's an unpleasant little social subtext to such assignments. How much do you care about your child's education? Are you indifferent? Poor? A working single mother without the time or materials to help? The answer to those questions, valid or not, will be on display in your child's classroom for everyone to see at conference time. In a private school or a small town, these ridiculously small things will be used to judge what kind of parent you are.
So, as I said, bullshit, and I never felt the slightest guilt making sure the finished product was respectable and I never judged anyone (except the idiot teacher who thought this assignment had educational value) on what their project looked like.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

The Cracker Emcee Activist said...
I never judged anyone (except the idiot teacher who thought this assignment had educational value) on what their project looked like.


I judged. Not harshly, but sternly, Old Testament style.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...


Why are parents doing their child’s homework?

Where I live, anyway, competitiveness is an enormous problem. Fucking Texas. Compete to get on the traveling gymnastics team. Compete to get on the peewee football team. Compete to get into the trendy preschool. Compete to get on the science/math/literature/history team. Compete once you're on the science/math/literature/history team. Compete for the crowd's attention at the football games (the actual game, the dance team, the cheerleaders, the marching band, the peewee team, the peewee cheerleaders) and then go to competitions of your own. (Thank God my girl's marching band didn't make it to state this year so I don't have to deal with that headache). Compete to get on the varsity ROTC drill team and then compete at meets. And the biggest of them all, compete for class rank for that magic top 10% that gets you into any public college in Texas.

If I thought all this pressure helped the kids actually pursue excellence, it would bother me less (I'm hardly against rigor) but it's breeding kids who are obsessed by working the system. My daughter (top 5%; 3 AP classes this year) seems to spend as much time checking her grades and projecting the math therein ("If I get at least a 90 on X it should balance out the 80 I got on Y because it's grade-weighted" blah blah) as she does thinking about the content of her classes.

Parents are just as bad, of course ~ I'm acquainted with a former AP history teacher who quit the field because she couldn't handle the constant pestering from parents about their kids' grades.

So this is why people are doing their kids' work for them. Because God forbid they fall behind in any way. Then they're fucked.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

And you're right about the more advantages thing and that's the rub. There's an unpleasant little social subtext to such assignments. How much do you care about your child's education? Are you indifferent? Poor? A working single mother without the time or materials to help? The answer to those questions, valid or not, will be on display in your child's classroom for everyone to see at conference time. In a private school or a small town, these ridiculously small things will be used to judge what kind of parent you are.

Yup.

Howard said...

I feel sorry for the girl, she sounds like many of my daughters single professional friends in the Big City who have daddy issues. One of the greatest joys of my life is having a positive, healthy relationship with my daughter and, now my granddaughter.. not that my son and grandsons are chopped liver, but they are part of the same universe I come from so it's not as much of a challenge.

As far as helping with homework, the Socratic method works best by answering questions with questions. The goal is to help teach your kids how to solve problems by breaking it down into bite size chunks.. IOW, teaching them to self-mansplain. This is one key method to erode a child's naturally occurring narcissism.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

The other thing about "projects" ~ that mentality is starting to infect things that should be strictly instruction + testing, such as math and science. My very STEM oriented daughter is driven to distraction by the fact that she's regularly asked to do these stupid arty projects for what should be very straightforward classes (precalculus and AP Physics). She gets points taken off for not meeting the teacher's subjective standard of 'creativity,' when often they are very original and creative but don't have rigatoni and feathers glued to them which seems to be the expectation. I blame both women teachers and the bone they are trying to throw to kids who are not suited to hard math and hard science.

Friedrich Engels' Barber said...

No, dioramas are preparation for law school, when we separate the A law/diorama students from the C law/diorama students.

JAORE said...

"I think it means: Drop out of school and embrace solitude. "

I think it means Mom is nuts.

buwaya said...

"My daughter (top 5%;"

Ours were top 3% or better (based on SAT/ACT), and never sweated all the "must do's", because they didn't. Boys were videogame/metal guitar/bike freaks, girl decided to become a good-as-semi-pro swing dancer (yeah, that doesn't count for college scholarships).

Howard said...

Pants: Both my kids are very successful STEM professionals. They both excelled at projects and art during their primary education. I can tell you that arts and crafts are a critical component of STEM because it involves making something solid and real with your hands. By connecting the hands to the brain, the learning is magnified by several orders of magnitude.

That said, the situation you describe may be sub-optimal because the teacher is a wanker. If so, this is another great learning opportunity. My advice is to require your kid to embrace it 100% because a super-critical lesson kids need to learn is to shut their pie-holes, put their nose to the grindstone and do stuff they don't like or takes them out of their comfort zone because it's what the boss demands for you to do your job. Therefore, encourage your daughter to double-down on the creativity and command her to make it arty and STEMy as if she was the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Gahrie said...

Oh, I thought that was why teachers *gave* children homework.

Hey!

(Actually I don't give homework)

Bad Lieutenant said...

Gahrie said...
Oh, I thought that was why teachers *gave* children homework.

Hey!


(Actually I don't give homework)
11/9/17, 2:36 PM

I was just messing with you. I don't actually understand why everybody has a problem with homework.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

I bet the kids in Singapore and New Delhi have no idea what a diorama is. They drink our milkshake.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Jesus people there's nothing the f*** wrong with dioramas! It's the kind of tactile 3D real-world activity the kids don't get enough of these days with their helicopter dates and their iPads.

Bruce Gee said...

Just one of a hundred reasons we homeschooled for 20 odd years.

But…but what about socialization???

TestTube said...

Althouse,

Thank you for this post. It reinforced two important points:

1) Never ask for advice from someone more messed up than you.
2) All newspaper columnists are more messed up than you.