h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, Coelacanth. I didn't have enough energy to be a teacher when I was young, and now I have even less. Plus, I see how little support and empathy many of today's teachers get. We need good teachers, and it looks as if a lot of people are afraid to jump into the field.

"I sympathize because I know how much of my job is spent satisfying one bureaucrat or another and how little time I have to be a librarian." [Hypatia]

Working around slow or poorly-working technology is my pet peeve as a librarian.

That's a major annoyance for sure, Paul. Been there,unfortunately. Our patrons are at the library because they need information or computer access that they don't otherwise have. We're often their only option. Then when our equipment doesn't perform properly, we're letting them down and sometimes causing serious problems for them.

Hi, Hypatia.

Public libraries are a *huge* support system for low-income people. In a recent national survey, 44% of them identified public libraries as their only chance for using computers.

Letter from the college today. How exciting, until I opened it. It basically said, "Thanks for accepting the offer, now send us £36 to pay for your CRB check."

Is that a background check for a criminal record or something?

Didn't Johnny Cash cut a record in a prison? That would have been a criminal record.

Exactly right Hyp. CRB = Criminal Records Bureau.

Interesting. I had no idea you had to be investigated before you could enroll in a graduate program. Things sure have changed since I was a student.

Hypatia, I'm sure you've heard about the background checks that are required in some states before anyone can work for any state or local government. This includes volunteer work for a public library [], even if you're just going to tutor a few hours a week in a literacy program. It probably also affects federal workers.

We're all obsessed with finding out each other's backgrounds. People don't even go out on dates anymore without Googling the people they'll be meeting.

It's a very sad state of affairs, Paul. We lose something as a society when we are so filled with suspicion that we automatically suspect the worst in people.

Something is going on with our current mindset, and I haven't figured out what it is. Violent crime is in some ways lower than it's been in a long time, yet public polls show that people think it's *worse* than ever. By some reckonings, taxes are lower than they've been since about 1960, yet so many people think they're extremely high. There is a great deal of anxiety. What is causing it? So many of us are anxious to a delusional extent. This seems to transcend gender. Last November, for the first time ever, women workers became a majority of the U.S. workforce, yet there is a widespread feleing that they are underdogs who will not, and can not, ever get ahead. They point to figures that show women workers only make 70 to 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes. This may be true as a national average, but when you adjust for equivalency in education, some areas (New York, for instance) show that women are equal to men, or even ahead.

If you're going to be anxious and fearful, then at least you need to get your facts straight, in case there is something *else* bothering you that you can then work on.

While I won't be qualified until the end of the course (and even then a Newly Qualified Teacher isn't quite fully qualified) I will be in schools with kids, so I think a background check is fair enough.

Last week I had a conversation with a boy in year 11:

"Sir, you should tuck your shirt in."

"You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition."

"Sir, you should tuck your shirt in, you c**t"

This is, of course, a joke. None of the pupils at my school know what a preposition is. Nor a sentence. And in many cases, probably not even a shirt.

Would the sentence have been okay if it were "Sir, you should tuck in your shirt"?

Yes, but I'm worried you're missing the joke.

B

"This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put."
- Winston Churchill

Please don't worry, Mu Beta. The joke is fine . If today's students don't know what shirts are, they must not be wearing any, so they don't have any to tuck in.

I can understand a background check once a teacher is actually offered a job more than I can uderstand one being necessary to take graduate classes. Not that it does any harm, I suppose. But in my experience, the teachers need protected from the students as much as the students from the teachers.

In hillilly land ~not~ ending sentences with prepositions makes you sound all stuck-up. I hear it so often that I don't even think about it. Being understood is important. That's what language is all about. But languages are alive and change all the time. We need to recognize the practicality of overlooking some rather awkward rules of grammar. I enjoyed the joke, though.