sustaining a quality education ~with Mark Burlingame~
Learning Styles: Pt 1 of 2
Recently I showed two videos that highlighted the opposite ends of the study-skills spectrum: a responsible program of practice and reinforcement, and an end-of-times, panic-laden overnight cramming or writing session. I confessed to being more used to the latter, especially with the two classes in question: biology, as was the first video’s subtext, and college writing, the class in which these outside materials were being presented. The first--by Mr. Wooten--and the second--by a Spanish-speaking reality-prank show--worked not together, but not against each other, either.
I had a theme.
“Elevator Ghost Prank” (aka on Facebook: “elevator ghost prank lol”) is an exercise in mortal terror. Unharmed, though badly shaken, sometimes near-weeping, helpless scare victims in their ordinary workaday outfits cower before a ghastly child with a painted face standing in a nightgown, staring off to the side...
Typically she waits for her victims to quake before belting out a paralyzing bloodcurdling scream.
By this scream she confirms her reality: in its cutthroat, soul-melting immediacy, an unanswerable noise from the dead. With face-draping long hair and deathly erect posture, holding the obligatory doll, she is the worst image you could ask for in a closed environment where in that millisecond before the light switches back on her silhouette may have just been perceived. Something vague, tiny yet creepily tall stands now starkly defined: dread and regret made manifest.
I kept thinking of the death of the soul.
Though it’s just a little actor crawling through a soft metal door when the lights flicker out, the confidence of her apparition is maddening as the scene repeats: an unsuspecting and respectable series of adults, freshly exeunt from unknown appointments, is escorted to the elevator by a most delighted secretary.
What were these people? Interviewees, dental patients, committee members, casual visitors to a local corporate headquarters?
It matters little who they were. My two questions to which my ENG 111 students responded in writing:
1. Is it wrong--unethical--dangerous--to put a small child in such a position of psychological tyranny?
2. What do these scenes of mortal terror teach you about the human unconscious--would you be glad for such an experience?
I have yet to read the responses.
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Mark Burlingame
English faculty, WCC