This weekend, my husband and I took our son to participate in his school's GeoBee. Now I am seriously hoping that the Vermont chapter of the GeoBee is not related to the National Geographic competition at all. If it is, what an embarrassment for National Geographic!
To start, some brainchild decided that the regional competition would be held in Northfield, about a two hour drive, and that all students had to be there at 9:30 to register with his school's team and await the arrival of the others so that the competition could begin promptly at 10am. So we left at 7:30 on Saturday morning (try getting a teenager up at 6:30 to get dressed and showered on a WEEKEND. This is earlier than he has to get up to catch the bus during the school week.) There was no time for breakfast at that hour, so unfortunately he had to go into the competition on an empty stomach which wasn't a good thing.
They started off extremely well. I still can't understand why they opted to hold the competition in this place with a lack of seating and the seating that did exist was folding metal chairs. We were told that they usually use the auditorium in the middle school that have padded seating, but they wanted to try something new this year. Folded metal seating SUCKS, but we'd been told the competition would take two hours. Three hours later, my behind disagreed with the location!
The geobee is 12 rounds of sheer torture. These questions are ridiculous. One round of questioning had nothing to do with geography. The questions were - What is the name of the professor killed at Virginia Tech two weeks ago? The next, where was he born? Where is he being buried? I supposed to of those questions could be stretched to fit in with geography, but it is a stretch and nothing these kids would have studied. So that category was absurd.
My biggest issue came towards the end of the competition. In round 10, a question was asked - What is the deepest lake in the world? And then four choices ABCD were given. IN round 12, the question was asked again without the choices. So obviously that team got it right because they heard it two rounds earlier. That same round 12 another question was asked that had been asked three rounds earlier. The teachers and parents were all balking that it was unfair to repeat questions. Meanwhile, the judges were simply stating too bad these are the official questions we were given. So one team was able to pull ahead of another because they got duplicated questions.
In the end, my son lost, and no he's not upset by it. He's actually quite happy and plans to skip this competition next year. He got one question about pointing to Cuba on a map, he looked at the map and they had Haiti there and then a circle next to Haiti that was shaded with the symbol representing a lake, so he was unsure what was goign on and decided to point to Haiti and explain that the other was shaded to look like a lake. Two teachers jumped up to defend him and the judges shot them all down.
My experience with this stunning GeoBee, what's the point? The judges were from the school that won, so obviously there was some crooked politics going on. The announcer is a TV announcer for public television and he seemed not to care. In the end, my son learned that he competition is too biased for him to have enjoyed. It's a shame they let this happen to somethign that has such promise otherwise.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Church & Religion
I had a discussion this past weekend regarding the state of religion today. I do realize everyone usually has a strong opinion regarding church and religion. I'm no different. The question came up - what is the one biggest incident/occurrence that shaped your views of church/religion. For me there is one biggie:
When my son was born, we had just moved to a new town. Let me backtrack, I didn't grow up with parents who pushed us to attend church. They let us make our own choice with my dad being Protestant and my mom Catholic. As a teen, I took a job working in an area church's nursery and Father Don was human. He did not look down on anyone. He make the services fun, with laughter and merriment.
So I move to this town, and there are three choices. Catholic, which wasn't going to happen, Methodist, or Baptist. I opted for Methodist and my husband and I decided to start going ever week because having our son Christened was important to us. What a miserable experience that turned out to be. The reverend was very anti any form of gambling. He scorned people who bought raffle tickets (even for charitable purposes), lottery tickets, friendly poker games with friends, etc. But I figured it might be a Methodist principle. We attended for a couple months and then my husband's work started forcing weekend overtime. Because I stayed home with our son, we cut down to one car to save money. So weekend overtime meant I was home without a car. For three weeks while he was mandatoried, we skipped church. The next week we returned. Before the service, the reverend's wife and some of her friends were sat in front of us and made the following comment out loud so that I heard - "I don't know why those sinners bothered to return at all. It's obvious that they are doomed."
Floored, I walked out of the church and never returned. When the reverend called me to find out why we'd left, I told him and he stood up for his wife. At that point, I decided that with an attitude like that church was not for me. Over time, I've developed into an agnostic anyway. I am pretty sure there is a higher being, but I'd like evidence to prove it. Renderings of a "white" Jesus doesn't convince me. In Jerusalem, he is far more likely to be Middle Eastern. Again, I want my proof.
Then I heard another story that happened probably fifty years ago. My grandfather was the one who would go out and plow roads during the winter. Vermont winters are quiet snowy. So one Sunday morning, he had been out plowing snow since the wee hours. He made it to church and happened to fall asleep during the sermon. The pastor took him to task in front of the church for daring to fall asleep during a sermon. Church wouldn't have been held had he not been out clearing the roads, so I'm baffled. He never returned to that church.
Obviously, times haven't really changed. It leaves me to wonder, how can people like this call themselves "Christians". Tolerance is supposed to be a part of being a good Christian and I've heard far too many stories of intolerance in church to believe some churchgoers are truly any nicer than the average joe.
When my son was born, we had just moved to a new town. Let me backtrack, I didn't grow up with parents who pushed us to attend church. They let us make our own choice with my dad being Protestant and my mom Catholic. As a teen, I took a job working in an area church's nursery and Father Don was human. He did not look down on anyone. He make the services fun, with laughter and merriment.
So I move to this town, and there are three choices. Catholic, which wasn't going to happen, Methodist, or Baptist. I opted for Methodist and my husband and I decided to start going ever week because having our son Christened was important to us. What a miserable experience that turned out to be. The reverend was very anti any form of gambling. He scorned people who bought raffle tickets (even for charitable purposes), lottery tickets, friendly poker games with friends, etc. But I figured it might be a Methodist principle. We attended for a couple months and then my husband's work started forcing weekend overtime. Because I stayed home with our son, we cut down to one car to save money. So weekend overtime meant I was home without a car. For three weeks while he was mandatoried, we skipped church. The next week we returned. Before the service, the reverend's wife and some of her friends were sat in front of us and made the following comment out loud so that I heard - "I don't know why those sinners bothered to return at all. It's obvious that they are doomed."
Floored, I walked out of the church and never returned. When the reverend called me to find out why we'd left, I told him and he stood up for his wife. At that point, I decided that with an attitude like that church was not for me. Over time, I've developed into an agnostic anyway. I am pretty sure there is a higher being, but I'd like evidence to prove it. Renderings of a "white" Jesus doesn't convince me. In Jerusalem, he is far more likely to be Middle Eastern. Again, I want my proof.
Then I heard another story that happened probably fifty years ago. My grandfather was the one who would go out and plow roads during the winter. Vermont winters are quiet snowy. So one Sunday morning, he had been out plowing snow since the wee hours. He made it to church and happened to fall asleep during the sermon. The pastor took him to task in front of the church for daring to fall asleep during a sermon. Church wouldn't have been held had he not been out clearing the roads, so I'm baffled. He never returned to that church.
Obviously, times haven't really changed. It leaves me to wonder, how can people like this call themselves "Christians". Tolerance is supposed to be a part of being a good Christian and I've heard far too many stories of intolerance in church to believe some churchgoers are truly any nicer than the average joe.
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