The golden rule of teaching

If the golden rule of teaching is don't let children draw nazi swastikas on their art, I've broken it. Whoops. I was teaching about indian art at the time and showing a slideshow of pretty indian patterns one of which had the swastika in the background which I didn't notice until a child said 'isn't that a Nazi sign?' I explained that it was a Hindu sign before it was a Nazi Sign according to wikkipedia where all truth is found 'it is one of 108 symbols of the Hindu deity vishnu and represents the suns rays' Then they asked if they could do swastikas in their collage, and I thought in my head 'yeah lets bring it back for the Hindus' when I should have thought 'would the headmistress want to display this work in school' and so I said yes. I hoped that my 'yes' came accross as 'yes but it's fround upon' but I don't think it did. Oh well, sorry teachers, sorry parents sorry Jews.

On a more positive note I tried to start a little revolution in a school yesterday. I heard some kids complaining that they couldn't paint very well because their brushes we're too thick. This is one the things that annoys me most in life, when children are given rubbish materials and therefore create rubbish art and get fustrated. I overheard one year 3 girl say that they could write to the school council about it, so I encouraged them to do 2 peices of art one with a good thin brush and one with a thick brush and give it to the school council explaining their case. They got really excited and wanted everyone in the class to sign a letter about it. I'm well up for petitions and protests, (in secondary school I once got in a lot of trouble for my protest against our lesbian PE teacher and the lack of shower curtains.) They didn't have a really thin good brush so I gave them my best one for the cause.