Upon further review

 

Back in Southeast Asia when I taught evening classes at an English language school, I made it a habit to set aside some time at the beginning of each class period to answer any questions that the students might have generated in the time since our last class.

But before the class period started at all it was my compulsion to clean the blackboard perfectly from end to end (they were very long, because in the daytime they packed 60 children in those schoolrooms) and even in the corners. The blackboards were very bad quality, painted in a glossy black on uneven masonry, and the chalk was cheap – it crumbled on me, and it wrote very badly. My sponge was old and ratty, and I wetted it in a great tile bin of standing monsoon water that smelled and that hatched mosquitoes. If the chalkboard was too wet after wiping down, then the chalk wouldn’t write at all, so we sat around and chatted while it dried.

Then when class periods started it was my habit to write up in one corner the day and date, American style, and then an outline of that class’s plan. And the outline and plan always began with time for questions. It was my belief that if we weren’t generating questions then the students had not been engaged enough or had not been challenged enough.

But most of the time the questions were about curiosities and not about our studies. What is the difference between American English and British English? The pronunciation and some vocabulary and one is old and the other new. Which one should I study? American. What music should I listen to? ABBA and the Beatles. Have you ever eaten dog meat? Not yet. What does ‘doc tai’ mean? Dictator. What are the parts of the body? Dimple, earlobe, birthmark, beard and goatee and mustache (they liked those), mole, butt (they liked that the best), eyebrow, beauty mark. What does ‘dieu’ mean? Untranslatable (something like showy-offy).

Well before that in the very first class of the course we had begun with names. We’d go around the room and each student would stand at attention and give their name in a complete sentence. No further introduction was requested since there wasn’t a student out of all of them who could speak that sentence without hurting my ears. Because the pronunciation and grammar were so bad.

As the courses went on we would progress through the knock-off textbooks very slowly because, following a little question time, we would review the previous class, and sometimes the review took up the majority of the class period, which was agreeable to me since I am of the opinion that arriving at competency in learning and training – and I believe that learning is basically training – is very much dependent on reviewing and reviewing again.

Now is the end of gardening season, and I look at it like this: The time between gardening class periods is a whole long year. That’s the length of time between trying to learn something, the questioning when you fail, and reviewing when you are successful.

This spring my questions were, for example, Are the seeds ever going to sprout? Some yes, some no. Will I have enough water? Yes. Will the fruit fruit at all? No, except for three lonesome Whitney crabapples, three lonesome pears, and a bunch of blueberries. Will any of my pollinators come up? Yes.

And then in review, I’m reminded of the importance of weeding early. Of the necessity to cage the tomatoes solidly. How it is necessary to keep watering newly transplanted plants or cuttings. How quickly the zucchini and squash and beans will ripen and over-ripen.

Eventually there’s some room in my soggy, spongy noggin for something new. Maybe, I’m starting to think, the ratios and numbers for N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) are not as important as some would have you believe. Blueberries prefer very acidic soil, rich in iron. Apples like a pH about .5 or 1 degree lower (more acidic) than other common plants and trees. Tulip bulbs can be divided in summer and replanted in fall. Timothy is the easiest of the non-lawn grasses to sow. Hot peppers (banana or Hot Portugal or Garden Salsa) stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon and fried or grilled are delicious. Fried green tomatoes, floured and fried hot and fast to a brown, are delicious with salt. Zucchini the same. Pruning is what gives a gardener the greenest of thumbs.

The only difference is that I don’t know it all with regards to gardening, but when I was a young man, I knew it all about English. Plus, there are less than a handful of gardening acquaintances in my life now, whereas in Southeast Asia there were 25 smiling, respectful, polite, nice people, of the full range of ages, twice a night, six days a week, laughing all together at my jokes and my mocking of the stupid, sappy movie “Titanic”. I couldn’t find “Straw Dogs” on VHS over there. That one generates a lot of questions, and could stand for some further review. Although most people would find it untranslatable.