from stephanie young:

"THE FRIENDSHIP BOARD

The mirrors in the rehearsal studio last night were covered up with "hand portraits," painted by the daytime class. On the table by the door were a series of postits with student names, for use the next day. Instructions said "Put your name on the feeling board next to the way you feel."

I didn't get a close look at the feeling board, but I agree with myself that it would have made a good quiz.

I did examine the friendship board up close. Student names ran across the top and within each child's section, colored papers were taped to the board. The key said:

Green Paper = Questions
Pink Paper = Offers
Lavendar Paper = Compliment
Yellow Paper = Comment

Several names had far more paper below them than others, and I assumed those children were more popular, and then got a little sad thinking about why some kids might have more or less paper (questions, offers, compliments, comments) to their name than others. But when I got closer, I saw that each paper represented something the child had said to a classmate or teacher, instead of what had been said to them. The more verbal a person was the more popular they appeared on the friendship board. Another actor and I started to trace conversations ("It's a blog!" I shouted) and the categories unravelled. While compliments were pretty stable ("Nice shirt!" "Pretty Shirt!") the questions and comments were all mixed up. Many were variations on "Would you like to play with me," but also detailed exceptions, i.e. "________ informs _________ that the square root of 144 is 12." All of this was of course mediated by the teachers, who write down what the kids say since the group isn't yet writing the language on their one. One point of the friendship board, then, seems to be a patterning and organization of social (verbal) interactions."

"The fixed categories into which life is divided must always hold. These things are normal - essential to every activity. But they exist - but not as dead dissections.

The curriculum of knowledge cannot but be divided into the sciences, the thousand and one groups of data, scientific, philosophic or whatnot - as many as there exist in Shakespeare - things that make him appear the university of all ages.

But this is not the thing. In the galvanic category of - The same things exist, but in a different condition when energized by the imagination.

The whole field of education is affected - There is no end of detail that is without significance.

Education would begin by placing in the mind of the student the nature of knowledge - in the dead state and the nature of the force which may energize it."

- William Carlos Williams, Spring and All