July 17, 2000
Lunch with Haji - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- In my continued effort to emulate “real” newspaper columnists - today homage to Jan Wong and her infamous “Lunch with...” columns, that appear in the Toronto Globe and Mail.
Her columns have made her one of the most hated writers in the country as she takes a well-known figure and takes them out for lunch. Sadly, the interviewee is lunch. I won’t be so cruel, but kindly let me dwell on the lunch I had last week with my pal, Haji Gentleman. Haj, is not famous, nor well known, but somewhat the inspiration for today’s diatribe.
Haji is friends with a few of you out there in Commentary land, but to those who know nothing of Haji, then lemme say he used to go to Tupper and for the last 3 years calls the town of Vanderhoof home. Haji left Vancouver 3 years ago, to live amongst the peace and tranquillity of mid-northern BC.
We found ourselves at a McDonald’s and we chatted about the old days at Dickens. (Actually, he spent some of the time bitching about his setting and how boring it actually is.) We spoke of the folks we knew and what ever happened to so and so. Amazingly, although in hickville, he’s kept a breast to wherever all our old Dickens colleagues are.
Charles Dickens Elementary was my elementary school and as I leave my high school, it’s fun to compare the partings. I spent four years at Dickens, (after spending a previous 4 at Dickens Annex,)and I liked it there, but it’s a hell of a lot different than other elementary schools. When I got to Tupper, and was finding myself comparing schools, we did things awfully weird at Dickens. We did things like call our teachers by their first name and stuff of the sort. It was a real shudder when I had to address people Mr. and Ms. at Tupper. Five years later, I’ve finally gotten used to it.
Haji was one of the few classmates from CD that came with me to Tupper. Our teacher, had tried to get the kids to avoid the feter schools and go to mini-schools like the Montessori program at Gladstone or Ideal at Churchill. O’Ryan Thiem (whatever happened to him?,) Jackie Pierre and Azeema Jamal were the few that avoided the offers, including me of course. A lot of my close friends had ended up going to Gladstone, as that was the only logistical choice. The others, found themselves on a bus for most of their high school careers.
For me, Dickens was a neat place to grow up in. It was strange, there, but with 20/20 hindsight, they afforded a kid like me a hell of a lot of freedom. I got to learn about stuff I wanted to, and looking back I’m finally figuring out it’s a hell of a way to learn. Dickens tried very hard to teach its students differently. It employed a lot of those, dare I say, leftist methods, like that of Dr. Maria Montessori, who preached academic freedom rather than the boring and tried way of teaching from a text book or the more orthodox ways we are used to. The teachers at Dickens, as top notch as they were, were rarely what we’d call conventional. They did things their own way, rarely looking at curriculum and taught us to learn things at our own pace and to experience life.
The conventional conservative in me, shudders at the thought I gave in to such bohemian procedures, but it truly changed me. Sure, we couldn’t call people names and make fun of our classmates, but we got to express views and affect the teaching of curriculum. Rarely did one feel that a teacher was a teacher and the students, students. It was a level playing field, except the continued adherence to pandering to the political correctness that I have grown to detest so much . (That’s another column.)
Now, Dickens was not all that. It was a lot of other things too. The teachers there, particularly Leslie Clancy and Ailsa Craig, took to my weirdness and felt particularly younger, when I talked of people like Frank Sinatra or Steve Allen.
The switch from Dickens to Tupper, to say the least, was amazing. To go from relative freedom, to something a tad more autocratic and constipated, was taken with a certain level of shell-shock. A lot, of my old Dickens colleagues either went with the flow or found themselves drowning. The academics of Dickens and Tupper were miles apart, and had I the chutzpah then, I’d have done something to note the utter discrepancies.
A year ago, I went back to Dickens and had a little heated exchange with my old teacher Ailsa Craig. Ailsa was one of these bohemians who in her late ‘40s had a son and continued to smoke, I only hope cigarettes. She was a great... now I wouldn’t say influence. She noticed what I was interested in, and rather than stifle it went along with it, ever so supportively. I am forever grateful.
Anyways, Ailsa was, and still is, of the belief that students should be passed regardless of their academic standing. A kid who’d have been set back a year, in say a Livingstone or a Brock, would be passed at Dickens for no other reason than they should be with their age group. That’s baloney, if I’ve ever seen baloney.
Meeting up with Haji after all of these years was fun. We talked about stuff, and he even took me into the nether regions of East Vancouver. He had to meet his dad at Tom Wither’s house, who lives just below 12th and Fraser, and it was neat to see Tom after 5 years. Wither, a bright and interesting fellow was the source of many laughs, my last year at Dickens.
After going through the withdrawal symptoms of leaving Tupper, I am reminded of when I left Dickens 5 years ago. I walked out of that red bricked building on some June day in 1995 and never much looked back. I had some great times and some wonderful memories, but I knew if I felt the slightest sombre, I wouldn’t stop. I walked out of Tupper, some June day this year, 2000, and I looked back a bit. These things never fully sink in until later. 5 years later, I miss Dickens, but going back will not yield back the same. Going back to Tupper, next year, let alone in 5 years, will not be the same either. Like the British, stiff upper lip and onwards.
Questions and comments may be sent to: editor@thecommentary.ca
An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .