Hah! They both know he can’t read!

Canada hates the Illiterates. Canada has been at war with the people of Illitria for decades and shows no sign of slowing its genocidal rage. Or something. Whatever.

Anyway, this time we’ve got a confrontation between this one teacher and the school trustees who don’t like how she is teaching the kids to read. This one guy is really upset, so the teacher asks him to read something (“It is from the Bible.”) that his kid had read. But the guy is shamed into admitting he can’t read. One of his fellow trustees is just gleefully pleased about it too. “Why don’t you just READ it then?” he says, just totally sarcasming his ass off. We never really get to see what happens next, because they all turn into a painting, but if they hadn’t I guess we’re expected to assume that he was shown his place and learned to respect the opinions of others who know more about the subject at hand than he does. The other possibility is that he was so embarrassed that he ended up lashing out at everyone in a hateful, and possibly violent, outburst.

For that matter, we’re never told what the teaching methods the trustees had a problem with either. For all I know, that teacher could be a horrible one and the trustees could have been fully justified. “If they read a word incorrectly, I stab their hands so they associate it with pain. When the read a word correctly, I administer the cocaine!” We don’t know. This commercial could be a tragedy.

Four and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake. This Heritage Minute does feel pretty iconic as far as my opinion of the Heritage Minutes is concerned. “Both of you know I cannot read a word” is a good quotable line, though I can’t think of a million places to use it in everyday life. Unless two people are asking you to read something I guess…

  1. Maybe they don’t turn into a painting but are using it for travel like those kids that would travel by going into stamps in the great movie from the late eighties ” Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller.” I’m giving this review a review of six out of six pieces of my reviewing system cake for reminding me of great movies from my childhood.

  2. but if they hadn’t I guess we’re expected to assume that he was shown his place and learned to respect the opinions of others who know more about the subject at hand than he does.

    Yeah, this is another one of those hilariously heavy-handed (and thus typically Canadian) “moral lessons”. But I still like this Heritage Moment overall.

    For that matter, we’re never told what the teaching methods the trustees had a problem with either.

    Ha, ha… yeah. It’s pretty hilarious that this Heritage Moment basically exists to glorify 19th-century schoolmarms (which is fine), but doesn’t actually make a lot of sense in and of itself.

  3. Well, if I can inadvertently cause someone to be nostalgic about movies from their youth, I’ve done well. I don’t expect they’ll travel too far in that painting, though. Probably just get stuck in some museum.

    And for the record, I think my site went on for far too long before the word schoolmarm was used.

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