My Best Teaching Is One-on-One

一対一が僕のベスト

Of course, I team teach and do special lessons, etc.

当然、先生方と共同レッスンも、特別レッスンの指導もします。

But my best work in the classroom is after the lesson is over --
going one-on-one,
helping individual students with their assignments.

しかし、僕の一番意味あると思っている仕事は、講義が終わってから、
一対一と
個人的にその課題の勉強を応援することです。

It's kind of like with computer programs, walking the client through hands-on.
The job isn't really done until the customer is using the program.

まあ、コンピュータプログラムにすると、得意先の方に出来上がった製品を体験させるようなことと思います。
役に立たない製品はまだ製品になっていないと同様です。

Sunday, February 20, 2022

Are You Meeting with Acephobia? Do People Say You Must Be Asexual? Unemotional?

(This is for people who get questioned over their lack of interest in sex.)

Don't ever believe that you don't have human emotions. Whoever tells you that is either lying for their own power or gain, or trying to use metalanguage you don't use to say something else. 

You can hope for their sake it's the latter, but that's not your problem. Just don't believe them.

The whole social conversation about sex is so skewed that you really can't tell what people are trying to say any more. People claim to be gay or lesbian or even bi-sexual, and yet they claim not to be practicing -- not sexually active. 

Maybe I'm being obtuse, but how can they know if they even have preferences if they don't? It's like saying you prefer the 68000 over the 80x86 (microprocessors) when you've never programmed either. Or like saying you prefer caviar to foie gras when you can't afford either. 

(Okay, the expensive food analogy reveals something about me that some might call bias. Cancel that. Even the CPU analogy will meet criticism, unless you understand that, in my opinion, low-level computer programming is a hobby everyone should try. Hmm. Every analogy I can think of falls a bit short.)

So some people claim to affiliate with the cause of the LGBQT community as a matter of principle more than practice. 

There are other people who claim to be defending the rights of the homosexually inclined, but they themselves are practicing bi-sexual. What do they mean?

Machiavelli and de Sade were not the first, nor were they the last, to assign far more meaning, and less, to sex and gender than can be justified.

It can be sort of understandable sometimes. For too many people, the hormonal flux is the only thing they've experienced that makes them feel good about either themselves or life. Maybe nobody ever hugged them except to try to force them to feel better. Or maybe words of praise were always attached to conditions. Or some other such. So many ways we pervert natural affection.So many ways we pervert love.

There are many ways to express human affection, so many colors. I think that affection which is dependent on gender, on rank in society, on social affiliation, on family connection, or on similar external stuff tends to be tinged with gray. 

Affection of vibrant colors and tints will be born of caring about the other person as a person, not as a member of some artificial group.

Anyway, human emotion has lots of colors. Lots more colors than human sexuality, even.

(And the rainbow flag is now often being used to mute those, even. If you wave it, please be careful not to use it to mute others' colors.)

(Originally published in my talk-about-sex blog: https://joel-rees-about-sex.blogspot.com/2022/02/are-you-meeting-acephobia-do-people-say.html.)