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Today I took t'boys to London. We fed pigeons at Trafalgar Square and then went to the British Museum. Enduring various bouts of pre-pubescence, we nevertheless managed to see the fabled Assyrian reliefs of King Assurbanipal 
hunting lions, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon (t'sons sketched a centaur fighting a lapith), Egyptian sarcophagi and mummies and the Islamic section (which I dragged them to, all part of my new teaching interests thanks to all of you lot! -- I saw a lovely Persian manuscript there, not image-googleable, showing an all-male picnic, complete with young boy nestling up to older man).
I find mummies ethically highly problematic. I don't think it's right to be ogling dead people in a museum. I kept thinking, imagine this is my daughter or mother, and I gave her a magnificent burial, had her mummified using all the rituals, sent her on her way in a ritual and in the context of a deep belief system, hidden her safely away in a never-to-be-opened tomb -- and now she's lying in a glass case in some stone building in England, goggled at by bored tourists with camcorders. I wouldn't like it. It is very disrespectful and not right. I know that there has been an issue over this with, e.g., native American corpses being kept in museums. Some of those had to be taken out and reburied. But the ancient Egyptians have no modern group to lobby for them. Still, it's an issue of humanity and human-ness.
I'm not sure whom I've told about this online but we are still traumatised after our visit last week to the private school we had been contemplating for t'prepubescent one. The headmaster was an absolute pig, subjected t'ppb one to an unnecessary and humiliating impromptu interview, has no idea how to deal with children, has no vision of what education means beyond grade-A GCSEs, and embodied the worst of the Anglo-Saxon private-school-class system.
Heh.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
badgermonkey would perhaps say, 'I told you so'. Still, though, we're still putting him in for the exams because he's all geared up for it now. The sad thing is he liked the headmaster: he hasn't got the nouse to see that he was being dissed. But I saw it. At first, I just felt disturbed, and later I felt outraged: how dare anyone do this to MY SON?
This was, of course, before he started driving me up the wall with ppb shenanigans on today's trip. But we're on a mission now: he's going to get culture and knowledge stuffed into him, whether he wants it or not.
But god, it's going to turn me into a wreck. Hello, Kevin!!! (possibly only intelligible to my fellow UK-dwellers)
hunting lions, the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon (t'sons sketched a centaur fighting a lapith), Egyptian sarcophagi and mummies and the Islamic section (which I dragged them to, all part of my new teaching interests thanks to all of you lot! -- I saw a lovely Persian manuscript there, not image-googleable, showing an all-male picnic, complete with young boy nestling up to older man).I find mummies ethically highly problematic. I don't think it's right to be ogling dead people in a museum. I kept thinking, imagine this is my daughter or mother, and I gave her a magnificent burial, had her mummified using all the rituals, sent her on her way in a ritual and in the context of a deep belief system, hidden her safely away in a never-to-be-opened tomb -- and now she's lying in a glass case in some stone building in England, goggled at by bored tourists with camcorders. I wouldn't like it. It is very disrespectful and not right. I know that there has been an issue over this with, e.g., native American corpses being kept in museums. Some of those had to be taken out and reburied. But the ancient Egyptians have no modern group to lobby for them. Still, it's an issue of humanity and human-ness.
I'm not sure whom I've told about this online but we are still traumatised after our visit last week to the private school we had been contemplating for t'prepubescent one. The headmaster was an absolute pig, subjected t'ppb one to an unnecessary and humiliating impromptu interview, has no idea how to deal with children, has no vision of what education means beyond grade-A GCSEs, and embodied the worst of the Anglo-Saxon private-school-class system.
Heh.
badgermonkey would perhaps say, 'I told you so'. Still, though, we're still putting him in for the exams because he's all geared up for it now. The sad thing is he liked the headmaster: he hasn't got the nouse to see that he was being dissed. But I saw it. At first, I just felt disturbed, and later I felt outraged: how dare anyone do this to MY SON?This was, of course, before he started driving me up the wall with ppb shenanigans on today's trip. But we're on a mission now: he's going to get culture and knowledge stuffed into him, whether he wants it or not.
But god, it's going to turn me into a wreck. Hello, Kevin!!! (possibly only intelligible to my fellow UK-dwellers)