scissors-woman vs. the teacher
Posted by dermot on December 11, 2008 at 1:58 pm
This was originally written in a discussion thread requesting memories about the best teachers from our childhood. The short essay grew a bit, and although it’s slightly off-topic, it is relevant to the animation industry in general…
First, the worst teacher I ever had - for TWO long and awful years. Libel laws prevent her name being used. I was in her class from age 7 through 9 - and the only thing she taught me was how to wet the bed - a lesson I unlearned after being liberated from her classroom.
This odious woman hated children with a passion. If anyone misbehaved, she would physically punish every child in the class. She segregated the kids into three groups based on academic ability (or her perception thereof). The students were assigned into groups A, B and C - so at least she taught us primate dominance hierarchy.
Oh - I was in group “B”.
Years after I escaped from that school, she lost her temper (even by her standards) and threw a pair of scissors across the room. They struck a 7 year old boy in the forehead.
She took a hiatus from ‘education’, but returned a few years later, after things had quietened down (and scar tissue healed). As she walked across the schoolyard, one of the kids yelled out: “SCISSORS WOMAN!!!”
Where is “scissors-woman” now? She’s the principal of that school - a job she acquired through stabbing a sick colleague in the back (metaphorically).
Enough of that moral abortion.
My best teacher was the man who taught us after two years of Scissors-torture. I will name him: Sean Bonner - a real human being, originally from Donegal. He was like a character from the John Ford movie “The Quiet Man”. Mr. Bonner was a man who liked to drink - a LOT - and yet, in spite of this, the year spent in his class taught me more than all the other years in school combined.
He taught without giving the impression of trying. There was no coercion, and no fear.
He had something that Scissors woman didn’t have, and never will have: He had class. And he really did like children, in the best sense.
Irish schoolkids learn the Irish language from the age of 4. It’s not an easy language at the best of times. When asking for a bathroom break, the 4 year olds were told to say “Lig Amach Me”…which we took to mean “Can I go to the toilet”.
Well, when we finally made it to Mr. Bonner’s class, the first kid who wanted to go the to toilet asked:
“Lig Amach Me”.
Sean exploded in laughter, ran into the adjacent classroom, and returned with one of his friends - a Kerryman - also very fluent in Irish.
“Say it again! Say it again!” Bonner said. The poor kid did, and both teachers cackled.
“Sir, what does it mean?” someone asked.
“Let me out” was the answer. As it turned out, the correct expression was “An bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leathreas?” which our teachers had decided was beyond the powers of 4 year olds. Nobody had seen fit to correct us (certainly not scissors-woman).
During the one year spent in Mr. Bonner’s class, I learnt the mathematical tables - in TWO WEEKS. Later we had art classes, where he knew enough to teach me about basic perspective - at the age of NINE - not bad. On the classroom wall were hung maps of the larger constellations - Orion and Ursa Major. One evening, when walking home with my mother, I saw Orion in the sky - the beginning of a lifelong love affair with Astronomy.
Even at the age of nine, it was well known that he drank too much. Once he was absent from class for a week - the rumours usually involved a particularly heroic binge. During that time, the Headmaster filled in - a pale shade by comparison. It was the longest week of 1978. When he returned the next Monday, the class breathed a sigh of relief!
We all assumed that once we moved on to the next year, we’d be quickly forgotten, as another class of 40 brats would take our place. Two years later we were in the yard at breaktime when Sean walked by. “Hello Dermot, Gerard, Jimmy…” he named us all.
“You remember us?” one of the group asked, astonished.
“I don’t forget my friends.” he replied.
Mr. Bonner died a few years later, from motor Neurone Disease - the same condition that’s afflicted Stephen Hawking. Scissors-woman is still alive though, still inflicting her demonic presense on innocent kids.
Life isn’t fair though. Another lesson.
Years later I entered the animation industry. There, I found studios where the walls dripped with fear. It’s something you feel indirectly, but it’s there, unmistakable. These places were the spiritual cousins of scissors-woman - environments where people were motivated by fear. Fear of making mistakes; fear of failing to match the arbitrary standards set by the bosses, fear of being ridiculed in front of co-workers because a drawing was insufficiently glorious. Finally, after 8 years of toxic work environments, I landed in a studio run by human beings. In spite of this, a person who has known nothing but abuse still expects it, no matter how nice people seem. One day, as I stood behind one of the Directors who was correcting my drawing (and waiting for the usual snarky put-down) a post-it note on his desk caught my eye. It was a list of DOs and DONTs on how to run a successful business. One in particular jumped off the paper:
“REMOVE ALL FEAR.”
The amazing thing is this: my work, which had been stagnant for years, suddenly improved. Within 12 months, I went from being a mediocre animator to directing million dollar interactive games.
Funny how things work… if fear really produced the best results, we’d all be saluting Kim Jong Il, glorious leader of North Korea. He’d have liked scissors woman…and he wouldn’t have liked Sean Bonner one little bit.
The ancient Roman historian Plutarch once wrote that “The mind is not a vessel to be filled - it is a fire to be lit.”
Teachers who fail to understand this axiom should be purged from the system, along with the motley crew of sadists and child-haters who continue to do damage young unformed minds, day after day. As to the directors who run their studios like concentration camps: Put down the copy of “The Illusion of Life”, and stop pretending that you’re the next Walt Disney. One of him was more than enough.
Thanks.
4 Responses to “scissors-woman vs. the teacher”
There are appalling teachers and appalling studios. There are appalling people, period.
You have to seek out the good ones. Unfortunately young children, the ones most at risk, have little opportunity to do so. I had a teacher like Scissors Woman (she might have been called Slaps-Boy-In-Face-With-Ruler-Woman) and the damage she did lasted for many years…
You had the misfortune to work at a studio that had an infamous reputation toward its staff, particularly its Irish staff. Others were and are better.
I’ve never understood why people use fear tactics to get results, when it is so much easier to use rewards. But then, the use of fear appears to be a constant throughout human history. Too bad.
The fear is a manifestation of their own sense of inferiority. They see life as zero-sum; one has to gain at the cost of another.
The situation at the Fear-Studio didn’t feel so bad at the time. It was my first job, and having nothing to compare it to, it was easy to regard it as normal. Most work environments are horrible anyway.
The sad aspect was the waste of talent and energy - which was capable of so much more than those second rate cartoons. There was one director - I’ll call him DK, who was a complete drunk. He laughed at one of the guys for saying “Good morning DK” as they passed in the corridor…as if it was an affront to be SPOKEN TO by one of the paddies.
Later, I saw this individual humiliate one of the animators by singing his complaints to him as follows:
“Why did you animate it like that Joe?”
“Sorry DK.”
“I to-ld you not tooooo….”
“Sorry DK.”
“Don’t you listennnnn…..”
“Sorry DK.”
I fled at that point. It was embarassing to witness. On another occasion, DK drew excrement (with a 6B pencil) on one of the keyframes of a female animator. She snapped - finally, someone did - and snatched the drawing out of his hand.
“Thanks, DK. Thanks a lot.”
She stormed out of the room, slammed the door, and went back to her desk. Then, she’d realised what she’d done, and sat in dread, waiting to be fired for “insubordination”. They liked that word.
Minutes later, DK appeared - and was like a puppy dog. Apologised profusely, and left.
Over time you learn that you have to stand up for yourself - otherwise you’ll be no better than a slave. Better to lose a job and go hungry than have your spine surgically extracted by a drunken sot.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Hi Dermot
Merry global financial crisis to one and all.
Thanks for the scissors woman essay.
I start my next animation job in January.
I’ve been a free lance but have now landed a job teaching animation. The studio jobs are hard to come by in this drought stricken part of the globe.
I’m not a very experienced animator and wonder if that is crucial in being an animation teacher? The teachers I’ve had that taught the best were the ones with passion for the subject and an interest in students. For example, a teacher does not need to be an environmental scientist to be passionate about environmental science. I hope this hypothesis is true.
I’m really excited about sharing my interest in traditional animation principles with my unsuspecting students.
My animation teacher directed me to your blog.
You have given me some thoughts to ponder.
Thanks
Oh, my animation teacher, Ian. He, in the view of some quieter animation students, may heve had an aura of ’scissor-woman’ about him. But what powered him is his, sometimes explosive, ranting passion for animation and that it got taught properly. The best lessons came from questioning him and taking a contrary point of view. Once the debate fired up the best information was revealed. We are older and physically larger than 9 year olds, so I wouldn’t advise this approach for anyone under 18 reading this blog. Ian’s blog: http://animresource.blogspot.com/
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