Christopher,
I'm hard-pressed to understand how Duffy's poem----not what others may say
about it or assume she means by it----nails education as producing violence.
 Her one reference to school is that of the speaker's smashing a fly against
the window with her/his thumb.  Next, the 'speaker' says:  "We did that at
school."  [So, I suppose, the 'speaker' and her/his classmates went about
smashing flies against windows with their thumbs.]  And after that:
 "Shakespeare".  My guess is that most folk conclude that reading and/or
performing Shakespeare's plays in school led the students to smash flies
with their thumbs.  Which, as everyone knows, leads to sociopathic
behaviours, and eventually to carrying knives for human-sportkilling.

If somehow we _know_ thru Duffy's words, other than those in this poem, that
she believes the UK [or perhaps any country's] educational system feeds
violence, then we have the foundation of an exciting debate.  Until then,
though, I don't see a connection in her poem to the notion of violence being
spawned in the schools.  I see a young sociopath's 'thinking' as Duffy seeks
to 'sound like' her/him.

I'm not trying to make a point about WHETHER schools train kids for
violence.  Just trying to figure out how one could conclude that _that_ poem
seeks to make the school-to-violence connection.

A notable difference between young Brits who've recently knifed one another
to death and young USAmericans who've killed others is that the Americans
used artillery.  America, much to our sorrow, is a gun-toting nation.  The
comparable figures for homicide in our two nations is horribly damning to
Americans' 'acceptance' of an Armed Populace.  I feel that Brits may not
fully realise the pervasive violence that Americans live with.  Here,
citizens are free to arm themselves [with the requisite license for their
guns], and they do arm themselves.  We seem to've wed ourselves to the
Cowboy image.  It would be much more historically apt to see ourselves as
Pioneers, or as Farmers, but those images don't sell films and novels as
successfully as cowboy movies and books have in the past.

I've moved off topic rashly, but wanted to add a dimension of experience
that may not be known by some folks in the UK.

Thus, reading about Duffy and violence in the UK at once causes our
[American] group of horrors to arise anew, an impotence at how to abort
those horrors, and a careful attention to how Brits seek to see and solve
their own problem of violence.

I find that the United Kingdom, for all its loud and continuous
self-criticisms, has 'handled' important social concerns more wisely and
pragmatically than we Americans have.

Those of you who know your country's history better than I do can attribute
causes to the effects of violence or disagree with my views.  I welcome the
exchange of information and opinions.  _More information_ is nearly always
good.

hon. joodles





P'raps there's more of the poem somewhere that I'm not finding, and it
reveals more details of schools' violence-teaching.

2008/9/14 Christopher Walker <[log in to unmask]>

> <snip>
> Do you want me to take this indirect 'dig' as exactly that, then,
> Christopher----indirect?  Why don't you just rebut me?  Indirection's too
> easy, and it's sneaky.
> You wrote:  "Better certainly than the limbo of anthologies and set books
> or
> (say) the musical conveyance of analogy." [JP]
> <snip>
>
> The 'dig' (though hardly the word I would use) was at CAD, not at you:
> different song and very different subject.
>
> RAI and Vatican Radio took a different view of the same song, *God is
> Dead*,
> but both assumed it was *real*. Those who would drop CAD's *Education for
> Leisure* are making the same assumption, that it is a *real* precursor of
> violence at some level. What interests me is precisely that (re)cognition,
> which may be social, readerly or both.
>
> To make my point a little clearer, what I'm saying is that Duffy is
> (broadly, implicitly) making the characterisation *This experience is just
> a
> little bit like that one*, *This speaking voice in the poem is just a
> little
> bit like certain people's thoughts*:
>
> Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
> I have had enough of being ignored [...]
> [...]
>
> I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
> We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
> another language and now the fly is in another language.
> [...]
>
> There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
> and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.
> [...]
>
> That's where *analogy* comes in and I think it shrinks and sidelines what's
> being said to the point where a perverse reading, that the poem encourages
> violence, is really no more forced than making other sorts of sense of all
> that dressing up.
>
> There is a postscript to my *God is Dead* reference BTW, which may also be
> germane. Francesco Guccini, now in his mid 60s, still sings the piece ('But
> I think / that this generation of mine is ready / for a new world and a
> hope
> that's just been born') as though he were in fact still young, whereas a
> younger performer (Fiorella Mannoia, now in her 50s) sings it slightly more
> plausibly as though it is out of her hands ('_your_ generation'). This is
> getting off the point, but I hope you can see what I mean. Nostalgia is
> just
> another sort of dressing up.
>
> CW
> _______________________________________________
>
> 'How to speak a different language and still be understood?
> This is *communication* but we might call it politics, or we
> might call it life.' (Judith Revel)
>