This has appeared on a doorway on Finchley Road. It seems an appropriate thing to see as I walk to and from work, since that's about how I feel by the end of most days!
Nothing much to tell about yesterday -- more book covering, book repairing, shelving, wrangling little kids in the Lower School, etc. A typical day. I wore a gray sweater to work that I'd worn in Penzance, and I became aware about halfway through the day that it didn't smell very fresh. Don't you hate it when you suddenly realize that people might be cringing as you walk away from them, wondering if your shower is out of order? That made me self-conscious for the rest of the day.
After posting my old school certificates the other day I began thinking about another episode from elementary school. I remember we did a unit in the fourth grade about a remote coral atoll in the Pacific. I couldn't immediately remember the name, but it eventually came to me -- Ifalik. I haven't thought about this in years, but I remember being very interested in life on Ifalik, which seemed like a tropical paradise with a lagoon and people eating breadfruit and that kind of thing. There was a lot of emphasis on the breadfruit.
I got to wondering why kids in rural Florida spent multiple days learning about life on Ifalik. I suppose it's just as valid as learning about life in India or Germany or anywhere else, and in fact Ifalik -- as part of the Caroline Islands in Micronesia -- was a territory administered by the United States at the time. So maybe that made it even more relevant, as a far-flung part of our own country. (It has since become independent.) I did some Googling to see if anyone else on the interwebs mentioned this specific memory from school.
I didn't find any first-hand accounts, but I did find a "Teacher's Guide to Economic Concepts" for fourth to sixth graders from 1975. On page 101, under "Division of Labor: Specialization: Interdependence," it listed a fourth grade textbook called "Regions Around the World." Page 74 of that textbook is summarized this way: "Ifalik is isolated. Its contacts with the world beyond the reef are very limited. The people meet most of their needs with things that are found on the atoll."
So my guess is, we were using that textbook. And maybe I remember the breadfruit so prominently because the whole point was to study the economy of Ifalik, which would have concerned labor and food production. It's funny what sticks in our heads, isn't it?
Addendum: Here's a post from a travel blogger who more recently visited Ifalik and a nearby island, and has some excellent photos of life there.
I would advise against "wrangling little kids in the Lower School" as this could lead to arrest and withdrawal of your retirement package. You could even be sent to Ifalik to eat breadfruit.
ReplyDeleteI said wrangling, not strangling!
DeleteI have never heard of Ifalik. I guess we didn’t use that textbook. I’d find that funny, good looking homeless guy and give him a €20 for making me smile.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a homeless guy matching that description but if I do maybe I will. LOL
DeleteI followed your link to the travel blogger's site. Stunning photos.
ReplyDeleteI love your final image here. Someone has a great sense of humour.
Yeah, it was a good joke! That travel blog is really well-done.
DeleteThat sparked a memory of watching a black and white film in primary school about a German family moving to a Pacific island. It was fascinating, especially the songs of the islanders. It must have been part of religious education as it was clearly a Missionary family. Anyway, we reenacted climbing up palm tees for quite some time in our local forest.
ReplyDeleteI guess there's so much romantic lore about the Pacific islands anyway --- from Gauguin to "Gilligan's Island" -- that we're primed as kids to be interested in stories of those locations.
DeleteIt was enlightening to read about life today on Ifalik (which I'd never heard of) It looks beautiful, but must be grindingly wearying.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem like it might be awfully tedious, but maybe not if that's all the routine you know.
DeleteI've never heard of Ifalik.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm off to find a funny, good-looking homeless guy who deserves $20.
If you find him let me know!
DeleteI had never heard of Ifalik until this morning. I guessed right about how the U.S. came into control of it though. You know it is kind of desolate when even Wikipedia doesn't have much info on it.
ReplyDeleteI think the island only has 500-something inhabitants!
DeleteWe definitely didn't have that textbook either (although my memory of what we studied in school is very tenuous at best). Are you finding it harder to do your normal tasks knowing this is the last year? I'm already feeling that way & I have at least another 4 years to go. Ha!
ReplyDeleteActually, knowing I won't have to do any of this much longer is encouraging! It gives me a little more energy to get through my least favorite aspects of the job.
DeleteI've never heard of Ifalik either. It certainly is a life so very different than mine. I wonder how many of their people leave the island for the more modern world.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I wonder, too. They must occasionally meet and marry people from surrounding islands, at the very least.
DeleteIfalik? I'll ask my 13 year old grandson if he's heard of it.
ReplyDeleteProbably not! I think it's only a fluke of my textbook at the time that I heard of it!
DeleteIf Found ... What A Classic Sign - Have A Fabulous Weekend There Brother Man
ReplyDeleteJam On ,
Cheers
Funny, right?!
DeleteYou sparked a memory of a study I made of Australian Aboriginal culture in fourth grade, we got to choose a culture far different from from our own to do a report on, I suppose to teach us the many different ways in which we humans inhabit the world. As I recall, I found more similarities than differences, can that be right?You’re right, though, the things that lodge in memory can be so random.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that culture must have seemed so exotic to you, in the same way that Ifalik did to me. And yet I'm sure there ARE more similarities than differences!
DeleteNow that's a spot I never heard of. We sure didn't learn that one in school!
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt it! It is a very random place to study (and to remember).
DeleteI've never heard of Ifalik. Nice photos of Ifalik by the travel blogger.
ReplyDeleteYour study of Ifalik seems to have stayed with you for the long term. An impression was made.
You must be counting down the days to your retirement! It won't be long.
A little less than six months. Hard to believe!
DeleteIt's hard for me to imagine living in such a place. That blog post did have some wonderful photos. My school study memories seem to dwell more on Europe and a bit on Australia. The only island territories I remember learning about were Easter Island and Hawaii. I always wanted to go to Easter Island as long as I could get there more comfortably than Thor Heyerdahl. Sadly, I never managed that.
ReplyDeleteI love that twenty pound sign.
I loved Thor Heyerdahl's books when I was a kid, and I have also always wanted to go to Easter Island. It might still happen, I suppose! I don't remember studying Australia at all.
DeleteI play some geography games that pick VERY obscure islands and atolls as the places and I never get them. I've been guilty of sniffing the armpits of various shirts just to make sure they're OK. :) My own, not other people's!
ReplyDeleteI would think one atoll would be hard to tell from another, based solely on photos or what you'd see on Google Earth. (I'm thinking of the game GeoGuessr.)
DeleteI love that last photo. Well done, whoever did it.
ReplyDeleteAs for social studies, I learned a lot about pygmies and Africa, and nothing about what Africa was actually like. When Kampala was a city, I thought people lived in the bushes. Kampala was larger than any city I had been to in 1975. Still makes me angry that I wasn't told the truth about life in the '70's in other parts of the world.
Yeah, same here. I think much of our study of overseas cultures was focused more on history than on modern life, and we wound up learning about Africa through the eyes of Henry Stanley and Cecil Rhodes rather than what it was like in the modern era!
DeleteI see in your sidebar you're reading your "holiday Dickens". I've not read that one. I still think you should read Nicholas Nickleby. I'm currently reading The Fair Maid of Perth by Scott, but will then tackle Bleak House to complete my first Classics Club list.
ReplyDeleteI will eventually get to Nicholas Nickleby. I'm trying to read some more obscure Dickens so I don't just wind up with a "greatest hits" list, you know?
DeleteI'd never even heard of Ifalik. It probably hadn't been discovered when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteHa! Well, the textbook containing information about Ifalik was published in 1970, so that might have been a bit after your elementary school years -- but not much!
DeleteI'll bet you're the only student who remembers any of this.
ReplyDeleteHa! I wonder!
DeleteI had never heard of the island either but it looks ideal, for the natives anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt DOES look ideal. It must have been chosen for study and use in the textbook because of its isolation.
DeleteInteresting. I wonder why my school didn't teach anything like that. Influe ce of Florida's military bases perhaps?
ReplyDeleteI think it went beyond Florida. That teacher's guide I found -- citing the textbook containing Ifalik -- came from South Dakota, and was compiled for the federal government, so presumably it would have been useful nationwide.
DeleteCodex: left an additional reply on a previous post.
ReplyDeleteI have never even heard of Ifalik, now I need to see if my 50 years old Atlas has it on one of its maps.
ReplyDeleteYou can find it on Google maps, but it may be too small for an Atlas.
Delete"There was a lot of emphasis on the breadfruit." This line cracked me up :) I wonder if the author of that section ever thought THAT was what a student would most recall.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the idea of breadfruit must have sounded pretty strange to me, so it stuck in my head!
Delete