Word: poles
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...visit two schools, one near Guangzhou, the other in Beijing. At both places, two teachers handle a class of approximately 40 four-year-olds. Instructive slogans adorn the walls: THE NAIL THAT STICKS OUT GETS HAMMERED DOWN and THE LONG POLE GETS SAWED OFF. Creativity, experimentation, even simple play are discouraged. Handed blocks, the children erect structures pictured in workbooks; once completed, the buildings are torn down and put up again and again until the time allotted for block-building expires. And "No talking, while you're building," a teacher scolds. Or while you're eating, for that matter...
...uninitiated, the sport may seem ridiculously simple: take a long pole ; with a line, attach a fake bug and toss it at some unsuspecting fish. But the disciplines involved in this seemingly simple act take years to master. Novices often quit in disgust or spend hours on the river, pleading to heaven for the strike of just one trout. Eventually, with practice, the casts begin to land right, without a splash, and then one day a trout rises to examine the offering -- and strikes...
...have heroes so that, by inoculation, we will learn to distrust heroes. Baseball idols peddling autographs at $15 a scribble provide this useful disillusion today. A few decades ago, the clay feet -- frostbitten, of course -- were those of polar explorers. Wally Herbert, who reached the North Pole by dogsled in 1969, writes knowledgeably about two of the most fascinating of the fakers: Robert E. Peary and Dr. Frederick Cook, archrivals in heroics and fraud...
...Noose of Laurels is a fascinating account of what might be called the psychopathology of exploration. It presents not just the evidence of its subjects' misdeeds -- or nondeeds -- but the details of two extraordinary lives. Despite his claims, Cook never really tried to reach the North Pole. In 1908 he simply set up a camp with two Eskimo boys near the shore of the Arctic Ocean, stayed there for a number of days, then returned home and announced success. Peary tried repeatedly, with all his energy, and in 1909, at the age of 53, nearly made it. But the speeds...
...adoring public did not know this, and his loyal wife Jo may have put aside suspicions, Peary had an Eskimo family. So did Henson. In one of the book's most touching passages, Herbert reports that in May 1971, Peary's Eskimo grandson Peter Peary reached the North Pole by dogsled with Avatak Henson, grandson of Matthew Henson...