I was a dedicated super in your apartment and you chose to fire me rather than deal with the truth…you are a slum lord. I guess it’s easy to be a prick when you hate Canadians…then again you also hate the Chinese and how did you put it…those women who are so ugly they have to cover their body’s with a rag! You hate Canadians but you sure love their rent. My kids would like their piano and drums and clothes back and I’d like my furniture and clothes too! —Justice
This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2015.
A “dedicated super?” You should have stayed in school.
Oh, Hey MontrealMan, you know that I’m always on board with the whole “stay in school” thing . . . but a good super is hard to find.
To do it well is a really tough job: you have to deal with some absolutely unbelievable things, and you have a lot of people making demands from all different directions at all hours of the day and night.
I have no sympathy for slum landlords, but a good super is worth his/her weight in gold.
The husband/wife team that keeps my building ship-shape are truly candidates for, well, if not sainthood, then maybe some other kind of award.
A really good super actually has spent a lot of time in school and training–ours has to know about carpentry, plumbing, heating, electrical, and a really quirky (some would say dangerous) old boiler that I am surprised is still running.
So yeah, always remind the kiddies about the benefits of staying in school . . but don’t be too quick to dis the super, because ours really is “SUPER.”
But the super under review was unhappy with his lot with the slumlord. It can happen elsewhere. There is only one thing for him to do to do – seek another line of work. That, of course, will involve going back to school. He should think of studying Philosophy.
Now that I think of it, our previous super was also a wonderful older gentleman who had been a bit of a theologian in his previous work.
We should never assume that a person who is doing difficult manual work for their income isn’t also knowledgeable in more abstract or academic fields.
(Being a super does pay better than theology, and would still leave some time at the end of the day for pursuit of more thoughtful and speculative studies.)
Staying in school doesn’t necessarily make you intelligent.
No, but it can give you access to some very interesting and highly-focused people that you would never have the opportunity to meet or work with otherwise.
Education is as much about connections between people as it is about the discovery and transfer of knowledge.
RSVPS
:Angel of the Tarsands (07/11, 4:02PM)
Did I ever assume that a person who is doing difficult manual work for their income cannot also be knowledgeable in more abstract or academic studies? Can you show me where I made that assumption? You must always support your assumptions with reasons/evidence.
:Senor Campana (5:01PM)
That statement is incoherent. There is no cause-effect relationship between intelligence and staying in school. There may be a statistical correlation between the two but not a cause-effect relationship.
Angel of the Tarsands (9:13PM)
To say that education is about connections between people is to utter a platitude. Whoever heard of education taking place but people were not present? To say that education is about the discovery and transfer of knowledge suggests that it involves the transfer of a load of coconuts between teacher and student. This is to completely misconstrue the nature of the pedagogical relationship.
So you worked as a Super for a slumlord, supporting his slumlordedness… So what does that make you?
Karma.
MM. The statement is not incoherent. Maybe you have the ability to either misinterpret or not quite grasp the concept of the statement. People can get an education, however cannot apply themselves in the real world. Of course I cannot prove this. Then again, can you disprove this?
Read my comment over again slowly. You claimed that staying in school does not make a person more intelligent. I agreed but not because they cannot apply themselves in the real world but because there is no cause-effect relationship between intelligence and staying in school. The two concepts are un-related and therefore your assertion is incoherent. Read this comment over again slowly. Good luck.