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cahnBackground: The kids' school has a topic for "Unit" every trimester that a lot of their work (reading, writing, some math) revolves around. These topics range from time/geographic periods ('Colonial America') to geography ('Asia') to science ('Space') to social science ('Business and Economics'). (I have some issues with this way of doing things, but that's a whole separate post.) Anyway, for Reasons, they have had to come up with a new topic this year, and E's 7/8 class is doing "World Fairs" as their new topic.
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Me: I know E's teacher is all about World Fairs and I know she is great and will do a good job. But I feel like if we had a different teacher who wasn't so into World Fairs, they wouldn't do such a good job and another topic would be better.
Me: Like... the Enlightenment!
D: Heh, you could teach that! But you'd have to restrain yourself from making everything about Frederick the Great.
Me: But that's the thing! Everyone does relate to each other in this time period! Voltaire -- and his partner Émilie du Châtelet, who was heavily involved in the discourse of conservation of energy and momentum -- well, I've told you Voltaire had a thing with Fritz -- and then there's Empress Maria Theresa, who went to war with him a few times -- and Catherine the Great --
D, meditatively: You know --
Me: *am innocently not warned even though this is the same tone of voice that is often followed by, say, a bad pun*
D: -- it's impressive how everyone from this 'the Great' family is so famous!
Me: *splutters*
D, thoughtfully: But of course there's probably selection bias, as the ones who aren't famous don't get mentioned. You never see 'Bob the Great' in the history books...
Me: *splutters more*
Re: MT's A+ parenting
Date: 2023-12-12 02:22 pm (UTC)Yep! And as I've noted, I'm more like Joseph: my sister would always talk really sweet to my mom and then do whatever she wanted, so my mom was like, "Well, she's just a kid. Honey, you have to do the thing." And I would always *do* the thing, but I would be full of arguments about why it was unreasonable/unfair/inconsistent. And that was perceived as a *personal attack*, so Mom and I were always at each other's throats.
I am so with Joseph here. You are the authority figure, and you can make me, but you're going to hear at great length about why you're wrong. Unsurprisingly, I'm like that at work too. Ahem.
Ohhhh, interesting. I guess they were smart?
Oh, they were both intelligent, determined, ambitious men, and both with a streak of ruthlessness. Leopold, though, had Joseph trusting him and confiding in him, and then behind Joseph's back he was all, "Argh, Joseph is ruining EVERYTHING!"
As S-R says, the system favored being two-faced. Even Isabella of Parma's "How to win friends and influence people" write-up was basically an elaboration of the exact ways in which you should be two-faced with MT, FS, and Joseph, because it was the only way to survive.
Re: MT's A+ parenting
Date: 2023-12-16 11:30 pm (UTC)Oh, they were both intelligent, determined, ambitious men, and both with a streak of ruthlessness.
Oh, yeah, but I always think of Vienna!Joe as a guy who is extremely intelligent but not always with the best people skills :) So it's interesting to me that here he absolutely knew what to do in terms of passing the buck and not being held responsible. Though in this case I'm sure it helped that he also personally probably didn't want to be held responsible for any of MT's policies he didn't agree with... like, my sister makes it very clear when she disagrees with my mom even though no one's witnessing it but me :)
Re: MT's A+ parenting
Date: 2023-12-16 11:37 pm (UTC)Well, I'm not sure if that was a people *skill* or just a personality *trait*, like his fight/flight manifesting as *fight*. It was definitely not a *skill* when teenage!me did it. :P