> "И что всего обиднее: не слыхать даже, чтоб кто-нибудь премудрым его называл. Просто говорят: "Слыхали вы про остолопа, который не ест, не пьет, никого не видит, ни с кем хлеба-соли не водит, а все только распостылую свою жизнь бережет?" А многие даже просто дураком и срамцом его называют и удивляются, как таких идолов вода терпит.
What about your concept of "tolpa" in this case? Just because many people/fish disapprove of what someone is doing, doesn't make it wrong.
Things like that happen All of the time. For example, in Canada kids in high school and even at university are openly making fun of the kids who like to study.
=====>>>> Is it the case that in Russian language there is no word for "nerd" or "geek"?!?!
Well, in English there are actually derogatory words for kids who do something that is obviously "the right thing to do". [See the analogy? In the story, the majority of the fish are making fun of the fish who was smart and did the right thing.]
So, those kids are making fun of the nerds and the geeks. The kids are having fun and the nerds are definitely NOT having fun. All of this lasts until they are all 22. And then, between 22 and 65, those kids work as waiters (working from salary to salary, always feeling the lack of money, not being able to go on a vacation, or do much after their difficult workday is over) at restaurants where they Serve the Former Geeks. [Just like the fish in the story die a very painful death the next day, which is an outcome inferior to the outcome achieved by the protagonist fish of Saltikov-Shedrin's story.]
Oh, wow, I see you have already commented about something similar:
"Тем, чего в совке нет и поэтому много детей записывали тогда в тупые просто из-за того, что они были отличными от серого стада, где верхом достижения среди взрослых был результат получения среди одноклассников клички - ботаник.
А те кто умел смешить, потому что чуствовал почему люди смеются на грани инстинкта, получали тройки по всем предметам, но за поведение.
Здесь учителя гораздо более терпимее к таким личностям. "
As Canadian society is being strangled and taken apart by the Lefties, the teachers have lost all of their rights, along with police officers [see the discussion regarding Tasers
]. So, instead of trying to teach all of the kids, they just teach the kids who are smart enough to want to learn (the alternative of confronting and putting the class clown in his place can cause the teacher to be fired). Instead of being the authority figure who DOES know more than the kid (recall, garbage in - garbage out, if nothing went into the kid, we can't expect anything to come out of him or her), the teacher is playing the role of a service provider. The kid is the customer. Unfortunately not all kids in school are mature enough to be making responsible decisions.Do you feel the same way about "кличкa - ботаник" in light of my restaurant waiters analogy? A kid may not understand all of the implications of his or her behaviour problems (which hurt the chances of the other kids in the class "making it", and obviously sentence the kid to a very unpleasant life). The kid is not told what is Good and profitable to study, but instead is "encouraged" to waste his or her time on nonsense. It is possible that the kid would have been a great (say) scientist, or that the kid would later regret not studying (say) science. However, the teachers are just not forcing the kid to study the traditional subjects that maximize the kid's future profit potential.
In other words, since the WORLD didn't change, and most nedouchki (and people whose only skill is to make jokes) will not be successful, it is too bad that the education system has changed. The system is failing the kids...
