We welcome you to “Through the Blackboard,” the Ullage Group’s third cornucopia of oddball stuff — this time devoted to the theme of education.

“Ullage” is a winemakers’ term; it means both the air at the top of the bottle, and the sediment at the bottom.  It’s sometines defined as “deficiency,” or “lack”; in the UK, it can mean “rubbish”; it comes from the French word “oeillage,” meaning “bunghole.”  It’s a word of many beauties, and seems a fitting emblem for those topics that are marginal, contrarian, or obsolete — which is what we’re after here.

We’ve had some complaints about it.  Some people whine that they can’t spell or pronounce it — I’ve heard “you-lage” more than once — and that it’s obscure.  I can only point out that if you can’t handle a simple six-letter word that’s been in the dictionary long before you graced the earth with your presence, then you need to go back to school, fool.  And if learning a new word upsets you so, maybe you’d better just stay at home, play with your toes, and not mix with the grown-ups.

The idea of obscurity is an odd one.  Many people seem convinced that anything they’re not familiar with is hopelessly obscure.  It never occurs to them that there may be another explanation.  One of my fellow cizens accused me of limiting my audience by making deliberately obscure references in an article I wrote.  You see, I had mentioned Nostradamus.  But let me unravel this mystery in verse:

Maureen flies in a rage when Joe
Refers to things she doesn’t know.
For she’s convinced it isn’t right
To be obscure; it’s impolite.
And things she doesn’t know, she’s sure,
Are quite obscure.

Perhaps, though, society’s values are shifting.  For the past few years, anti-intellectualism has run amok, and it hasn’t served us well.  An institutionalized contempt for education, for rational argument, for nuanced thought, has been a flop.  Stupid ideas don’t work.

Building a society on greed and exploitation makes us unhappy.  Huh.

Investing billions in pyramid schemes leads to financial collapse.  Oops.

Stressing religion over science creates a generation of uninformed zealots.  Wow.

Spending twenty hours a day staring at a computer screen erodes social skills.  Golly.

Obviously, things took a funny turn somewhere in those classrooms we spent so many days in way back when.  So, this afternoon, we’ll look into some of the dark corners of the history of education, and of schools.  We probably won’t solve anything.  But it’s a rainy Sunday, and there’s caffeine and alcohol on hand to stimulate the brain.

Speaking of which, it’s time for that sacred ceremony, the opening of the ullage.  We open a bottle, thereby considerably enlarging the ullage, and pour out a swig for our cup-bearers, Geoff and Lynette.  This time we’ve picked that favorite student beverage, beer.  And then: through the blackboard!

(Posted by Doug Skinner)