Wow, Your Mandarin may have to take a trip to the opera!

Your Mandarin’s son was given an assignment for his 5th grade music class the other day. Your Mandarin’s son had stated that some of his friends had started the assignment but were having a really hard time with it. Intrigued, your Mandarin offered to take a look at the assignment and see if he could help him out.

To give our faithful readers some background –  your Mandarin’s son is in 5th grade and they are currently studying the opera Carmen. So your Mandarin told my son to bring up the web site where he needed to answer questions regarding the opera in less than 30 minutes. Listed below are the five questions that center around the theme of freedom:

1. “Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even to die free than to live as slaves” -Fredrick Douglass
Please explain this into your own words. Do you agree or disagree?

2. “None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.” -J.W. v Goeth
Please explain into your own words. Do you agree or disagree?

3. “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” H.L. Mencken
Please explain into your own words. Do you agree or disagree?

4. “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.”- James Baldwin
Please explain into your own words. Do you agree or disagree?

5.”Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.” -Albert Camus
Please explain into your own words. Do you agree or disagree?

Upon seeing these questions your Mandarin could see why my son and his 5th grade classmates were finding this assignment difficult. Most college students couldn’t coherently answer these questions.

What these questions did do though was to give your Mandarin a chance to further ingrain into my son the concepts of freedom as defined in the constitution and bill of rights. Your Mandarin was pleasantly surprised that my son was able to answer most of these questions from a constitutional viewpoint and through discussion was able to answer the rest. Now it just remains to be seen what the reaction of his music teacher will be to his answers.

The Mandarin

The Mandarin, whose real name is 吏恆, joined the order in 1309, and introduced the Gormogons into England during the 18th Century.

The Mandarin enjoys spending time with his pet manticore, Βάρἰκος, or Barry (who can be found in the Bestiary). When not in the Castle…well, frankly, nobody is quite sure where he goes.

The Mandarin popularized the fine art of “gut booting,” by which he delivers a powerful kick to the stomach of anyone that annoys him. Although nearly universal today, the act of gut booting or threatening someone or something with a gut boot is solely due to him.