Debate aside, (that wasn't the motion I worked on for today's training, someone else took it) I feel that today deserves a good long rant in preparation for an even longer good long rant tomorrow. It's the time of term again, weight tests right after the holidays. Mine is tomorrow. For a generally heavy-boned person like me, with perhaps a few extra pounds of flab around my developed areas, that becomes a threatening situation, but at least THAT can be resolved with a doctor's letter.
We'll be having General Knowledge Quizzes once every week for English and they will come into the Continual Assesment results, which, in a way affect our total score. If it was an essay or comprehension or class work, that is understandable, but across such a large range of subjects and topics, even school debate members will be seeing GAME OVER flashing in their minds. For a generally undetailed person when it comes to remembering information, this is doom.
I understand the rational behind this decision of our English teacher, but isn't there a stnadard format of tests across the board. Surely a letter with our actual class performance could be generated. 20 minutes could generate a letter that can be sent to all the parents and a table with the grades in respective areas could be alongside it. It probably would mean more effort, but nine more week's worth of quizes is no easy feet in my point of view either. My dad thinks that the Singapore part of the quiz should be managable, I beg to differ.
For a well travelled woman like our teacher (she revealed her appointments to be in Nepal, India, Australia and New Zealand), experiencing the creams of the crops in a specific area or in world affairs, such a mindset can be hard to break. Or actually, impossible. She used words like "mediocre", "all of them are averaging Bs", "It's not just about how many As", "What you make of your lives", "You have so much more of your life to live, but death can take any one, at six or sixty" and oh, as much as any intellectual person can say in ten to fifteen minutes in front of a silent class. and in the middle, "I'm not scolding you".
She's a puzzlement, truely. She can be really engaging when she wants to, drawing topics like Michael Jackson's death and current events which sometimes are very much removed from our lives. One question was about Julie Andrews and which song she was most reknowned for. When it comes to this sort of thing, I can't say much, its an area I hardly read in depth into. But its sometimes just the area of interests you have. For people like the Nepal students she has who have an Ivy League University scholarship who know even minute facts about Singapore I forget, they are interested in such things. And not knowing such things doesn't make you any less interesting to talk to, or mediocre. I don't find myself boring and I'm sure people I talk to don't find me so either because I can't tell them about the dates or specific ideas. I can tell them about musicals and incidents in my life, of the places I've been where the person next to me may have crossed over the same places. If they cared to tlak of world events, I would beg an explanation of the situation then give my own opinions.
That isn't important anyway. For now, just read news articles like a good debater, something I have put off due to relaxation purposes. I can't see why someone can't live life knowing about things generally, instead of being some encyclopedia. If everyone at an institution did that, there would be hardly any interesting trivia anymore. News is depressing. We are just students, we can change some things, but before we try to change somethings and make something of ourselves that the world can see, I think we best sort out our own beliefs.
No comments:
Post a Comment