Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Mid Year School Ramblings...

.. say you have a couple of students who are totally wasted in school. What is the best thing for them? Law says they can stay till 17. But they are totally wasting their time. The teachers become mere babysitters for them. The kids are 16, they can't do much. They sit in class, seemingly listening and trying to keep up with work but when you get down to the crunch, the work they do.... no difference if they had not started at all too. So what do you do with such kids? The parents want them to stay in school cos I think they don't know what to do with with them too, I supposed. Either that, they are hoping for miracles..... I don't know.

Me? I think they should just go out and work. There are lessons that life out there can teach better than school. Two more years and these kids would rot. They'd be so bored that they'd become negative 'role models' for the rest. They'd be so bored that they'd be tempted to be disruptive, insolent, rude, obnoxious.... Since the world of academia is already totally lost on them, some of them might just turn attention seekers, troublemakers, etc... And the school is supposed to be a 'prihatin' place today... benevelovent with the kesian culture. This 'kindness' is actually 'killing' them, denying them the opportunity to be better, I feel.

Policy makers say everyone is supposed to be able to read. Policy makers are wrong. There are some who cannot... add that to those who seem more 'rascally' than others, we have to deal with a myriad of problems... and compound it with school administrators who seem to be breathing down our necks to keep jacking up our passing percentages, education kinda loses its meaning.

Education today is akin to a factory churning out products in a factory line. And because of the almighty 'A' which all of us seem to be striving at, we seem willing to trade our real intellect. Education today is a dumbing down process. Teachers today are also dumbed down by administrators who seem to insist that things be done their way and theirs only. So with every new administrator that we get, there will be changes... even down to changing signboards which cost hundreds to put up... then when new boss comes, change... money wasted...

2 comments:

Thomas C B Chua said...

AJ 7, I can feel boredom seeping in and this is only the 2nd week of the new term.Parents r avoiding the issue and cheating themselves. Our voc schools are 3/4 academic so these overgrown babies have to be baby sit if u happen to get the F,G, H classes. I had done my fair share for the simple reason : "Oh, you can control them !!!" And it was more tiring than teaching.So, had to think of ways to keep them interested. "Lotus eater" became "Chiak Kua Chi man wants to song song. Mai work so he went to Capri chiak hong and bo ai come home"

AJ7 said...

F, G, H?? Now you get this problem even in C, D classes. Add that to this current football fever, the game of hide and seek continues. And after running lose, getting them back to the previous mode is another tiring affair.

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