Saturday, August 19, 2006

The one with that there is no failure, just feedback

A short 15 minute in a sec 3 class was enough to get my blood boiling. Sometimes I wondered if my threshold for masochism had reduced appreciably.

I am never someone who believe in completing syllabus for the sake of it and believe in my inner purpose of developing the whole self. I mentioned extensively about the things I believe strongly about the growth of a person and the meaning of life. And sometimes I do get cynical looks and comments but in general students are usually receptive. Maybe it is too much of the “good” thing and I find myself facing a crowd who were skeptical to the things that I said. I did not expect students to treat what I said as “gospel truth” but I was hoping that deep down I could touch hearts and got them thinking about things and about life in general. Maybe it is the intellect level, maybe it is the maturity level, but it was frustrating to say the least.

I wanted to set some work relating to self discovery - maybe it has nothing to do with the curriculum, maybe it has nothing to do with exams and Maybe it has nothing to do with them. In view of the cynicism, I erased my instructions on the board, the instructions for their weekend task. I retorted that if they feel that it doesn’t matter to them. They do not care about it, then I think it defeat the purpose of the exercise. I walked out of the class.

This was it....

1 comment:

Jelis said...

Ouch. Students are a cynical bunch, especially where school is concerned. Half the time half of us don't even mean it, just that we take ourselves far too seriously sometimes. Give 'em time; IMO you do a great job: I miss your history lessons too. Jia you! =)