Just Jie Yang now.

Forgot to run today, so I guess I just have to exercise more on the last day of school. I want a single digit fat percentage at medical check up! But I think I’m actually more fixated on the blood test. Fear needles like mad.

Hope you enjoyed the phlood!

Okay oops my gay tendencies are expressing themselves already. Will phlood this place after all those Dance people upload their photos and Yufei returns me my thumbdrive. Then I’ll put up JTS, Volleyball Finals, BBall Finals and Back Again photos and make this blog take 3 whole minutes to load.

So, we had this informal discussion about the state of class affairs yesterday with none other than form teacher, and basically it was something much milder than a thrashing out about how bad the teaching was for certain subjects, and there was a tussle to push the responsibility of such bad teaching, whether it should be to a larger extent the teachers’ fault, or the students’ fault.

Now, I cannot make a clear stand here if I do not define the subject at contention, so I shall use a prime example that has been debated since the dawn of time, Economics. And I will be as impartial as can be, so identifying the problems that I feel have been quite a prick:

1. The teacher does not teach concisely, but rather, talking about concepts in a very woolly manner that is only benefitting if the student does not read regularly and is uninformed about major economic events.
2. Theteacher infuses an overdosage of sarcasm into his teaching, and has unreasonably high expectations when it comes to behavior; asking your friend basic questions or even turning your head to the side would be commented on disapprovingly. Eg. “Our Great Lady Gloria…”
3. The teacher has a habit of interrupting students in the middle of their answers, or mishearing their queries, which results in a waste of time because the student has to repeat his entire query/answer in both cases.
4. Not all students have done their work, in fact, a high percentage.

Dissecting individual problems, we can see that the teacher possesses a high number of flaws in his teaching style that is unsuitable for a class that is highly polar in terms of inquisitiveness and unwavering in terms of behavior (for the simple fact that our behavior has not been bad in the first place). It is unlikely that there is substantiation for the sarcasm. And it is not the teacher’s responsibility to pump students full of information if they have not been even been keen in keeping up with the global news in the first place. Although it may seem like a fallacy to assume that students who are not reading won’t be keen to absorb the “wool” provided in class, I think it’s very true. How many people in class actually jot down the examples mentioned? We can thus improve the speed and efficiency that classes are conducted at by shearing all these “wool” off.

With regards to the rude habit of interruption and addition of pet names, I find that highly unnecessary. I find it rather unamusing too to confuse my name with my classmate’s after a year of mispronunciations and corrections, and waving it off as a simple joke. Not remembering a person’s name is not an insult, but neither is it a proper show of basic respect that a teacher has to his student.

I personally would like to contend with the overarching argument that since students do not do their work, they have no right to complain that the teaching has been bad. Point number 1 would be teaching style and work completion has no direct correlation; sarcasm and interruption has no lasting effect on a student’s likelihood to complete his work the next time, save for the threatening undertones. In fact, I do my work, and have only not done/brought my work twice this year. And yet I am subjected to such teaching. A correct statement would be that there is a direct correlation between teaching content and how well a student knows his work.

To counter the case where the underlying logic is that “a student’s work reflects his level of knowledge”, this is highly inaccurate as the student may not be motivated for any particular reason, not because he does not know his work, and this should not result in “woolly” teaching, because he would not be motivated to absorb in class too. If the student didn’t do because he doesn’t know, it is natural that he’ll be more inquisitive and would listen up, and ask more. The pace of class should thus be at the most optimal and efficient, not slowly just to ensure that all who did not do their work will understand. It is the student’s responsibility to do his work so he can follow, and not the teacher’s responsibility to ensure the student did his work and slow down just because he is unmotivated to do so. It is unfair to the students who did their work.

If you didn’t understand that whole chunk, what I’m trying to say is: just go on with lessons as if everyone did their work.

Yesterday’s discussion was, to be honest, not productive. The impression I got from the start was that, it was our fault that our Economics lesson proceeds this way. I personally believe that the proportion of blame can be at best, only a small amount placed on us. And our openness to our form teacher sitting in is testament to the fact that there is, something fundamentally wrong in the lessons and not those sitting in them. The manner in which we conducted the session was just wrong, and it didn’t help that no one wanted to continue voicing opinion because everyone wanted their break time.

Just really really doubtful about myself, and it wouldn’t hurt if everyone started appreciating me more in a nice manner.