Monday, September 10, 2007

How many last straws can we take?

Name: Uncle Edna
Class: 4.09
Date: 10th September
Year: 2007
Organization: Blogger.com
Areas: Creativity, Action, Service, Leadership
Shoe Size: 9
Favourite Colour: Orange, maybe blue.
What do you feel about the whole optimist/pessimist thing?: What?!
Teacher Supervisor: None

Proposal for: Blogging about CASL

On the 10th of September 2007, I intend to write a blog post about the idiocy of the Creativity, Action, Service, and Leadership Programme (CASL) in long, satirical prose.

The aims and objectives of the aforementioned activity are to allow me to express my views about the above topic, in the hopes that others may see my point of view, allowing them to garner a fuller representation of the above topic. Formalities aside, this activity is also an opportunity to antagonize and vent my frustrations about the failures of the education system which is a very serious matter indeed.

Signed: The Edna Man
Teacher Supervisor

Was that stupid enough for you? If not, let's go on to talk about my day, and you'll see stupid concepts worse than Being Hit on the Head Lessons.

After a bone-chilling hour of IHS lecture, some guy from some university (dunno which university lah, but you can guess) comes in and starts talking about that university and everything the school offers, blah blah blah. I was barely interested, and while it would have been tolerable if he had ended at the appropriate time (because he said he would take only FORTY MINTUES), he ended up overshooting by half an hour. Very slick. Would his whole faculty be like that? If so, then I might not be interested, thanks.

And that's with me freezing in my seat and dying of hunger.

I don't get it. Everyone keeps lecturing us on how to keep within the time when you're presenting, and don't hold people up and all that. Didn't these people receive the same education? Why is it when kids do it it's wrong, but when adults do it, it's alright?

And then, to top it all off, the Year 4 Level Director comes and gives us another 15 minute lecture on How our CASL Book is Not Up to Standard and If He were to Judge Now We Would All Fail and Stay Back A Year. That's about all I got from those fifteen minutes, partly because the cold and lack of lunch was numbing my brain, and also partly because that's all he seemed to say; he repeated it about ten times. At least.

Hello...? Hungry? Cold? Irritable driver waiting? Don't care? Alright. Nothing I can do about it anyway.

And then there's the whole idea CASL which irks me. That you have to do a proposal for every little stinking thing we do. Oops, I sneezed; guess I have to write a proposal for that. Then comes the meticulous records of the number of hours we put in. Then the reflections.

Can you imagine? A hundred and fifty hours worth of proposal, C-A-S-L, reflections. I mean WHAT THE HELL-o what have we here? A blasted ESSAY about the whole thing or YOU DON'T PASS YOUR IB.

C'mon. There has got to be a better way than this. Doing good or participating in activities isn't supposed to be about meticulous proposal writing, or the frantic calculation about how many hours you've got. Once you implement the quota, the whohle meaning is lost. A wise Core Math Teacher once said, "When you start taking photos for money, you're not going to enjoy photography anymore."

Or maybe that's what it's about. Screw the meaning and purpose, what's important is Vitamin M.

Sometimes it just makes me think about quitting formal education and opt for home-schooling. Might as well learn everything from the Internet. Just imagine, if you go apply for a job interview, and you say, "Well, I almost reached the IB Diploma. It's just that I disagreed with the system and quit in protest, and continued my education on the Internet." And they hired you. You must have had some really good pants.

At least there are some other examples of the human species at its prime. Lang Arts Teacher in stunning move launches into speech about language and words, and how important they are to building character. Extra, extra, read all about it!

Hours done: 30 Writing: 1 Creativity Posting: 1 Service
The Edna Man

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