2 weeks at RI
I've finished two weeks of my one-term stint back at that school in Bishan – yeah that one of happy and not-so-happy teenage memories – and seen lots. Some encouraging, some not so.
First of all, it's been a steep learning curve standing up there and doing your darnedest to keep order while delivering the content you're supposed to go through. I think it's a gazillion times easier if you're doing math or the sciences or even history – at least you have readings, handouts, and a fairly comprehensive syllabus to work with. Of course there's a syllabus for English as well but my guys' abilities differ so wildly that it's a huge challenge holding the class together. Some of them have problems stringing a sentence together and keeping the grammatical number or tense agreement. Sadly, this is especially but not exclusively true of the foreign scholars. I wonder whether standards have slipped and if so, why.
And one of the saddest and scariest things about the modern age is that reading and writing (in a sustained, intellectual fashion) are skills that aren't valued any more. It's scary because I'm teaching things that hinge vitally on command of these skills. The people I'm teaching now grew up with the Internet. The younger ones were born in the year I got Internet access – that's 56kbps dialup, by the way. They've known iPods and MSN for as long as they can remember, and they've been on Facebook possibly as long as me. A whole generation of people has suddenly migrated away from books, magazines and newspapers, to grow up on blogs, podcasts and tweets – a shift of that speed and scale is alarming. I honestly believe that the piecemeal nature of information on the Internet has led directly to an impairment of our ability to store and process knowledge. Is it just me, or have kids these days (in fact, all of us) become dumber on average? Is there any way of knowing?
I'm also stunned by some of the attitudes to learning and to authority that I've seen. To be fair, they're only manifested in a tiny minority, and perhaps they aren't worse than in my time – perhaps I led a sheltered GEP-humanz life and I'd never even seen the kind of stuff that happened in the rest of RI (not to mention outside). But a few assignments I've been handed have shocked far more experienced teachers than myself – that is indicative of the level of seriousness and pride with which they treat their academic work.
As some of you may know, RISE changed hands recently, and I've been absolutely shocked by the nonchalance – indeed the slapdash attitudes – shown by some of the younger players towards their new conductor. I'm seeing ridiculously poor standards of musical and rehearsal discipline, and sec 2s speaking out of turn, talking back to their seniors and teachers. Putting it bluntly, they are perfectly happy to waste the time and energy and goodwill of their betters. I am disgusted. Or do they know not what they do? If this is true of other CCAs as well, then I think it's time to bring tekan camps back.
That is not to say that I haven't seen good things. The good thing about being in RI is that there are always brilliant students with a flair for the language who really demonstrate superlative achievement and maturity. I've seen a few extremely promising orators and writers already. But even then, many of them aren't living up to their potential. The level of energy that I've felt is rather out of proportion to the level of achievement I've seen. True, they're only 15 going on 16, and they're incredibly distracted and unfocused as us guys often are; true, as teachers and seniors it's impossible for us to expect the guys to perform at their best all the time. Perhaps it's early days yet.
It's early days indeed – just ten days into my job I've weathered day after day of teachers' throat (a perennial job hazard), late nights (8pm and more, thanks to the enthusiasm of the RISE exco, which I'm loathe to suppress), and rowdy classes (sad to say I don't have a 'stage presence' like Mrs Smith!) I sometimes look at myself and wonder what right I have to suppose that I know better than my classes, to pretend that I have anything useful to share. But then I come across some guy or other who's dumb or rude or screwed up enough that I feel like smashing his noisehole – that happens about once a day – and then all's right with the world again. Though I haven't smashed anyone's noisehole (yet).
First of all, it's been a steep learning curve standing up there and doing your darnedest to keep order while delivering the content you're supposed to go through. I think it's a gazillion times easier if you're doing math or the sciences or even history – at least you have readings, handouts, and a fairly comprehensive syllabus to work with. Of course there's a syllabus for English as well but my guys' abilities differ so wildly that it's a huge challenge holding the class together. Some of them have problems stringing a sentence together and keeping the grammatical number or tense agreement. Sadly, this is especially but not exclusively true of the foreign scholars. I wonder whether standards have slipped and if so, why.
And one of the saddest and scariest things about the modern age is that reading and writing (in a sustained, intellectual fashion) are skills that aren't valued any more. It's scary because I'm teaching things that hinge vitally on command of these skills. The people I'm teaching now grew up with the Internet. The younger ones were born in the year I got Internet access – that's 56kbps dialup, by the way. They've known iPods and MSN for as long as they can remember, and they've been on Facebook possibly as long as me. A whole generation of people has suddenly migrated away from books, magazines and newspapers, to grow up on blogs, podcasts and tweets – a shift of that speed and scale is alarming. I honestly believe that the piecemeal nature of information on the Internet has led directly to an impairment of our ability to store and process knowledge. Is it just me, or have kids these days (in fact, all of us) become dumber on average? Is there any way of knowing?
I'm also stunned by some of the attitudes to learning and to authority that I've seen. To be fair, they're only manifested in a tiny minority, and perhaps they aren't worse than in my time – perhaps I led a sheltered GEP-humanz life and I'd never even seen the kind of stuff that happened in the rest of RI (not to mention outside). But a few assignments I've been handed have shocked far more experienced teachers than myself – that is indicative of the level of seriousness and pride with which they treat their academic work.
As some of you may know, RISE changed hands recently, and I've been absolutely shocked by the nonchalance – indeed the slapdash attitudes – shown by some of the younger players towards their new conductor. I'm seeing ridiculously poor standards of musical and rehearsal discipline, and sec 2s speaking out of turn, talking back to their seniors and teachers. Putting it bluntly, they are perfectly happy to waste the time and energy and goodwill of their betters. I am disgusted. Or do they know not what they do? If this is true of other CCAs as well, then I think it's time to bring tekan camps back.
That is not to say that I haven't seen good things. The good thing about being in RI is that there are always brilliant students with a flair for the language who really demonstrate superlative achievement and maturity. I've seen a few extremely promising orators and writers already. But even then, many of them aren't living up to their potential. The level of energy that I've felt is rather out of proportion to the level of achievement I've seen. True, they're only 15 going on 16, and they're incredibly distracted and unfocused as us guys often are; true, as teachers and seniors it's impossible for us to expect the guys to perform at their best all the time. Perhaps it's early days yet.
It's early days indeed – just ten days into my job I've weathered day after day of teachers' throat (a perennial job hazard), late nights (8pm and more, thanks to the enthusiasm of the RISE exco, which I'm loathe to suppress), and rowdy classes (sad to say I don't have a 'stage presence' like Mrs Smith!) I sometimes look at myself and wonder what right I have to suppose that I know better than my classes, to pretend that I have anything useful to share. But then I come across some guy or other who's dumb or rude or screwed up enough that I feel like smashing his noisehole – that happens about once a day – and then all's right with the world again. Though I haven't smashed anyone's noisehole (yet).
posted by Unknown at
9:37 pm
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