Friday, October 15, 2004

A few more things ...

Funny stuffs i saw at re-m from atomfilms ...

Spiderman
Very cute!

Olympics
This's the funniest ... where have I seen it before?

Bush and Kerry
This was shown on TV before.

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Bad news, Samurai 7 has been licensed. :(

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I wonder sometimes if I'm depressed or I'm just bored. I know sometimes I feel down, anxious and depressed and stressed out. I don't know if I will ever dare to leap into the unknown. I'm just too shackled with the chains of materialism and money. It drags me down, down and down. Would I be very happy if I am very rich?

Am I doing the things which I truely enjoy? Work sometimes is enjoyable, especially when it feels like making a difference to someone else's life. It feels meaningful to teach someone who is eager to learn, who wants to know more and asks questions and is keen to have a discussion. However more often then not, sometimes it simply feels like hitting my head into a brick wall. Since results are all it matters, learning becomes forcefed. Practise and practise and practise over and over again. And simply just to score an A. Is an A all that good? Must we force someone to learn something which is not in his interest?

Unfortunately, yes.

Recently a lady wrote in to 'complain' about the PSLE Science paper being a 'murder' and that her son went home crying. Today there were many replies to her letter. I quote,

Difficult or unexpected situations are a reality of life and I am concerned that our best pupils (a) find a tough paper to be such a setback, and (b) cope with setbacks with tears of despair.

Secondly, although preparing for an examination must involve instruction in exam technique and a discussion of exam strategy, I believe we should not spend so much effort on this, to the detriment of the acquisition of the knowledge which the exam is designed to test.

...

My concern is that, in response to this year's shocker, teachers would fall over themselves to come up with new 'techniques' to handle these questions. Teaching a person to think requires time for reflection and imagination, not a prescribed set of steps. Let teachers focus on exploration and understanding rather than past-year papers.

From a fourteen year old boy:
Also, the writer described how her son 'came out crying after his Science paper' and related various other incidents of children being emotionally affected by the PSLE. I would like to suggest that instead of spending the past year 'drilling him in skills related to tackling test papers and examination conditions', perhaps she should have considered giving him emotional support and advice on how to cope with stress, as well as spending more time explaining to him the whole purpose and objective of an examination.
etc.

So, one wonders ... what is learning all about?

And why are we forcing students who cannot do well academically to study so hard? Surely they can learn to do other things which are just as useful in their lives? Why do we look so hard at their capabilities of getting As? Isn't it more important to build their characters rather than their ability to be a parrot?

Hmm, anyway, I was thinking of my enjoyment in my job. There's no enjoyment if one feels one is not appreciated or that one cannot be trusted. But I just can't drop everything and leap into flight.

So perhaps I'll just continue to find little things which are enjoyable in my life. Perhaps I'll try to be happy in my own way, just to be able to spend more time with hubby and have him laughing with me. I'm just glad to have him by my side. :)

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Today Wen and I had English Tea at the lounge. It's been so long since we both found time to spend a lazy afternoon rotting away. There were nice sofa seats and armchairs, nice tea and nice scones. And nice music as well. Nowadays people don't play the piano anymore. The lady dragged in her harp. Huge harp and proceeded to play. Beautiful music, lovely to simply close one's eyes and let the music wash away one's troubles. I fell asleep half-way too. My cat fought with Wen's dog. Of course my cat won. heh heh.

:P

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And lastly, I think I'm coming down with infected tonsils again. Shessh.

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