Being students...

There have been a few interesting letters on student life in the newspapers nowadays. Some of the more lasting snippets are: primary school children carry bags weighing 5 kg while secondary school children carry bags weighing 7 kg, a parent, who belongs to the minority group, complains about our local education system and reckons that the government won't do anything about reducing the pressure on children, a student thinks that it is up to the children themselves to find the pleasures in such a pressure-cooker system, another parent feels that just as there is a work-life balance for workers, there should be one for students too and yet another parent laments that with tests and exams to study for, children have no time to spend with their families, to eat a proper dinner and to sleep adequately.

This topic carries on in terms of a student supporting his school principal's decision to shorten the duration of each lesson and thus improving the results as well as the effective studying of the students, a parent advocating long school hours for character-building purposes rather than for purely academic purposes and another parent agreeing that long school hours prevent students from mixing with bad company and making poor use of their idle time.

Recently, it has shifted to model exam answers and assessment books as aids to getting better grades. Economics is the most attacked subject. The essays are irrelevant to the questions and not detailed enough. As for assessment books, the answer sheet provided may have inaccurate answers but some inflexible teachers may think that any other answers from them cannot be accepted.

When I was a student, I wasn't as stressed as students now. Of course, it may be also because I wasn't very serious about my studies. *blush* I never needed tuition for my subjects, except for Chinese. I relied on school remedials. I started sleeping very late only when I was doing my A'levels, surviving on 3 hours of sleep. After coming home, I watched a bit of television, ate dinner and then slept from 8pm to 3am. Then I woke up to do my tutorials and assignments till 6am, which was when I got ready for school. I would use my second break period to catch up on sleep in a quiet cubicle in the library. On Saturdays, I would wake up early for extra lectures. When exams approached, I would be studying in the library after lessons.

Nowadays, secondary school students are doing what I did during my A'levels! Even primary school students suffer from parents' sometimes unreasonable pressure on them. Their holidays are used for more revision for exams and not for play! I don't remember revising intensely before primary 5 back then!

I don't have much faith that our ministry will actually take the grouses of the citizens seriously enough to make changes too. Things only seem to have worsened for the younger ones ever since I graduated from university 3 years back. I admire the guts of that parent who wrote this comment to the Forum page. I definitely agree with him but have no courage to spell it out so clearly and bravely.

Yet long school hours, if properly used, can be interesting and enriching for the students. Instead of just extra lessons and core curricular activities, optional workshops and excursions can be held, taking into account the non-academic aspects of student life as well. However, as to its effectiveness in preventing students from mixing with bad company, it doesn't seem to be that good, since bad company can still be found in the schools themselves. It can only prevent students from mixing with bad company found outside the schools at the very most.

I remember my Econs tutor telling me that model essays are not good because they are written by students themselves and sometimes their teachers don't edit them before giving it to the printers. Looks like this phenomenon is still around and I had received this tip more than 10 years ago! As a tutor, I have never trusted the answer sheets attached to assessment books or school papers. I mark them based on my own knowledge. I don't want to deprive the students' different and yet reasonable answers of being accepted as correct. It would be so narrow-minded if I just followed the answer sheets blindly and unquestioningly. In fact, there are mistakes made in the exercises themselves too! The most common ones are grammatical in nature. This is a great hazard as there is an implicit view in the accuracy of assessment books.

The purpose of blogs

Blogs are online diaries for public viewing, I reckon. So I practise crypticism in my expression of thoughts. To me, it seems unbecoming and inconsiderate to use real names, especially when I have negative things to say about people. Maybe I'm just too polite, I don't know. I know there are blogs which practise such blatant and candid expression but I feel it can hurt people who happen to fall into the category of being spoken ill of. Oh, I have no right to criticise bloggers who do this since blogs are somewhat like personal diaries, I know.

This awareness extends to the use of diction. The choice of words can differ from person to person but somehow vulgarities, which express "more fully" one's feelings, reflect on the person's character. There're blogs which show disregard for one's civilized state of mind in this way. Lack of self-control is apparent and the answer to the question of whether humans are better than animals is definitely a negative one, with the usage of such language.

Oh, of course I'm aware that there is freedom of speech, thought and choice in the world. Thus I would like to clarify that this is my subjective opinion. Period.

Blogs are allegedly uncreative and ignorant , as mentioned in a newspaper article. Well, most of the reviews I've got about mine are positive, citing my blog as profound, educational and informative. I write my opinions on current affairs as well as personal happenings in it. Rachel even said that I could write as well as a journalist. So there, ST!