See? I totally wasn't lying when I talked about canned fresh air (300 yen) from Mt Fuji.
Quote of the day: (Eric Cartman) You will respect my authori-tay!
My brother was telling me ab0ut his attempts at school-sanctioned community service. Apparently and shockingly, he's been helping (out of his own free will) at some children's home to help kids (aged 4- 10) to read. This of course has been compounded by the fact that the kids apparently 'don't want to be taught' and thus logically 'can't be taught' (now where have I heard that before?). And for some inexplicable reason, they have also taken to calling him 'Mr Elephant' whenever they see him, hence making his task quite a Herculean feat.
I cannot imagine how remarkably patient he must have been putting up with their 'retarded behaviour' eg: attempted strangulation while he was helping them tie their shoelaces, enduring catcalls and 'Mr Elephant' etc. Apparently after one particularly frustrating session where he was attempting, without much success, to help them spell, he assigned them a task.
Ian: Ok. Today when you go home, I have some vurrrrrry important homework for you to all do. Are you listening? You better be. Tonight, I want you to go home...now listen carefully...go home and Get A Life. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know what a life is? I think you should take this assignment seriously because you all don't have one right now.
Children: What's that? How do you spell it?
Ian: If you don't know go ask your parents.
It was obviously an inappropriate remark but I can feel his pain.
Ian: *trying to justify himself* Well obviously it won't hurt them now because they don't even know what Getting a Life means! And even if they do realize what I was talking about 10 years later, they may actually thank me for my kind words of wisdom and, you know, Get a Life for instance? Its always important to Get a Life don't you think? And I'm sure they'll realize it in the near future and recognize how I was doing them a service to remind them of it. So there. But anyway I'm not going for the next session in case they really did go home and ask their parents.
I can hardly claim any false fraternity with full-time teachers despite having worked as a relief teacher for like. What. Under a month? But nonetheless, it's been eye-opening. Perhaps this is a sort of retribution or grim justice for all those years of cruelty I must have inflicted on my own teachers, both deliberately or indirectly through passive defiance. I wasn't a Bad student I suppose but I can see now that I probably didn't exactly make my teachers' day either, particularly in secondary school. You know that common line teachers use as emotional blackmail/ammuno? It goes like 'If you're so clever why don't you come up here and teach? It's not easy you know!' and it precedes dramatic Shakespearean exeunts, discomfitting silences or even tears (in the case of pregnant teachers with hyperactive emotions). Well it's true, it really is.
Howsoever you may not want to admit it, students NEED teachers more than teachers need students. Teachers are always at the top of the food chain. Face it, they are smarter, cleverer, earn more money and are more intelligent than YOU, the pathetic, smart-alecky student, will ever be without their help. And yes you do need their help. So stop being like Avril Lavigne back when she thought 'Alternative' meant wearing ties with collar-less shirts and going around with too much eyeliner and a perpetual scowl, and pack away your Stupid, Pointless, Self-Destructive Rebellion. Instead, swallow your egos, shut up, sit still, listen, stop reading magazines and texting and just SUBMIT TO THE AWESOME POWER OF THE TEACHER!
Haha I'm beginning to sound like a dictator and my parents. I see myself aging into conservatism right before my computer screen.
It's not that I think students should be utterly acquiescent to their teachers. There should of course be some accountability on the part of teachers toward students but I think its equally important that teachers get the respect they do before they can ever think of respecting their students as mature, intelligent youth. Instead of 2 year old brats who need to be told off every other lessons. And no. Respect isn't a one day affair that occurs only on Teacher's Day where people go up on stage and say 'even though we may not show it we really do appreciate all the work you've done for us'. To me that statement always seemed utter nonsense and fluff. You appreciated everything but you never gave any slight indication that you did? What? No thank you? No smile? How do you ever buy that statement then? It is an assertion with no evidence/substantiation whatsoever apart from a token teacher's day performance and maybe some token gifts. To be fair, maybe students really do value getting what is practically a world-class education, and maybe I'm just being cynical. But nonetheless that has long struck me as being merely a sweet thing to say on a day when we ought to be sweet.
So yes, I shall stop talking as if I have any right to lecture, save for one last sentence: To students past (that's me), present, future - do get a life and start respecting authori-tay!
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