Teachers Mocking Students

Sarcasm. Play on words. All these are lost on kids whose English is beyond pathetic. Which, by the sound of it, includes my 11 yo daughter’s entire class. Herself included.

 

I guess her English teacher learnt that lesson the time one kid in class announced, “I bred my dog and it had 8 babies”. Upon which the teacher asked, “You’re saying you had 8 babies?”. The kid just stared at her with that did-I-say-anything-like-that look on his face.

 

Of course, any such claim by one kid only sets off counter claims. Another kid scoffed at the first kid and declared, “So what? I bred my hamsters and they had babies too”. The teacher tried again, “You had babies?”. “No”, replied the kid, “The hamsters did”. This time, the teacher tried a different tack, “Oh! I got confused because you look like a hamster”. A direct insult – this all the kids understood.

 

When I was teaching my daughter computer programming for her school exam, I told her that she should check the program by feeding it different values that would produce different outcomes. In their practical exam, those who had solved the question had to go over and show their program to the teacher. The teacher would look at it and if it was wrong, shake her head and make fake sympathy noises and then cheerfully give a big zero. Such displays of fake sympathy, esp. when directed at others – this the kids do get. To rub it in, my daughter asked, “What kind of person doesn’t even test their program before going to the teacher?”. This from the same kid who won’t check her own answers in maths…

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