Back to School - Welcome to the Madhouse

My 10 yo daughter went back to school last week. After a year-and-a-half of COVID-19 imposed study-from-home regime. Some parents are still scared to send their kids; and the school bus isn’t operating either. As a result, in my daughter’s class, only 7-8 kids came this first week in a class of approx. 40.

 

Not surprisingly, kids have forgotten a lot of “school etiquette”. One girl, for example, sauntered into class without remembering to ask for permission from the teacher. Unabashed, she then glanced at the teacher and said (believe it or not), “Sup?”. Here’s how Urban Dictionary defines the term:

“Sup is something cool people say. It can be used as a greeting. People say "sup" when they don't feel like saying “what’s up” because it's too long.”

Upon which a boy reminded her, “Bro, you forgot the hand gesture that goes with ‘Sup’”. This happened in English class. Sup, bro. I can imagine the teacher frothing at the mouth…

 

Another time, between classes, one of the boys stood on the desk and started thumping his chest like a gorilla. Of course, the teacher walked in the middle of his performance. Of course, the boy didn’t get down. Or look embarrassed. Or apologize. Instead, he asked the teacher to find and play a gorilla song on YouTube. Why, you ask. So did the teacher. Here’s what he replied:

“So that the other monkeys in the class can dance while I act as the gorilla.”

Me gorilla, you monkeys. All hail the king.

 

During one class, my daughter was sent to get colored chalks from another room. Upon her return, this other girl declares that she’d have brought them much faster. On all matters other than academics, they are all super-competitive. To which this boy remarked, “You are so fat you couldn’t even have moved to the other class”. Such excellent banter goes on at a volume audible to the teacher.

 

One girl wasn’t back after the Games period, so my daughter was asked to get her back. The other girl snottily replied, “I am still playing; I won’t come now. If m’am wants me, she can come get me herself.” My daughter gleefully repeated the words to the teacher. You can imagine what must have followed.

 

The online kids are no better. I thought they “cheated” in the usual ways – turn off the teacher’s audio, turn off their own video feeds, daydream, switch to YouTube, and resort to everybody’s favourite excuse when the teacher asks a question – “M’am, my network is bad, I can’t hear you”. Apparently, they do a lot worse than that. Here’s how I got to know that. In the combined online + in-class model, the teacher beams the online kids onto the projector in the classroom. Having lazed off all year, most kids have taken no notes all this time. The ones who come to class now have nowhere to hide. The teacher asked one of the online kids to show her notebook. It turned out that the girl was writing in the notebook of some other subject. I can imagine a kid at school having forgotten to get the subject notebook, but how can a kid at home write in the wrong notebook?! The teacher asked that very question, to which this kid responded with her variant of the-dog-ate-my-homework answer, “M’am, I was in Chennai. Due to this week’s cyclone in Chennai, my subject notebook got wet and had to be thrown away. That’s why I am writing in this other notebook.” If you’re struggling to make any sense of that, don’t bother – it doesn’t make any sense. Convinced she had made her case, the girl then gives the class a thumbs up sign – it’s all good now.

 

If this is what’s going on the classroom, you can understand how the teachers respond. When my daughter was asked to list five verbs, she barely named one before this other girl butted in and named a few more. The teacher snapped at her, “I had asked xxx this question. Is your name xxx? Did you change your name to xxx? Bring your name change certificate tomorrow.” You can see the teacher’s frustration when she then added, “I won’t believe it even if you show me the name change certificate tomorrow.”

 

If all this sounds like my daughter isn’t doing anything crazy, that’s almost certainly because this blog is entirely based on events she narrates. And like Franklin P. Jones said:

“An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.”

 

With or without my daughter’s “contributions”, it’s a madhouse out there. No wonder my daughter is so happy to be going to school again.

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