« done! | Main | tadaima! »
December 13, 2005
double take
huh?
i just had the absolute weirdest conversation with my japanese teachers.
they wanted me to lower my kids grades so they fall into the school's regulation of keeping the average between 5 and 6; think of it like the us system, except that instead of out of 100, they base it out of 10, so move that ol decimal over and you got it. btw, passing here is a 3, i think the us should learn something from this hehe. shoot, this is really frustrating because my students averaged about a 70% on my final, but they said `yeah that's too high.` ...what?
but i can't believe they asked me to do that. yeah there are kids that are little punks, but i'm not going ot lower any of their scores because of it (though incredibly tempting). it comes across like this:
fred: hey bob, yeah, your kids are doing too well in schol.
bob: yeah isn't that great?
f: yeaaaaaah, no we can't have any of that. doing well in school? that's unheard of!
b: ...uh...huh? why?
f: yeaaaah...
b: ...that doesn't answer my question.
f: yeaaaah...
b: ...
and then they brought up that companies don't want kids to excel in english over other subjects? i, what, huh? what the hell does that have to do with anything? so they're good at english, that's like a bonus imo. some of my kids are damn good at english, and i'm not going to sell them short because of it! what kind of a teacher is that?
isn't it the better the kids do, the better off everyone is? does something not add up here, or is it just me...?
Posted by Jeff at December 13, 2005 05:38 PM
Comments
Heh. Ah yes, but see, you are now in BIZZAROLAND! Where thinking is only for the upper echelons and is used as a tool with which to control the masses. We can't very well educate everyone - that will harm the 和 you silly American-college-educated foreigner! Do you want to be responsible for uprising and disunity? You'd best remember your position here, Young Padowin Skywalker. ;)
But yeah, seriously, stuff like that pisses me off too. By the way, if you're bored at work (hahaha, "if"; you're on JET - of course you are) check out http://www.debito.org for some educational reading. It's good stuff; I promise.
Posted by: Travis Harper at December 16, 2005 09:01 AM
ah, yeah, i'll delete your double posts. and yeah hehe that crap is frustrating as all hell. i'll check out the website in a bit. and, haha.
Posted by: Jeff at December 19, 2005 03:37 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)