Ahhh, the busiest day of the year for me--the day that I have to make a list of all the students who failed my first semester class. Today records were broken and stupidity reached new bounds. I actually had to make a copy of the "Failure" sheet that was given to us because there was not enough room for my exorbitantly high number of names. Okay, Okay, I will prolongue this no longer. The final number came to a whopping 20 students. Yes, 20 young men and women (mostly freshmen) failed first semester English with Mr. F. "How is this possible?" you might wonder. "Is he the strictest, hardest, most unfair son of a bitch ever to lead an English class?" To these valid concerns I can only answer with a simple statement and a brief anecdote. First, let it be said that feces could pass my class, honest to god feces. In fact, when I think back on former students I do believe that this has literally transpired. Now the anecdote:
To teach students about "Allegory," I make use of Dr. Seuss' book The Butter Battle Book, which is, in fact, an allegory for the cold war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. After reading the children's book (I stress the word C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N-'S) aloud to them, I ask them to write a brief summary of it as they would explain it to a five year old--no symbolism or anything fancy, just what happens in the children's book. I even give them sentence starters: "The Yooks and the Zooks are fighting because... They keep making... In the end...". For the purpose of this discussion, I won't even get into the allegory part of the lesson which comes later; I will skip to the punch line. One young man who has the physical appearance of a sneeze personified summarized the book thusly: "this bok is about how peole in china don't like to put butter on there bread upside down."
Alas, perhaps my expectations are far too high. Can you believe I actually expected them to be able to understand a children's book? The nerve!
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3 comments:
My god, people really are getting dumber and dumber.
Hey Mr. English Teacher:
"Prolongue" should read prolong.
You incorrectly made the plural of childrens, children's.
Maybe that is why so many kids are failing your class.
Jill's Friend.
Very duly noted. While I would love to say that was a test for the careful reader, I must chalk it up to a typo and the uttter lack of proofreading I do on this blog. Perhaps, in the spirit of my blog, I can use this as evidence that my student's (yes done on purpose their) our rubbing of on me.
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