It's been a bit of a non-entity blog week this week. Eri's been working down in Yokohama every day recently, and if she commutes from her house, it takes about 2 hours each way, so she's been staying at mine where it's only about an hour. The problem is though that she has been working from 9am until 9.30pm so by the time she gets home it's 11 ish and she hasn't eaten, so we don't get to bed until about 12.30, so when I wake up at 6, I've been a little shattered. Basically, it's contributed to me (and, not to be entirely self obsessed, her too) being really tired all the time.
At work at the moment, I have only been teaching the new first year kids. 7 classes and about 35 kids in every class. It's actually quite fun to teach them, as they still have the enthusiasm and innocence of elementary school kids - the system hasn't completely destroyed them yet and, although that process is always a joy to behold, it means that classes can be enjoyable for me, knowing that the kids will try hard and will enjoy all the stoopid games and activities (and indeed plastic vegetables) I can throw at them. It also means that for the 50 minutes when you are teaching them, you can almost forget the exhaustion and total lack of energy that nearly cripples me the rest of the time.
Sadly, this isn't always the case. One of the two first year English teachers has been a second and third year teacher for six years in a row and has been complaining about not being able to teach the first years - generally thought of as the easiest and most rewarding year to teach. The school have given in to her (actually quite reasonable) demands and have given her three of the seven classes. The problem is that she is not an especially good teacher and is determined to teach the students exactly as is prescribed by our (actually-quite-impressively-awful) text book. It's now time for her to teach the alphabet, and amazingly, the textbook seems to have arbitrarily chosen a method to write the alphabet, and has dictated that any other method is wrong. Wrong and EVIL! Here are some examples of things which are officially not allowed in the English-Language-According-To-Mitsumura-Tosho, when writing English (by hand):
- The horizontal bar of an upper case A cannot be half way between the top of the letter and the bottom of the letter. It must be nearer the bottom than the top
- The middle bar of the upper case E must be less wide than the upper and lower bar.
- The lower bar of the upper case F must be less wide than the upper bar.
- The only straight line in an upper case G must be the horizontal line in the middle.
- The upper case J cannot have a horizontal line at the top.
- The two diagonal lines of the upper case K cannot meet in the centre (To do so would be marked incorrect in a test - anywhere in the world). The lower diagonal must start about a third of the way along the upper diagonal.
- The upper case M must have vertical lines at the edges. Slightly diagonal lines will be marked as incorrect.
- The diagonal line of the upper case R must start at the bottom right edge of the loop. It cannot start at the point where the loop meets the vertical line.
- The lower curve of an s (upper or lower case) must be wider than the higher curve.
- Lastly, and most amazingly for me: The lower case t is the same height as the lower case.
Having to listen to this nonsense when fully compus menti is bad enough, but having to listen to it for 45 minutes when exhausted and to see confusion of the students (who have all learned the alphabet before at elementary school), without finding the nearest weapon and going postal is almost impossible. Instead one has to tread carefully, not allow anyone to lose face in public (confucianism, confucianism, confucianism), and to find a way to politely tell your colleague that she is an idiot and that she is poisoning the language of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Rowling in the minds of these young whippersnappers.
It's enough to make you give up and just tell the kids that she is right and that there is not enough logic left in the universe to explain why.
The pictures below illustrate examples of things that were marked as wrong (x) in students' tests. Unbelievable but true. No wonder the kids are confused. Click on the picture to see a "perfect" example:
