Quote:
Originally Posted by Terrible Lizard
In my school there's this kid, smart and laid-back to put it modestly. He's on his way to winning scholarship money yada, yada, and yada.
So for an assignment in his English class he writes about his first sexual experience, and the teacher tore it up. “Shocking!”
Luckily somebody pieced it together, and copied it several times eventually one copy making it into the hand of a friend. He gave it to me and it was good, VERY good and not just because it was sexy, there was passion and character development, and it was overall very engaging.
But what kind of pisses me off about this is that, because of this almost ridiculous amount of censorship in areas where "freedom of expression" is supposedly encouraged, any merit for a work despite its content is immediately disregarded as pornography. Though the authority figures in the world have always been stupid and ****ing hypocritical. In an ideal world this kid would’ve gotten an A+.
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English assessment is always blindly biased and hopelessly hypocritical - examiners tend to let their personal opinions get in the way of actual English assessment.
My fifth form English teacher used to say "Always act as if the examiner is an uptight prudish nun." I believe that was in response to one of my mates writing about going home after school with some friends and slapping nicotine patches on themselves.
NZ's English curriculum has always pissed me off. Too much focus on students reading/watching a book/movie, memorising essays for set questions and being marked for their ability to regurgitate an essay six months later rather than assessment of actual understanding of a novel/film. Not enough focus on teaching students even minimal grammar and extending their vocabulary. On one hand, teachers will pontificate about the beauty of poetry as an artform produced by people in their particular circumstances. On the other hand, they'll sit you down for a class and order you to write a poem on a topic, as if poetry is some uninspired claptrap which can simply be contrived on the spot.
In that year, I was required to draw a static image depicting something from a novel and write a commentary on it. Unfortunately I am terrible at drawing, but I was good at English - I did mine on Of Mice and Men and prefaced the commentary with "It is important to understand that my artistic prowess does not do this assignment justice". The artwork was barely above stickman detail.
In front of the class, the teacher told me that under the old school system (School C), I would have attained a near perfect score... but under the system at the time (NCEA), I would only attain a pass mark. He was quite angry... he told me to never try anything like that again.