The Year 11s had a good lesson today. Those who showed up, anyway. The Year 11s are suffering from a highly contagious disease—PersonalProjectitis. Their parents pay enormous amounts of money for them to attend school, and in return the students stay at home and pour countless hours of labor into “projects”—usually senseless stuff that will end up on the cosmic junk pile of busywork that gets binned every June.
“It seems basic to me: if you want an education, you have to come to school,” I told Pallavi and Raveena, two of the better Year 11s, who are worth their parents investment.
Pallavi has her own opinions. “Please, Mr. Mick,” she told me last week, “can we not listen to you today? Will you just let us work quietly on our math problems?”
“In other words,” I told her, “you’re telling me to shut up!”
“But at least I’m being polite!”
So today I resorted to the Modern Method of teaching. Research shows that modern students don’t listen to their teachers, but they learn better from their peers. Sure enough, late in the lesson, I saw JiYoung explaining a problem to Pallavi.
“Now I get it!” Pallavi exclaimed. “It’s so much clearer now!”
She never said that to me!
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