Friday, May 30, 2008

End of the school year gems

Often such pithy words of wisdom spewing forth from the minds of teenagers just make you stop and giggle loudly to yourself at your desk. Enjoy.

According to one senior, the Bard's name is Shakesphere. It's a good thing I have several large posters with his name prominently displayed on them hung around the room to help with such unawareness.

"A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift is an important piece of world literature because "It's an example of trickery to get people to listen to his story." I guess that you could say that a satire about eating children (just the unimportant ones) to "solve" poverty and especially hunger is a bit of trickery.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw is also an important piece of world literature because "It's importance comes with the enjoyment of reading and the detail that's in it." I wasn't aware that my seniors were such epicureans of good literature. What a vague and trying-to-be-impressive-but-student-obviously-has-no-idea answer.

The best came from another teacher's class. I'm glad I don't know who this kid is because otherwise every time I look at him, I'd just think of this example. This teacher assigns a controlled source based paper to his sophomores every year. This is the first time that these students have really done citations and sourcing, so the sources are provided, and every students writes about the same thing. At the end of one student's paper, he obviously thought that this very Catholic teacher needed a lovely benediction as his grade was being decided. Therefore, the last line of his paper reads, "God bless you and many blessings for you and your family!" That's a new one!!

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." H. G. Wells (Dare I say that I know several people who are already heading toward catastrophe?!?)

No comments: