During my bilingual course I was forced to write essays, dozens of them, however, now I need to write just two. And after at least a week of trying every single day, I have one line:
The first day of We Create Identity I didn’t know what to expect. After the first day, I was little wiser.
Which is very true, ca1 was a very strange course, in which many people did not know what to do and what to expect. Mr Eliens was also the perfect teacher for this, he is definitely very kind, however, he is rather vague. His assignments are do something, or write something, make me something or whatever. This is also rather like is way of speaking, he can say things that seem very logical, however, need even more explaining than the question you had in the beginning.
This is a way you could show a person their own identity, just let them go with hardly any guidelines and see where they end. But, it is also a way to loose people, I had/have a lot of problems with the do something attitude, and it was also Eliens who asked me, do you need schooling or do you need education. Well, I need education, however, when all the education I have received in my life was via schooling, then this form of education is horrible. It makes me feel lost, like I am doing something useless that has no goal or objective. This really is something that I need to work on, as, from what I know, most of the following courses will be similar.
Nm1 however, was rather different. Not only because the teacher was away almost all of the lessons, but also because we had a specific list of assignments. Well, at least more specific that ca1, which was a big relief for me. However, most of the assignments were rather rushed as the exhibition that I was organizing together with Inéz for the ca1 course had precedence over these assignments, which meant that I spent almost all my time working on my ca1 project (the interactive movie I posted about, which of course came with it's own organizational problems and hurdles) and the organization of the exhibition. The exhibition, in the end, was acceptable, it could indeed have been much better and more professional, but it ended in the head of the study complementing me and Inéz on how we did it. He thought it was a success. The movie was a problem too, not only was it extremely dramatized (which not everyone could appreciate), the sound failed continuously and, for me, some bits were just missing. However, that too ended in the teacher complementing us on our video, which made me more relaxed and the whole exhibition thing more fun.
In the end, all was well, except for the essay.
During my bi-lingual course I grew a hate for essays, we were required to write deep, well-structured essays on literature, media and language subjects. All conform to all kinds of rules and regulations, you were even deducted points for using the abbreviated forms of words like 'it's' and 'you're'. Letting go of these, not so pleasant, regulations is difficult for me, I wrote essays in that form for at least 3 years, which makes writing an essay for a course with the subject 'something' very stressful to me. Yes, this is something that definitely needs working on, and I need to let go of the things that I learnt in the past.
Another thing that I need to work on is my way of thinking in 'teacher' and student. As almost everybody knows, I grew up in Zimbabwe, not the best place for a child, or anybody for that matter, but it was beautiful, however, not in every way. We did have a swimming pool in the back garden and beautiful weather. But, the government, or should I say Mugabe, had taken it's toll on the country. We lived quite close to the university, and I still remember how we weren't allowed out of the house for days because there were riots on the road in front of our house, and the police were trying to control the students (as it was the students of the university that were protesting because they were getting less and less money from the government) with teargas and beating. Also, the schools weren't everything. My brother and I were sent to a standard government school, my parents chose not to send us to the international school as they didn't want us to get spoiled and turn into brats. However, the schools diminishing budget lead to all the good teachers leaving to go teach at private schools for the money, leaving us with less qualified young teachers who didn't know how to control anything, let alone a class of 30 children. They resorted to beating us (with the board eraser) to discourage speaking in class and well, everything. The one thing that hit me most (once I came to the Netherlands and started realizing it), was that it wasn't allowed to question what the teacher told you. Basically, he could tell you the world was flat and you just had to accept it, or risk a beating or detention (manual labour in the school garden, not your best Friday afternoon). My first year of secondary school was a revelation, learning to talk, to be myself, to open up, not only to the people around me but also to my teachers. I still see them as some kind of invincible thing, however, the idea of a teacher a some kind of god is long gone. I hope this process will keep on moving forward, until I can see them as an equal.
No comments:
Post a Comment