Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Relationships. This is something everyone has experienced. I don't mean relationships in a romantic sense. I mean relationship in an everyday sense. We have a relationship with everyone we are close to. Everyone has had a relationship go sour on them and sometimes their left feeling totally confused. I know that's how I feel. There are friendships that I was so certain would last but now only a year later has turned into something less then a casual accquaintance. I don't know what went wrong. I mean we were friends and we were good friends and then suddenly we weren't any more. I don't know if it's the distance or the difference in professions or something else entirely. I mean I thought things were going great. It certainly seemed that way. The emails were always lively and fun. We kept in touch and we kept each other informed of the events in our lives and then suddenly the emails stopped.
I suppose relationships are hard even on a good day and this is just a prime example. I generally don't have a problem keeping friends. I mean, my best friend has been around for 17 years now and we're still going strong. Sometimes I think it's just a personality clash. Mostly, I think it's the fact that people are afraid to be honest. They are afraid to be honest with other people and they afraid to be honest with themselves. It is difficult I know that. Honesty can really hurt. Especially when it comes the time to admit something not so nice about yourself. The only cure for that is to remember that everyone has their little flaws and that no one is perfect. If anyone claims to be perfect that person is lying. Perfection is an ideal, it is something to strive for. The only problem is by the time you achieve it, you've been dead for a couple of years. Cheerful thought isn't it?
Honesty goes a long way in helping smooth the troubled waters of the relationship sea. It keeps the pretence to the minimum and it takes all the guess work out of the situation. It certainly helps things, because I know from experience that most people are just bad at guesswork. I should know, I suck at it. So let's all try and be a little more open, a little more honest and maybe, we won't have to work so hard at relationships.
Just Me.

Monday, November 25, 2002

I have exams. They drive me crazy. You know recently I attended a conference where one of the topics of discussion was "Are examinations a violation of our children's rights?" I was very interested in that of course. I was also very surprised by the audience at the conference. There were a number of students as well as educators there, and it was very interesting to note that, a lot of the students did not seem to think that exams violated our rights. I suppose it's a sign of maturity that these students recognise examinations as a necessary evil. Are examinations a violation of our rights? I suppose there isn't an easy answer to that. I suppose there has to be some way of evaluating our progress in our education. If there weren't any examinations, how would we know if the student has learned anything. I mean putting a child in a level of education he or she isn't prepared for is more cruel than anything an exam can cause. However, as with many other things, we have taken a good idea like an exam and become very stupid about it. Come on, what is the point of examining kindergarten children for crying out loud!
I think the answer lies in our approach to exams. Exams aren't evil but neither are they the life and death ordeal many students seem to think they are. Examinations are only a method of evaluation. I think the emphasis we place on exams are wrong. I can't think of an answer, especially now that I am quite wrung out from my examinations preparations but I feel that we place too much pressure on our children to get good grades. It doesn't matter that the good grades don't seem to correlate to a better life, parents seem to think that if you do well in exams your life will magically fall in place. The truth is rather more complicated than that. The top students in school were always the ones who no one knew. No one knew them because they were shut away in their rooms, studying, or running from one tuition to another. These kids spend their formative years shut away in the dark forgetting any social skills they may have picked up. They grow up into brilliant but dysfunctional adults. this is always true of course, but everyone agrees that genius is just the flip side of the coin from insanity. It's a mark of our time that we tolerate insanity more readily, we welcome it in fact. Still I think pressuring the children to excel in their studies at the expense of living is just plain mean. Hopefully starting now, we will remember that examinations are just a matter of evaluation. Hopefully with this realisation, less children will feel pressured to kill themselves over bad results.
Just Me.