I'm FAILING stuff for retarded reasons.

This is the first time in my life I'm failing stuff in school. And you know why?

Okay, I'm largely at fault and I'm be the first to admit that, but…

Oh, gosh, this is gonna be longer than I'd like…

CHINESE

Okay. Every Thursday, we have this test, we gotta memorize a freaking 400-600 word letter word for word and we're gonna be tested on that alongside comprehension passages and cloze passages.

I'm not gonna deny that it's improved my memory a bit. And everytime I see that sweet 9/10 on the paper I feel like I've achieved something worthwhile. Though I know it's not since I'm gonna forget the moment exams are over.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s all pointless since most students are gonna forget all their stuff once they pass their exams, y’know. It’s like you’ve wasted all those years learning about something something you have no interest or talent in and aren’t about to pursue beyond school.

To most of the people I know, learning all that stuff in school is all about the grades and nothing about the value of just knowing. I’ve had more than a few classmates walk up to me and say, “Why the hell are you reading that crap?” when I borrowed “Telling Lies about Hitler – Holocaust Denial and the David Irving Trial” by Prof. J. Evans, and I’d reply, “Why the hell not? I wanna know more about this stuff.” And they’d say, “Well aren’t you wasting your time on crap that doesn’t matter? We aren’t gonna be tested on that anyway.”

And in my heart I’d go “Er kann mich im arsche lecken” but I like to maintain an outer layer of civility so I say, “If you want to remain an ignorant turd all your life you go ahead.”

That’s when they usually walk with a contemptuous sound of some sort.

Okay, back to what I was talking about. So, yesterday, my Chinese teacher announced the overall marks for everyone. Guess what I got?

49.

49%.

Failed by 1 freaking mark.

But my first thoughts were not of self-bashing , but more of… What the hell? I scored real good (even if I do say so myself) on the weekly tests and stuff, and that’s counted too, so why the hell did I fail?

I’ll be brief.

In the year-end holidays last year, we were told to read a few Chinese books cuz there’d be a test when school starts. Last year, this test didn’t have much effect, so seeing that I could barely read any of it (it’s Romance of the Three goddamned Kingdoms and the book about the White Snake or something… If you’re Chinese you’d know; shui hu zhuan, literal translation – water stream chronicles, you know), I didn’t read it and failed miserably on the test scoring 14/50 through guesswork.

The punchline?

That test carried 50% of the marks.

And I was left tearing my hair out together with nearly all my classmates.

That’s right, it was darn near 100% failure for that test, and I happened to be one of the few unlucky ones who scored just badly enough for the weekly tests and writing work that I failed the overall by one mark. The rest were borderline passes -52, 53, that kind of thing.

Was my mom understanding about it?

Hell no.

God damn it.

Chemistry.

God damned chemistry.

No, don’t get me wrong, I love chemistry. Real interesting. Like physics. No, I’m serious. Sure, I’ll never become a physicist or mathematician because I’m very bad with abstract mathematics, but I very much want to understand what the hell Einstein and Newton were writing about in “Principia” and “Principle of General Relativity”. And I like knowing more about the universe we live in.

Back to topic.

I failed chemistry because…

Okay, see, we didn’t have many tests this year for chemistry, so every test has huge weightage, and there’s this single big test that’s worth 40%.

The other two tests I passed – borderline, but still a pass.

This particular one? I actually did it half asleep. My body just had to feel sleepy that day, that time, my brain just had to shut down on me.

I only got 4 right in the MCQ and there was one section when I was actually awake and that was the one I scored the best in, but there was more after that and I couldn’t remember what was in a freaking blast furnace.

I looked at the MCQ after the test and what killed me was that I knew all the answers! It’s just that I wasn’t thinking straight half asleep. Yes I actually thought that iron was more reactive than magnesium and that a compound was reduced when it gained oxygen.

God DAMN it. The things a sleepy mind does. No wonder it’s said that driving half asleep is worse than driving drunk.

My only consolation?

Nobody scored higher than a C5 in the overall, which is proof positive that the fault lay in the teacher’s crappy teaching.

Seriously, he puts it in such a way that we have no idea what’s going on. At all. He confounds us with abstract mathematics and fails at simplifying his explanation for us weaker minds even when we asked him to.

I know that people say it’s not the teacher, it’s the student. Just like it’s not the sword, it’s the swordsman- it’s not the cello, it’s the cellist – it’s not the tool, it’s the workman. But I believe that it’s a 70%-30% worker-tool balance. A shitty sword will not win Hans freaking Talhoffer any fights- Rostropovich will sound terrible on a shitty cello – a workman’s tools directly influences his work. A teacher is not a tool, but a teacher’s supposed to teach stuff so the student can understand, and if the student doesn’t, it’s either because the student is dim-witted, or the teacher is crap.

In this case, since nobody scored higher than a 55 (yes, nearly the whole class failed) it’s definitely the teacher.

Wonder if we’ll switch next term.

Something happened in Additional Mathematics the other day. Insignificant, but it made me think a little.

We were learning second derivative or something. d^2y/dx^2. My teacher was showing us how it worked on the board.

After she was done, my friend piped up and said:

Friend: Why are you wasting time on showing us these graphs? Why not just have us memorize the formula and move on?
Teacher: Isn’t it better if you actually understand what’s going on?
Friend: No, it’s not, it’ll just confuse us. Memorization is more efficient.
Friend 2: I agree. It’s really confusing, can’t we just memorize the formula?
Teacher: Oh. Really? Thought that it’d be better if you understand it. Well, I’ll remember that for future topics. Anyway. Turn your textbooks to…

I wanted to say something, but decided against it.

There was something sad about this. She wanted to memorize the procedure of manipulating symbols which held no meaning for her. She doesn't really know what’s going on, only that it is. Her mind couldn’t handle a simple explanation of how and why it works. I looked around, and wondered if that’s their attitude towards mathematics. Just learn how to manipulate symbols to pass exams, don’t need to understand it, numbers don’t need meaning.

I honestly don’t know what’s better, though, because I sure as hell won’t need to apply differentiation to my ordinary life. But at the same time, there’s just something about understanding it that’s… Appealing. Just for the sake of knowing.

Then again, I could save myself the trouble and forget all about it.

Damn it, I hate thinking too much.