Currently, I am enoying a cup of cold chilled lemon honey drink. The sweetness and sourness of the drink touches my lips, as if to refresh me for another day of work. However, drinking a nice cup of chilled lemon honey drink isn’t so sweet at all for me. In order to make honey the way I like, I would first put about 4 teaspoons of lemon honey into the cup, take cold water and pour it in. Now you might be wondering that honey isn’t so easy to dilute into cold water, so obviously I take my teaspoon and slowly stir. Strangely enough, each time I do this, I would just remember a particular test question I was given when I in Primary 3 (Grade 3). The question asked students to describe 3 things about this image of a bottle of honey. Obviously, the image was just a simple black-and-white with a bottle and a label saying “HONEY”. So my answer was:
- The honey is sticky.
- The honey is sweet.
- The honey is cold.
The following Friday, the teacher in her usual hastiness, handed down the graded test papers while trying to get the whole class to settle down for Friday’s assembly. It was at the end of the day, so you can imagine the madness going on: students can’t wait to go home, teachers trying to get everyone to settle down, prefects setting up the microphone and all that and lastly, parents and bus drivers waiting under the hot sun. When I got my paper back, let me state something: I didn’t expect much. In fact if I were to pass my Science paper, I would be more than happy. My Science was really sucky back then, so it was either a fail or a pass. Most of the times, it was at 50/100. Anyways, I got my paper back and while the class was flipping to see their mistakes or showing off to others that they got the most difficult question correct, I flipped to the page where the question of the bottle of honey was. To my astonishment, my teacher didn’t give me full marks. She gave ticks for the first 2 points: 1) honey is sweet and 2) honey is sticky. For the last point I wrote: 3) honey is cold, she gave a big red cross, like vending her anger on my paper. Next to the cross, she wrote there in her messy handwriting (must be last minute marking again), “Honey is warm”. So you can imagine my shock at the time. Plus this question was like one of the easiest in the whole paper, so you can imagine a little girl in polka dotted uniform, sitting cross-legged and with a face that showed clear embarrassment. Let me explain why I said honey is cold. In the past, my family always put the honey in the fridge. So obviously being at the age of 9, I can’t possibly think what others had in their family, so I just put that honey is cold, thinking that everyone also put their honey in the fridge. Many years later (technically now I am nearing my 17th birthday), I can still remember that not-so-honeyed question. I realised that the teacher was being ignorant too. I mean did she also consider at her age of like 20-something that people might have honey in the fridge and not in the kitchen cabinet or something? If I knew this in the past, I would have immediately find her and reason out with her. Alas, 9 doesn’t beat a 20-something on average, especially in the past. However, I thought about it and it was quite sad that in the past, the syllabus required children to know the correct answers, not necessarily know the correct methods. So there were teachers (not refering to all teachers, I am NOT sterotyping wonderful teachers) who just rejected whatever that was not in the answer sheet. They, in a way, might have tried to brainwash students to only thinking of the correct answers, without properly teaching how they got to the answers. Now, thank goodness, our syllabus require older students to have logical and correct methods stated before giving them the full marks for a question. I am not too sure how the syllabus requires of younger students though. At least, there is some sort of change right? As Singapore is getting much more tougher on their examinations, many are complaining of the unnecessary stress provided by these questions that demands more than just skills and knowledge, but also reasoning and creativity. Sadly, there are students (not refering to all students, I am NOT sterotyping students too) who ends up hating their teachers because the latter sets difficult and tedious questions. Well for those students, I just want to say: What goes around comes around. So if your teacher sets a really difficult paper, don’t worry too much. Simply because your teacher’s children will get much harder papers than you in the future, where everything is just getting more tougher. Well, that is the good thing. The bad thing is when you become a parent in the future, your kids would suffer too. Personally, that is a really vicious cycle. **cool, this essay is like 876 words –> my longest ever =)**
AUTHOR’S NOTE: THE WORD COUNT OF 876 WORDS IS ACCORDING TO MICROSOFT WORD HAHAHA
