One of my classes is beginning to frustrate me. I call them my "class from hell" even though half of the class is not as hellish as I make them out to be; after all, the other half of the class are quiet behaved girls. I'm not saying that girls are better than boys, but the breed of boys in this particular class just make me want to smack them upside the head. I begin to wish that corporal punishment was reinstated in California.
English. It's not the most interesting thing in a high school kid's life. It's the most hated subject in schools because it is the most mentally demanding as far as analytical thinking is concerned. And let's face it: kids these days have no endurance for difficult tasks. They give up as soon as they think it's hopeless. This, indeed, is a society of laziness, of baby-boomer spawns who genuinely think they are entitled to anything and everything just because their parents got everything and anything.
Most of all, I hate the stupid responses that kids give me that I can't seem to argue around or against. For example, some kid said to me, "I didn't do my homework... it's because I'm black."
What do you say to that?
The thing that bothers me most is when students complain that English is boring. I don't take it as a personal insult that my subject is boring or that I teach in boring ways, but what bothers me is their apathy. They'll sit there in their seat and just not do the work. It's like banging your head on a wall to get them to do anything. If they're going to sit in my class and refuse to do the work and not care, why can't I just give them an F for the year and not care, too?
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. On that note, why does California require minors to be in school? If high schoolers don't want to come to school, they shouldn't be there. If these kids are so eager to start working to earn their own money, let them. Let them see how hard it is to make ends meet on a minimum wage with limited work hours because they're still under sixteen and can barely drive. They'll all come crawling back anyway...