In which Uncle Angel is reminded how useless he is
All the geniuses come and go.
I saw the last of my Senior 3s for the last time yesterday. That was the more dutiful of my two classes, but they made no effort to solicit any last-minute advice from me about today’s exam through which many of them slept. I can only assume that they’re so brilliant that their knowledge of English, and competence in the language surpasses mine.
Last week, I asked them some impromptu questions about Paper 2 (writing). The results were not encouraging. They seemed largely incapable of recalling what the text types were or their characteristics. I resumed my grilling on Sunday (yes, Sunday – Bank Holiday + China = stupidity) and noticed various students scribbling down notes as if they were seeing these things for the first time. Actually, that’s not beyond the bounds of probability.
One thing I will say is that this year’s Senior 3s did not reach the heights of arrogance and insufferability which have characterised their predecessors for the past three years. One class was mostly present this term, and even in my mixed class, the attendance was fairly steady at the start of this term.
The rot set in with the biggest dunces and the biggest geniuses, which means that I haven’t seen about a third of the students in that class for the past month or so.
This was also the class which had a solid core of girls without a shred of a personality among them.
I thought I might get emotional about my separation from my Senior 3 classes, but I’m not really feeling anything probably because they come, they go, and then they do it all over again.
I should observe that my classes were also doing the easy version of the paper, which is almost impossible to fail without a good deal of hard work. As far as indicators of intellect go, this one flatters even the meanest mind.
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