A solution to exams: how we will get a 100% pass rate every year.

As the senior exams are now in full swing, I think it's appropriate that this week I write about fishing, or more specifically, the time I spent attempting to fish down at the Coast. Our story starts about a year ago when my family went down to a beach house on the South Coast for our holiday. Why they wanted to spend two weeks on a lump of sand with fluctuating weather conditions where everything (including bedding) rusts I don't know, but I tagged along in any case. We got to the little cottage (which had the structural stability of quicksand) and I decided to try some of the seaside activities that people so often talk about...

First off I tried surfing. I hadn't the foggiest where to start so I got myself a board and asked some of the locals what to do. "Wax the board." they all said. So with a slight bit of scepticism I did just that. I then ran into the ocean which, despite it being Africa and despite global warming was freezing, and attempted to catch the first wave I saw. Obviously, because I had waxed the board (which was a stupid idea really) it was very slippery, and thus as soon as I tried standing up it slipped out from under me and hit me in the head. Of course, having the perseverance of a bee flying into a window, I tried again, with the same result. And again. And again. It was when I began to bleed severely that I started thinking surfing wasn't for me. So, cold and broken, I receded from the water and gave up on the whole surfing venture. I then tried to build a sandcastle and, well let's just say that if you ever want a list of places that you don't really want sand...

I skulked back to the cottage where I found my brother and father setting up their fishing equipment. Personally I think it's a cruel and demeaning activity that you'll spend hours preparing for, just so you can spend more hours sitting on a cold, wet rock in the hope of luring some poor innocent creature into biting the very painful and sharp looking hook that you're dangling from a piece of string. Then, to add insult to injury, you'll probably say that the creature is too small and throw it back, where it will be eaten by a bigger fish. However, I'm sure fishing has a few good points, even though I can't exactly think of any right now... Nevertheless, I had nothing better to do so I got out a spare fishing stick and went with my bro and dad and sat on a rock to dangle a piece of string into the sea, just as it began to rain.

By the end of the day my dad had caught three biggish fish, my brother had caught a number of small ones and I had caught (no fisherman's tales here) a sum total of, well, zero. The thing is that their hours of preparation and toil had paid off, whereas for me who hadn't prepared at all, things didn't go too well. Now what you don't realise is that I've just led you through a 544 word analogy, because this moral also applies with exams: If you drift along and don't prepare, chances are you will see flaming wolves, but if you prepare and study and put in time and effort, although you cannot guarantee things will work out, in all probability you have ensured yourself a good mark.

But there's a problem with exams. If you study hard for, let's say two weeks in advance, and make sure you can recite the textbook off-by-heart, there is still no guarantee of a good mark. You could have a really bad day when you write it, or the teacher might ask things that you didn't go over in too much detail, or you might not understand the question, there's a whole bunch of things that influence how you write an exam. Studying just increases the chance of those things having less of an effect. And another thing is this: let's be honest here, once you've written an exam all the knowledge seems to leak out, which is then compounded by a holiday straight afterwards. I can hardly remember anything that I learned last year in Bio, for example. So, in essence, there is a whole list of things wrong with exams, and that's not to mention all the paper they waste, the work hours for the teachers, the cost of running the school for the duration, and all of the trivial things like that. This means that, in actual fact, exams are very useless and silly. This, of course, brings in a new problem. How then, are we going to test how much people know and have learned?

Fear not, because I have a solution! After much thought and consideration, I have come up with a plan that will replace exams forever: at the end of each year, the school should put students from each subject into real world situations. For example, you could ship off all the science students to NASA, where they would have to design their own rocket engines using their school based knowledge on the theory of expanding gasses. They should then take a ride in their rocket and if it works, pass with distinction. If it doesn't work, well then the rocket would crash and burn and you wouldn't have to worry about that student any more. This way the pressures are on for students to properly learn their stuff, and theoretically you should get a 100% pass rate every year.

It's a brilliant idea really. Think about it, all the Biology students could perform their own kidney transplant, all the Business Studies students could open their own shops, all the Accounting students could do the bookkeeping for JSE for a week, all the French students could be dropped off in France for a while to see how well they get on, all the Geography students could be made to do Journey without maps and all the IT students’ laptops could get thrown out of the window so that they would have to fix them on their own. This system will revolutionize education everywhere, now all I need to do is get backing from the IEB.

But what about English, you ask? Well, all the marks are drawn out of a hat anyway, so...

James Hosken

The Sporting Dilemma

Cricket is not a spectator sport. Yet people watch it. You'll always find some wanderers at the Wanderer's wondering why they have paid for a ticket that allows them to waste seventeen hours of their life getting sunburnt on TV while watching some guy throw a piece of cork at some other guy who hits it back at him in an attempt to get it past some more guys who are actually on the first guy's team. The hitter, or 'batsman' will then attempt to run at the person who threw the cork at him, but instead of angrily beating the thrower, or 'bowler', with the bat that he currently holds, he promptly turns round and runs back to where he started. Then, the people who are out in the field ('fielders') will try throw the cork back at the batsman who's in in an attempt to get him out. Once they've got him out, he'll go inside and another person who was inside will go out to be in until the people who are out in the field get him out too. Once all of the people who are meant to be in are out, the sides switch and the whole bloody thing starts again.

Other non spectator sports include snooker, croquet, bowls, showjumping, swimming, athletics meetings, night time motor racing, day time motor racing, rowing, and the Norwegian ladies championship for knitting. But probably the least spectator friendly sport on the planet is golf. You stand on a patch of desecrated rainforest and watch some guy (who probably isn't Tiger Woods) hit a ball into a hole. Action-packed and exhilerating are words that don't exactly come to mind. However there are some sports that can be more interesting to watch than dried deer droppings. Basketball is one of them, however I'm way too white to be interested, so that can get crossed off my list. There's also soccer, but unfortunately that has turned into too much of a money making scam for my liking, so that can go too. Which leaves me with three choices...

Waterpolo, rugby and that Aztec game where you have to use any means possible to get the ball (which is usually a human head) through a hoop, where at the end the losers get sacrificed. Unfortunately one of those is illegal and one of them is gay; the thing about waterpolo is this: it's a nice concept, but I just can't grasp a game that involves two sides of near naked men in a pool trying to throw an inflated sheep's pancreas at some netting, just to have the other side throw it back. So this leaves just one. Rugby. With sufficient amounts of violence, skill and intellect (well, the commentator must at least know how to speak), rugby is the perfect spectator sport. And it was upon this realisation a few weeks ago that I began to get excited for the Menlo Park game...

As all of you should know, we had our first rugby match on Friday against a school that I used to know as Menlo Park, but which I now refer to as the Arrogant Mucus-filled Vile Scum of the Earth. We were all pretty excited as a short, gay guy in a green shirt switched on his mic and told all of us that he was the presenter. We all sat patiently while the commentator made some indistinguishable noises on his own mic. We even waited quietly while the Scum's team ran onto the field. Then all hell broke loose. I won't remind anyone of the details of the game, suffice to say that we got our arses handed to us. On a silver platter. With gold leaf. And titanium cutlery. And then they stepped on our faces as well. However, I am proud to say that for the two and a half minutes or so that we were in possesion of the ball the entire College shouted their lungs out.

So, the lesson I've learned from this is to stay away from sport. With cricket you would waste your life away, with soccer you would lose all your money, with golf you would be bored to death, with Aztec sports you would get arrested if you're not killed to death for losing, I'm too white for basketball and too straight for waterpolo, and when it comes to rugby you will just be downright disappointed (and have no lungs). Maybe I'll take up chess...
James Hosken

Words that describe tone

critical
arrogant
whimsical
detached
angry
pretentious
fanciful
apathetic
threatening
condescending
wistful
indifferent
irate
patronizing
flippant
straightforward
outraged
humorous
nostalgic
candid
indignant
bantering
sentimental
didactic
ambiguous
silly
reflective
learned
confused
mock-heroic
regretful
scholarly
perplexed
amused
remorseful
pedantic
ironic
happy
apologetic
moralistic
tongue-in-cheek
ecstatic
challenging
inspirational
sarcastic
effusive
contentious
respectful
sardonic
contented
inflammatory
reverent
mocking
disappointed
shocking
sympathetic
irreverent
sad
dramatic
compassionate
disdainful
elegiac
passionate
interested
contemptuous
melancholic
restrained
urgent
caustic
depressing
impartial
serious
biting
mournful
objective
ominous
cynical
poignant
clinical
apprehensive
skeptical
somber
factual
foreboding
wry

Reminders...

Hi Form 4s

Please remember to email me your Henry V presentations. Mr Fairweather is keen to have them.

Also, don’t forget the 7 BOOKS that you need to be reading… You have 18 months…!

Thanks!

(The pic is of Cameron eating your Henry V essays... Apologies to Matthew in particular!)

The Journey...

I took one of those internet tests a couple of days ago and apparently I have an IQ of 196, my future partner’s name is Gertrude Percival-Green, I would make a good paediatric cardiologist, and I’m going to die in a huge fireball at the age of 112 in a spaceship that’s plummeting out of control to earth. The first one I don’t believe; it’s flattering, but really implausible. The second point was distressing, because if I ever met anyone called Gertrude Percival-Green... well, I’d run away. Fast. Another indication of the test’s absurdity is the fact that I can’t stand the sight of blood, and I honestly would not be proud to say that my profession is ‘cutting small children open and messing about with their vital organs,’ so I would not ever be a paediatric cardiologist. But I like the way that they’ve said I’ll kick the bucket. I must say that dying in a plummeting spacecraft does have some kind of ring to it. It must be better than dying in the hospital as a vegetable, connected to very invasive tubes and sensors. I’d like to go out with a bang, and I’m sure you would too. You may wonder why, and the answer is simple. Adventure. You don’t want to be remembered as a shrivelled up potato with a plug in you arse, you want to be remembered as ‘that guy who died fighting off thousands of terrorists on top of Mount Everest.’ Adventure is what led the cavemen out of the caves. Adventure is what led Chris Columbus to go the extra mile and make America known to the rest of the world. Adventure is what led the Wright Brothers to want to fly. And adventure is what Mr Broom wants us all to experience on The Journey...

At first I’m sure anyone would be slightly sceptical about being sent out to spend 23 days in the bush with no technology, no running water, no sanitation, sufficient food for a hummingbird and a spade as a toilet (we called it Doug). But in truth, after a while everyone was... well -although I loath using this word- Gee’d. Most of us, in fact, were looking forward to spending 23 days in the bush with no parents, no running water, no sanitation, no food and no sturdy roof over our heads. Anyway, on the day of out departure, after a boring bag check to make sure no one had brought any “hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals” (as Ma’am Reyburn puts it so nicely) or pornographic magazines (19 were uncovered), we all got lined up next to the bell. There were sobbing mothers and a couple of emotional speeches about “...boys growing into men... a significant time of life... sincerely hope... safe passage...etc” and before we knew it we were past the bell, up the N1 and gathered (again) in the parking lot. There were some more speeches given, the last goodbyes were said and the group flag was handed over to us. This was a rather special moment, even I will admit, because that flag was the flag that defined us as a group, it was our banner, our sign, and it would go with us wherever we went. And so, finally, we left the school.

We had been told that it was easy to get lost on Journey, but not even the most pessimistic cynic could have predicted what happened next. We proudly walked out of the gate, marched to the top of Chapel Hill and got lost. Not 100 meters into the Journey and already there had been a fight about which way to go! And, basically, that set the scene for the entire Journey. “Mr Broom’s Spur Drawn Maps” as we so cunningly referred to them, were utterly useless as any sort of route indicator and as a result, getting lost daily was an absolute guarantee. What varied was how long it took to realise we were lost. There was one day that we actually asked a passing local if we were on the right track and he looked at the map, thought for a while, and then said that we were meant to be “on that mountain, just over there.” Well, “Just over there” turned out to be a very long way away. If you think that’s bad, apparently one of the groups after us didn’t chance upon a helpful local and subsequently reached the border. I asked which border and the reply was “just the border.” I suppose I could go on and talk about the roughest days on Journey, the easiest days on Journey, the most emotionally challenging days on Journey and all that rot, but just in case any unlucky form three happens upon this, I don’t want to ruin any surprises so think I’ll leave that for some other day.

Anyway, breaking off the topic for a while, did you know that Charlie Brown’s father was a barber? And that the Chinese have extended their release dates for the Long March Changzheng rocket designs to April 2014

Oh, yes, just before I leave you, remember that flag that I told you about... well here’s an amusing story: On day 2 someone had left the flag sticking too far out of the truck that was carrying our stuff while we were cycling, and there was a particularly insensitive tree that stuck out over the road and bent our flag. On day 13 our flag got bent a bit more, and then it got torn a bit. By day 18 some of us had forgotten its original shape or colour, because at the time it was a sort of brown-black murky twist of wood and cloth. But it was still our flag, and we cherished it. On day 23, after the 3 hour bus ride back (that’s depressing – 23 days there on foot, 3 hours back... in a bus), we were waiting for Mr Hamilton to call us up the N1. Our group leader for the day (no names mentioned - I promised Janneman I wouldn’t use his name) very astutely pointed out that we couldn’t walk up with a bent flag, so he tried to bend it back. Anyone who’s ever tried to bend hard wood will know that it doesn’t bend so well, but rather snaps. And that’s what happened. After 23 days of rivers, sun, bush, dirt, rain, heat, and cold, we broke our flag in the last 5 minutes of the Journey, waiting in a car park. I almost cried.

James Hosken

This poem was posted on a Facebook group I joined over the weekend. The group was entitled "RIP Susan Tsvangirai", and was one of about 30 such groups set up following the death of Susan Tsvangirai, wife of Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai, in a head on collision with a US Food Aid truck.

There is much speculation from the people of Zimbabwe that the "accident" was not an accident at all, but rather a planned attack by President Bob to try and rid himself of the Prime Minister. Unfortunately the ever passive Morgan denies this, and believes that it was all just an "accident". Personally, I think Bob is to blame.


"The Drums Are Calling, Old Man"

The drums are calling old man, and they are louder by the day.
They are calling you to judgement and now's the time to pay
for the wrongs you've done your country and the trust that you betrayed.
So hear those drums now swelling, hear well and be afraid.

You came to power on waves of hope that you would make your mark,
in a land that shone in Africa like diamonds in the dark.
In simple faith the people put their trust into your care,
and were repaid by the Fifth Brigade and the CIO and fear.

Twenty eight years of motorcades and lavish trips abroad,
a nation's heritage is lost through patronage and fraud.
The Chiefs grow fat while people starve and famine stalks our homes.
On idle farms the weeds grow rank and cover cattle bones.

The youth are taught your slogans, but even as they sing
the drums of change are beating, for the truth is seeping in.
The demagogue has feet of clay and lies will not sustain
the shattered land that once seemed free and will be so again.

Too late to blame the drought, the Brits, the whites, the MDC.
For all know where the finger points with cold finality.

So hear the drums, old man, and listen to them well,
They foretell of your end days and they have much to tell.
For he who sows the seeds of hate will reap the grapes of wrath,
so tremble in your bed at night, at the end of your sorry path.

Unknown


I am posting this because I believe it is very relevant to the current situation in Zimbabwe, a country where my family grew up and lived in happiness, a feeling which most families still there cannot have on a day to day basis.

Jo Balmer

How a dirty old cereal bowl is related to Dumbo the Elephant.

Welcome back everyone, and I hope your half term gave you sufficient time to rest, even though it probably didn’t. Last week I asked for some feedback on the length of my writing. I have currently received feedback from two people, one of whom was my mother, and the other was a bloke called Jo. This tells me one of two things: either no one can be bothered to get up and respond to my request, or no one actually reads any of this and I am wasting my time; only entertaining my mum and a guy called Jo. I suppose another way of looking at this situation is that nobody has actually complained and therefore I am doing something right. Yes, yes I like that one…

Ma’am Reyburn started this site so that people would learn. So far I haven’t really learned anything, and I don’t think any of you have either. But that’s about to change! Every week from now on I shall give you one FREE!!! piece of occasionally relevant news and one FREE!!! very seldom relevant fact. How kind am I?

For anyone who’s interested (and I’m sure everyone is), the irrelevant news piece for the week is that yesterday (the 3rd of March) was the international day of square roots. Apparently they did this because of the date (I.e. today is 3.3.09, and 3 is the square root of 9). How quaint. The irrelevant fact for this week is this: in 1976, a Los Angeles secretary formally married her 50-pound pet rock. Two questions spring to my mind: why? and how?

Well now that the strenuous intellectual task of learning is over, and Ma’am Reyburn’s wishes have been fulfilled, I can get on with other things. I was sorting through a pile of old stuff that my sister had grown out of so it could now be gotten rid of and, wow, I had a couple of laughs. For example there was one children’s movie called Dumbo, which is basically about a big eared young elephant who learns to fly. This amused me, I mean, what type of paint thinners must you be sniffing to come up with a story about a 2 and a half tonne mammal using its ears as a flight tool? And they feed this drivel to small children! It’s rather upsetting to think that all of us were enthralled by such convulent and thrilling plots such as this one when we were younger. Whatever, I moved further into the pile of old memorabilia and found one of my very old music books. This brought back lots of memories, as at one time I had taken a combination of piano, violin, marimba and recorder (which, for those who don’t know, is basically just a glorified whistle). I had stopped recorder because it had a terrible screechy sound, I had stopped marimba because my old school had stopped offering the lessons and I had stopped violin because, frankly, I was utterly useless at it. And yes, I do currently take piano, even though I’m also pretty useless at that, compared to people with names like Malkovicjh Bragolevovikch, or Henry Thackeray, for example. So, with a tear of low self esteem in my eye, I moved on through the box.

My eye was caught by a dirty old cereal bowl, and suddenly the floodgates of memory were opened. This was the bowl that I had used to eat cereal with for the first 8 years of my life, and it was ‘my bowl’; some people have blankies, some people have teddy bears, some people have action figures that they treasure and don’t go anywhere without, and I had my bowl. I remember when I was really young I would fight at breakfast with my brother over the cutlery we got (I ALWAYS had to have the coco-pops spoon). I have obviously grown out of this behaviour, although to be honest at breakfast I occasionally notice that some people of the College apparently have not; the following is an example of something you might hear at breakfast: (Please circle appropriate...)

“No sir/ma’am, it wasn’t my fault, because he stole/ravaged/spat-on my bacon/spoon/plate, so I stabbed him in the eye/kidney/head with my fork/knife/pen. He then punched/kicked/head-butted me in my throat/stomach/leg so I obviously reacted by throwing a tray/table/printer at him. You see, that’s why there is blood/limbs/a mess on the floor and you can’t blame me.”
Really, some of the manners are despicable. Anyway, furthering my quest for old memories I found a tattered old book. I pulled it out and dusted it off and what do you know! It was my first reading book. I can’t remember exactly when I had read it but all I know is that it was an amazing story with an exhilarating plot and well thought out characters with a moral at the end that is very relevant in today’s society. So I picked it up and had a bit of a read. I opened on the first page and there was a picture of a dog. The text said “LOOK.” I turned the page to find a picture of a cat. The text said “LOOK.” The third page contained a picture of a man. And lo and behold, the text said “LOOK.” I turned the page once more, and (this is my favourite part) found the twist in the plot. There was a picture of a dog, a cat, and a man, all together, and the text said “LOOK!” Suck on that, J.K.Rowling.

I was about to pack away the box when I noticed one last thing. A crumpled up, dilapidated old piece of paper with some ink markings on it. Upon further study, the ink markings turned out to be badly written words. In fact, it was the first story I ever wrote. I vaguely remember writing something like this, but I must have been on drugs, because I could not tell what was going on. There was something about a pirate ship, some treasure buried on the moon, clowns and a guy called Steve. How they interlink we will never know, because it will require highly trained problem-solving decipherers to actually read and interpret what I wrote. Although, in all fairness no one can really tell the difference between my handwriting when I was 5 and my handwriting now, much to the frustration of any poor soul marking my work.

So my advice to you is this: If you’re ever really bored on a six and a half day holiday, take out a box of your old stuff and reminisce in good times gone by. But don’t write about it, because then you, like me, will have wasted 5 minutes of a bloke called Jo’s life as he reads about something that is completely irrelevant to society. I thank you very much.

James Hosken

cool quotes

I have come across many quotes and some have made me stop and thin for a while about it and the deeper meaning behind it. So I feel that i should share this with the class and will post quotes on the blog whenever i come across one that has had such an effect on me.

This is the first one and second one as they occured on the same day:

"If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have."

"Love is not what makes the world go round. It's what makes the ride worthwhile."

Matthew Sawyer