ah yes, that goodness toward the one with the creative excuse. I know
it well.
Never did the 'distance learning' gig though Max.
Doug
On 22-Nov-05, at 2:32 PM, cooee wrote:
> Assessment
>
> Through the glass side wall
> of the tall Union Hall
> we see as we saunter
> (pup and pensioner),
> seated at desks writing,
> this year’s exam-system fodder,
> the diploma-hunting platoons -
>
> it’s yet another afternoon
> in November spring weather -
> exams still going on.
> Days come back to me
> pulsatingly,
> Auckland’s plane trees
> decked out pale-greenly
> outside the tall hall windows
> as I and my generation
> chewed our ballpoints
> in the name of education.
>
> I’d come out certain
> of another humiliation
> unless it was English,
> logic having defeated me,
> or the theory of money,
> or physical anthropology
> (taught by a dentist
> who walked up from the city,
> with a grim-mouthed interest
> in the teeth of prehistory).
>
> My broad choice of subjects
> and short concentration span
> ensured me some fail-marks
> and deferred graduation.
> I bet none of this lot
> are so inefficient.
> A glance suggests that
> their families are mostly
> moneyed and Asian.
> Commerce, today, no doubt.
> Indeed, ‘English’ here,
> which I taught so long
> (a subject wisely avoided
> by students from overseas),
> mostly lets them write at home
> and post stuff in to the Essay Box.
>
> Pup and I have just assessed
> a late one: ‘sorry, Max,
> but life has been hard
> since my mum stabbed my dad’.
> Creative excuse?
> I’ll assume
> that’s not my business
> to assess,
> but it is...disarming.
> Her poems are formulaic,
> her commentary under-informed.
> Push her through, a pass this week,
> in March she’ll graduate.
> I shan’t pretend again
> I can teach folk to write.
>
> Come, pup, to the off-leash park.
>
>
> Max Richards
>
> Bundoora/BalwynNorth
>
> 8.15am
> Wednesday 23 November 2005
>
>
Douglas Barbour
11655 - 72 Avenue NW
Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
(780) 436 3320
Shakespeare
Drag yr mouldy old bones
Up these stairs & tell me
What you died of,
I think
I’ve got it
Too.
Sharon Thesen
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