Tales of the English Department

As most of the people who follow me on Instagram know, I've been again, again and again baffled by the Raffles Institution English Department. In fact, I reached what I'd like to call a breaking point earlier this week. Some people have popped into my DMs and asked why exactly I feel such great hate toward the English Department, and to be honest I can't pinpoint it down to one reason.

Updated 22 Oct 2023: I have rephrased certain things to make sure they sound less targeted, please contact me if you feel something is off or feel uncomfortable.

Earlier this week...

    As most of the Year 4s know, we attended a talk about GAP Congress with an English teacher this Monday. We made noise, as we do 80% of the time, and we were told to keep quiet. I have absolutely no issues with being told to keep quiet, it makes sense and is very much logical. HOWEVER, the way she did it was almost as though she was mocking us, and very frankly the only term I can think of to accurately describe this feeling was patronising, I felt disgusted by the way she spoke, sure, we were in the wrong, but does that justify the need to act that way? Does it justify the tone she spoke to us in? I personally felt like she looked down on us, that she wanted to affirm the fact that we were lower in the hierarchy compared to her. Maybe I don't fully understand the situation, but that's the gist of it.

    Continuing from this idea of power dynamics, we swivel over to the rest of the English Department. This is probably a sentiment that most of us hold, but the English Dept. marking schemes are absolutely ridiculous. But then again, what can we do? We can't change it, I have seen people in my class fight for it, but obviously to no avail. To call them tyrannical might be a bit of a far stretch, but I am very much able to acknowledge that we are powerless.

    We are very much polite, well-mannered, and open when we speak to them about feedback, comments, and changes that we feel would make the curriculum that bit better. However, is this sentiment returned? Absolutely not. They are, to put simply, stubborn. They know they are in power, and they make "full use" of it. They live delusionally day-by-day believing in this fantasy that we adore their teaching and that content taught is genuinely useful, when we do in fact have ideas and suggestions that can both make their teaching more engaging for us and make our learning more effective and conducive.

    Every time I get a weighted assignment back, I CANNOT, I physically CANNOT read the feedback that is written, it is illegible and very much ironic coming from a language teacher, if you don't know how to write, TYPE. When I ask the teacher for clarification, he does read it out, but even so, it still makes no sense, when probed further, all I am told is "YoU hAVe aREa fOr iMprOveMenT", as if I did not know that from the mark. Sure, comparison is harm in most situations, but when everyone else in the class has such a drastically different score from you, it is simply human nature to question why. When I asked, I was provided: no proper reason, no attempt at explanation and no proper tips to improve.

The English Lit Department

    The last point made during my breaking point was that the English Literature Department SHOULD be teaching English. I will keep this part short and sweet with an example. I was taught Literature by Ms Afiqah for 2 years, sure, I might've been kicked out of the class because I forgot to do my PBQ/Unseen, but now that I look back, thank god I got kicked out. At least getting kicked out meant the teacher was bothered enough to make sure I got something into my thick skull. I felt genuinely interested and looked forward to her lessons, she was engaging, called on people who were dreaming away to answer questions, and made the lessons somewhat fun. To provide a point of comparison, what do we do in English Lessons? Watch videos, "analyse" news articles and then engage in "discussion" with our buddies. Eventually, at some point, it just becomes useless, the conversations die out and it's absolutely the opposite of engaging. I'll acknowledge that maybe they're trying? At the same time though, the lack of engagement is so omnipresent within the classroom, but the teacher just seems to be oblivious to that, so that is a bit odd.

    I have plenty more to talk about, but I will leave that for another day. I have refrained from talking about IC24 (Shibuya) since that would probably make me look like I am just salty about it, though I do have concrete points about that one. 

 

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DISCLAIMER: This post represents the opinions of the post author, it is in no way meant to be an accurate source to cite in any form, and it is perfectly ok to disagree with the opinions put out by me.

Last Updated: 24/10/2023