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What’s wrong with kids today?
Not all kids, just two. What’s wrong with two of my kids today?
One (Student C) has been through our motivational workshop and still delights in making doomed pronouncements for himself. “I’ll fail.” “I’ll get everything wrong.” “See, told you I wouldn’t get an A1.” He knows I hate these statements, he knows they go against our mindset of positive thinking, and he knows he can do better than his dire predictions, but still he delights in them. I feel like smacking him one. Or a dozen, whatever it takes to get the message across to him.
Today Students A and C did a practice test, and Student C was “so happy” to get an A2. As my boss was there, I challenged Student C to tell my boss to his face that he was happy with the A2. My boss was unflappable. He just gave his usual speech about “it’s your life, you screw it up”. I’m torn between correcting Student C every time he says this, because I want to change his mindset, and just ignoring it, because I know he’s just doing it for the attention. He does a lot of things for attention, but this is the one that irritates me the most. Also, he’s passive-agressive: While he won’t voice out his objections, he will just stubbornly persist in his erroneous ways until you give in out of exhaustion.
If I were allowed to smack them around, I so totally would. Except that physical punishment probably doesn’t mean anything to these kids. They have other weaknesses, and I shall find these and exploit them! Muahahahaha!
Student B was also present today, but not in my class. When I went into his classroom, he told me in the presence of his teacher and classmates that he had essentially been offered money to shut up and not spill a stupid, trivial secret. His school is really terrible, not academically but in what they do to their children. What kid uses money as his instrument of first resort? Kids who have too much, that’s what. And this breeds a very “money talks” mentality among them. All of them. Every single one of them. I sincerely doubt I could find one kid in that school who has the kind of moral fibre that Student A showed.
So I told Student B straight to his face, again in front of others, that he had no integrity. He happily agreed. *sigh*
Later I was forced to play my last card. I told him that his peer(s) considered him not the greatest role model. I asked him if he would do business with someone with no integrity, and how would he succeed anyway when he himself has none, yet intends to go into business? He has a great entrepreneurial mind, I’ll give him that, but his moral compass is seriously screwed up.
I told him that if he was already such an asshole at 15, what kind of asshole would he be at 25? He seemed to find this amusing, so I don’t know if the message got through. People like him have an awesome tendency for selective hearing and memory.
I shall probably just give up on both of them. As my bosses tell me, you can’t change all your students. If they don’t want to change, I’m not going to waste my time and energy on them when I have lots of other students who need guidance. My only priority is to boost their grades, since that’s what I’m being paid for. If they want the moral fibre freebie, it’s theirs for the taking, otherwise I can’t be bothered anymore.
A Plastic Post
Several semesters ago, I had to take a module on “Living With Chemistry”, and one of the topics covered was plastics. You might think plastic is just plastic, but there is a huge variety of plastics in this world, thanks to the genius of petrochemical engineers. A few molecules here, a branch chain there, and voila! New material generated.
One of those new materials is HDPE, which stands for High Density Polyethylene. It’s all around you, but you just didn’t know its name. Did you just buy a bottle of juice from Giant? Chances are, the bottle was made of HDPE. When you do laundry and you pour in some Dynamo, look at the bottom of the bottle where they stamp the plastic category. Yup, HDPE again. HDPE has a very high resistance to chemicals and water, so it’s commonly used for these purposes. There are even HDPE Nets, which is just one form that scrap HDPE can take. Contrary to popular belief, HDPE is actually a reusable material.
So please be a responsible Earthling, and separate your trash as much as possible so that it can be reused and recycled.
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