Teaching Troubles
For parents of teenagers, June is that irksome time of year when, after what seems months of 'study leave', their offspring spend all day gazing up at the ceiling with grubby socks all over the sofa, the trauma of end-of-term or GCSE exams setting the household temperature to 'dangerously high'.
Nowadays the tension of a terminal 'pass or fail at a single stroke' situation is mitigated by coursework, upon which much hope often rests. Though when I infested the classroom and wielded the whiteboard marker pen, coarse might have been a more appropriate spelling in some cases.
The stress of the moment can lead to some very interesting answers and History seems to be the subject that produces the best.
Many of you will doubtless already know these classic howlers:
- The Battle of Sluys was fought at sea and was one in which the archers did better than the cavalry.
- Prince Rupert was found in a ditch with some peas in his pocket which he had eaten for breakfast.
- Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was canonised by Bernard Shaw for reasons I don't really understand. The English and French still have problems.
- Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
- Magna Carta provided that no man could be hanged twice for the same offence.
- The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.
Having taken a class through the dramas of the invasion of 1588, with the exploits of Drake 'singeing the King of Spain's beard' and a graphic illustration of the invincible crescent formation of the Spanish fleet as it swept up the English Channel, it is perhaps not inevitable that my personal favourite is this answer to the question: How did Drake delay the Armada?
He stretched a line of ships across the Pacific and made the Spanish go the other way.
Coursework too, produced its moments. Given a free choice of historic topics, one girl chose the French Revolution. After three weeks' avid reading of a single book, she appeared to have produced little and actually complained that the book hadn't, so far, been too helpful. A glance at the title revealed why – she had selected The Theory of Evolution!
Maths lessons also produced some merry moments. Like the time when, in an attempt to introduce the elementary ideas of algebra, that only similar things can be combined (Xs and Xs but not Xs and Ys) a round-the-class session asked questions like 'three apples plus two apples' or 'three apples plus five bananas'. Eventually a girl was reached who had sat, po-faced, with arms folded throughout the proceedings.
Question: What is five oranges plus four oranges?
Answer: 'I don't know – I was away last week!'
