Marking woes

The first five days of marking exam scripts are the worst. I need to get samples from all classes to ahve a feel of what are the major problems and the average performance. Its fustrating sometimes when what are considered as general knowledge ended up as not so general after all. There is little I can do to improve the geographical literacy since its assume all JC students have a certain level of geographical literacy. Perhaps the secondary schools should be blame for not getting the foundation right. Perhaps students should be blamed when they know the birthdays of their pop or sports idol but nothing about the city these celeberities grew up in. Why are students not keeping their eyes and ears open, to observe things beyond their immediate environment and look at the world?

Reminded me of the big news about a group of school band leaders who chose Hilter as their role model for leadership -- a case of pure ignorance or plain silly! Likewise a geography student who does not know where the major continents are and the country which major cities belong to is also a course for concern.

The famous story about the littel girl who saved many lives because she studied about Tsunami is pleasing to the ears of a geography teacher, but can my students do the same? What knowledge have they absorb from the months of lesson when till today, many are still unable to look at things through the eye of a geogapher!

These two days, the media is filled with IOC and Olympics 2012. I wonder how many of my students read about what has been done in those cities, the development and budget etc rather than which celebrities are in town. Are they more familar with Beckham than London? Woe to the geography teacher who fail to intill in his / her students a sense of the geography.