So! I was quoted in an article in today’s Straits Times.

This is a snippet from the article, including my quote:

Education Minister Heng Swee Keat was a guest at the Pre-University Seminar last June but chose to sit unnoticed at the back of a hall for more than an hour, to listen to students’ presentations.

He said he prefers not to disrupt proceedings or affect the candour of discussions.

He also stressed that it is his belief in working together with educators at the front line and with the community that “shapes my interaction, rather than a reaction after the [General Election]“.

Mr Heng also does not believe in making unannounced visits to schools to try and catch educators out.

That is not helpful in generating trust between educators and those at the ministry’s headquarters, and trust is what matters in the long run, he said.

Project manager and parent of two, Mr Tan Gin Tat, 40, gave a thumbs up to Mr Heng’s school visits.

However, he added: “If Mr Heng is walking down the school corridors, I hope he doesn’t just talk to the top people but chats with teachers on the problems they are facing on imparting knowledge to kids.”

Teacher Laremy Lee, 28, however, wants more unannounced visits to be made. Schools and teachers sometimes “stage a show” for office-holders on planned visits, he said.

– Andrea Ong and Cai Haoxiang, Do-it-yourself ministers gaining notice, The Straits Times, 3 Jan 2012, p. A8 (my emphasis).

I realise that I may sound as though I want Heng Swee Keat to catch educators out, so I thought I’d share the actual quote I gave in its entirety:

Question: Heng Swee Keat has been making it a point to visit schools of all levels and strengths to find out more about what’s going on the ground and to gauge the prevalence of parents’ feedback. A few of these visits were unannounced. How do you feel about this move by Mr Heng? Are you in favour of it or do you feel it’s just “wayang”?

Answer: Unfortunately, I don’t have a bird’s eye view of things, so it’d be difficult for me to correlate the visits with efforts such as the recent Character and Citizenship Education initiative. If the visits have led to the understanding that parents are as responsible as teachers for instilling values in the youth of today, for example, then yes, I am in favour of more visits like these.

With specific regard to unannounced visits, I think it’s great. When announced visits are made, what happens is that schools and teachers will stage a show for the visiting office-holders. So office-holders end up going off with the impression that everything is fine and dandy, when in actual fact, there are many problems that have been swept under the carpet, only to resurface after the visiting office-holders leave. So there should be more unannounced visits.

The point I was trying to make was that there should be more unannounced visits so that office-holders get a good sense of the realities of the situation as opposed to an artificial view of what is going on.

The Laremy Lee version.

1. Human beings are animals.
   That’s why you can learn a lot about humanity by watching Dog Whisperer. That’s also why we need rules and boundaries to maintain order, especially when…
2. Human beings are like currents – they follow the path of least resistance.
   Not everyone is altruistic enough to do that which takes effort to be done, hence the solution in (1).
3. Every child is a reflection of her/his parents. Similarly, every student is a reflection of her/his teacher(s).
   A lackadaisical child/student is the product of lackadaisical parents/teachers.
4. From (3), the way a child/student speaks is the exact same way her/his parents/teachers speak.
   A polite, eloquent child/student is the product of polite and eloquent parents/teachers. Ill-mannered, uncouth and impolite children/students…
   
   By the way, not to belabour the point, but this is also why the Speak Good English Movement will never succeed – because it addresses the wrong target audience.
5. In most situations, less is more.
   That’s why I’m ending here.

What are some of your hard truths?

Also, if anyone can design/customise a picture for me (i.e. include my picture as well) based on the original text, I’d be very grateful!

NOTE: I was contemplating publishing this in the school newsletter, but I decided this was the better platform.

The poem stems from something I’ve been thinking about for a while, because I’ve wanted to find a way to thank my students and wish them well.

I started writing the poem last week in the midst of marking and all that jazz, but I’ve decided that the poem is done and it’s time to put it up.

Last but not least, “piglet” and other porcine-related words are figurative and not literal, and is in no way meant to demean or denigrate – I thought I had better make this clear, just in case, and I apologise if I inadvertently offend anyone.

–

Piglet Race
By Laremy Lee

For all my piglet children.

I see you all bounding toward me
with the innocence of bacon,
the look in your eyes squealing:
in another life, I could’ve been char siew.

Your heads held up in earnest,
your snouts pointed to the sky,
you radiate pink with promise and youth
as you race toward the future, on a path

you’ve often been prodded along.
Remember, though, before I let you go:
life must be as easy as a piglet race
but not as simple as one.

Fly like the wind. Leap
as high as you can, over
hurdles set out like nets.
Look cute while doing so.

But wait for fellow piglets if
they pause. Help them if they falter.
We are as much competitors
as we are comrades-in-trotters.

Fortunately (or unfortunately),
like Fleance, you will soon flee
leaving me behind as Time flies
to pick my pocket once again,

as it did me when I was a piglet like you;
as it will you when you are a boar like me.
Another set of piglets will round the bend,
bounding toward me with all their might,

even going so far as to – who knows? –
one day, also bound toward you,
till your heart beams and your smile says,
“That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.”

I think my, er, advice worked – I received enough Ferrero Rocher to set up my own distribution centre.

Jokes aside, one present which stood out was the Teachers’ Day video done by 10A04.

Initially, when they bounded up to me to give me the DVD, I was like, “Wow! Mix-tape for me?”

I was genuinely elated; I remember thinking: Wow, these piglets have grown! They put their PW skills to use and realised that a mix-tape would be a great gift for me because:

• I like music,
• Mix-tapes have symbolic value, in that they hearken back to an era that I often romanticise, and
• Mix-tapes have artistic value, in that the choice of songs are not arbitrary but curated in order to achieve a certain effect on/send a certain message to the listener e.g. I’ve chosen these songs that I know you like because I want you to know I care, or I’ve chosen 12 of my favourite songs because I want to share my music with you (a deeply personal gesture, IMO).

Sadly, my happiness lasted for a while, because I soon found out that:

1. It wasn’t a mix-tape, but a video, and
2. ALL THE OTHER TEACHERS THAT TAUGHT 10A04 ALSO RECEIVED THE SAME VIDEO.

Wah lao eh! Felt somewhat cheated lor. LOL… Kidding, ya.

I really like the video; in fact, I like it so much that I want to share it with all of you here:

Click on this link in case you can’t see the embedded video.

Nice right? (BTW if you want to watch more stuff by Ansen Goh and Co., check out “A Measured Distance Away” and ObscuRed.sg .)

I’m so glad they came together to do this, not only because the video shows how much they’ve grown as a class, but also because receiving the gift has made me re-evaluate my ‘preferred present list’ – I’ve just included a section called ‘Digital Art’.

So thanks, kiddos, for all the love. I’m proud of all of you.

In the last few years, I’ve noticed a trend: most students don’t know how to compose e-mail messages, even if their lives depend upon it.

That’s quite a pity, because this is actually a compulsory skill taught at the ‘O’ Level. Specifically, it’s taught in the English Language Paper 1, in Section 2, or the Situational Writing section.

Perhaps it’s not made so explicit i.e. perhaps teachers don’t teach students how to write e-mail messages per se.

But I know for a fact that teachers do prepare their students to write formal letters – the structure of which can be used in e-mail messages.

So it’s either one of two things:

• Most people need to be taught specific actions for each scenario in life, or
• Most Singaporeans have been taught to the test so much that the ability to transfer and/or apply knowledge learnt in class has been lost entirely on them.

In any case, I’ve also learnt that if people make mistakes and aren’t corrected at specific points in their lives, they go through the rest of their lives carrying said mistake(s) with them.

THEREFORE!

So that I don’t need to keep on repeating myself over and over again, this is the Mister Laremy guide to crafting an appropriate e-mail message!

(Round of applause, please.)

–

Dear student,

Thank you for your e-mail. Please take note of the following:

1. For future correspondence, you must include a salutation that addresses the recipient of your e-mail or letter e.g. Dear Sir, Dear Madam, Dear Mr Laremy, etc.
2. You must also include a paragraph or two of text that explains the purpose of your message. A blank e-mail message literally does not say anything.
3. Use a valediction or a sign-off appropriate to the content and tone of the message e.g. “Yours sincerely” or “Sincerely” since you are a student writing to a teacher, in this case.
4. An example of how you can craft a simple but appropriate e-mail message:
   

   “Dear Mr Laremy,

   I have attached my assignment to this e-mail.

   Thank you.

   Yours sincerely,
   A. Long-Suffering Student”

5. Other things that you will find useful:
   • If your work is late, you must start off your letter by apologising for not being able to meet the deadline and then requesting for an extension to the deadline.
   • I believe you mean to use the word “deadline”, not “dateline”. Please consult a dictionary to ascertain the meanings of the respective words.
   • When you write to teachers, you cannot adopt a superior tone in your e-mail because we are not your subordinates. This means that I have a bit more leeway in terms of using phrases like “Please take note” – but you don’t.
   • Neither can you adopt a familiar tone with teachers in your e-mail – we may be friendly, but we are not your friends.
6. If you’re not convinced, or you don’t see how knowing this will help you in life, you may want to refer to this website.

Have a great day ahead.

Thanks,
Laremy

I know some of you are still confused about the characters and the action in the play, so I’m going to share some web resources with you, which I hope will provide you with more guidance in your study of Richard III.

What’s important is that you invest some time and effort into reading all the material including your text. You must also actively re-read your materials and refer to them continuously e.g. refer to the family trees as you read the history. This will help you make the connections which you need to better understand the play.

If you do this diligently and in a disciplined fashion, I guarantee that you will see the academic pay-off sooner than later.

1. Student Guide to the Play.
   This Insight Text Guide may be a six-page preview but I think it will help to clarify some of your doubts.

2. A Brief History of Richard III and the War of the Roses.
   I covered this in my introductory lecture, which can be found on Moodle along with notes for revision. If you feel that you need more background context/information, you can find it here:
   • You Can’t Tell the Players without a Scorecard.
     This is a simplified history which is quite different from the action in the play. Please bear this in mind when you read this article.
   • Richard III – A Man and his Times
     Another summarised history, which again is very different from the play we are studying. I’d like you to read this for insight into writing style; the tone of this article differs from the previous as it tries to dissuade the reader from believing the traditional portrayal of Richard III.
3. Family Trees.
   Last but not least, many family trees which you must refer to when you read the above material or the play, so that you can attempt to map the interactions between each character, or at least differentiate one similarly-named character from the other. A gentle reminder: there is also a Plantagenet Family Tree on p. 262 of your text.

(via Ansen’s Formspring.me page)

For those without image suppork:

Question: how to do lit ):
Answer: dunno i havent do:p

Question: What kind of lit rep are you?!
Answer: errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr r u mr laremy pretending to be my classmate?

Eh… Not me lei *makes whale sounds*

In any case, I have decided to get my own Formspring.me page too!

I think Lionel de Souza needs extra tutoring with regard to how to write an expository argument:

Other than being used for trysts and immoral purposes, rooms at budget hotels are also used by gambling syndicates to operate illegal “casinos”, drug addicts to abuse drugs, fugitives of the law who dare not return home for fear of being arrested, etc.

– Lionel de Souza, TODAY, Why budget hotels must be reined in

If this were an essay he submitted to me for grading, my comments would be as follows:

Lionel, where is your evidence? What makes you an authority on budget hotels?

I know you are a retired cop, but I don’t think you’d be privy to what goes on in budget hotels in this day and age – unless you hang out at budget hotels yourself.

Even if that were the case, citing personal experience is not always credible when it comes to making expository arguments.

Actually he needs a lot more help with his writing (look at the amount of fallacies in the letter!) but I can’t afford the time.

Besides, people seldom buy the cow if they can get the milk for free. (Though I must clarify that I always make it a point to buy the milk if I get to sample it first and I like what I taste.)

Anyway Lionel, if you do read this, and you like the taste of my milk, my rates are $100/hr - you know my name, look up the number.

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

(via)

~

This was quite meaningful for me because of two portions, one of which was this:

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized … that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

It’s helped me to realise why I took a certain something too seriously – I had been too focused on performance as opposed to learning, considering the stage I was/am at. I guess it was also, in part, due to mismanaged expectations. But better to learn this later than never.

The second thing which I found meaningful was this:

Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation. But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Am going to start saying ‘good effort’ instead of just ‘good’ from now on!

Sounds familiar, though it is a story that is not entirely of my telling.

The rule is that when you have been absent from school, you have to bring a letter of excuse. He knows his mother’s standard letter by heart: “Please excuse John’s absence yesterday. He was suffering from a bad cold, and I thought it advisable for him to stay in bed. Yours faithfully.” He hands in these letters, which his mother writes as lies and which are read as lies, with an apprehensive heart.

When at the end of the year he counts the days he has missed, they come to almost one in three. Yet he still comes first in class. The conclusion he draws is that what goes on in the classroom is of no importance. He can always catch up at home. If he had his way, he would stay away from school all year, making an appearance only to write the examinations.

Nothing his teachers say is not already written in the textbook. He does not look down on them for that, nor do the other boys. In fact, he does not like it when, now and then, a teacher’s ignorance is exposed.

– Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee, pp. 107 – 108.