Bizarre Teaching

Some teachers would do anything, weird or otherwise, just to get the message across. The young ones especially often lack in confidence that he/she is in charge in the class and everyone must listen to him/her. This brings out some bizarre way of teaching which sometime unbelievable. Maybe some of us can relate to this as we also might have gone through it during our schooling days. And that’s some 30 over years ago; but believe it or not the same method still exists today. Why do you think that students behave strangely stubborn or brutal? towards their friends or even teachers?....because some teachers still believe in canes and canings. this is largely happening in sekolah agama/maahad tahfiz. Never underestimate the school whenever you drop off your sons/daughters to experience such learning. During my primary school; way back in standard 2 or 3, I had an English teacher and he was really an ass. I think he’s from Penang so you know how he should look like. He would come in and taught us some strange language that we could never relate with. We all tried of course, just to avoid his “pelempang”. He would stick his tongue out like a dog and spank us like a fly on your dirty dinner table. And “us” meant the boys who pronounced the Queen’s word of English as one of the Kelantan’s; and that included yours truly of course. I could smell his perfume and would get traumatic all over again whenever I sensed it today. I don’t know the brand name but I still could recognize the smell. See how sad the impact can be on a child? He could rot for all the rats, and see if I care! For the girls, he would be gentle and soft….well that’s understandable but for this teacher he would go a step further and called up those who were “weak” to his desk. He gave personal lesson while his hand went up and down caressing the girls’ behind in front of the class, right there and then. We did not know it was wrong…because teachers are always right, right! Duh!

Anyway, when I started teaching at ITM, bizarre teaching surfaced every now and then. I went by a class one time and saw some of the students standing on the chairs and some on the tables. Can you imagine a 20-year-old standing on a table? He could reach the ceiling. I mean, was that some kind of punishment? For what? They were old enough to have their own kid and you asked them to stand on a table. Unbelievable. Another one would ask his student to bring “satu bungkus nasi lemak” for him every time during the class. And he would eat it in front of the class. I saw him and could not believe my eyes. He is now a popular Prof on Era FM.

I have my own thing during my early days of teaching which I feel so bad whenever I remember it. In one class I announced a pop quiz. Please take out a piece of paper and don’t move your head around. The question was : draw me. Yes I asked my students to draw me. Now what in the world learning has to do with that? But they all did it alright with some odd shapes and sizes. I even put them up in a notice board for the selected ones. That was really a useless piece of teaching crap.

So remember teachers out there….do have fun teaching but at the same time teach your students something! Something useful for their future..their life.