A Look Back, A Spotlight on Education

My Eighth grade English teacher walked around the classroom, in a daily ritual, glancing over pages of circled letters, occasionally muttering, "turn", in an exhausted, apathetic tone. Many of my classmates used the time she had allotted for "checking homework" to socialize, while others frantically fumbled for a pencil, asked for a neighbor’s workbook, circled, underlined, and copied while occasionally lifting their heads up to see how far down the rows she had gotten and how close she was getting to them. Needless to say, it wasn’t hard to copy another student’s homework. We had already been in this "orange vocabulary book" system for two years by the time we were in the eighth grade. The workbook called for no originality or unique thought, so all of our little workbooks were expected to look exactly alike, all the same a’s circled, the same words underlined. It was possible that on any given weeknight, ten out of the twenty-five students in class would actually bother to do the assigned vocabulary homework. A few of us would copy a friend’s answer a little before, or even during class. There were still a few students that wouldn’t even put in that much effort into the English class, and would readily take the "zero" in the grade-book for the day. After the all-important "homework checking ritual" was through with, we all reluctantly opened up the vocabulary books for the "checking the answer" ritual. Starting with the front right corner of the classroom, students began reading off answers, letters and words, and nothing else, one after another, being occasionally corrected, and fed the right answer.

I can’t say I learned too much from this vocabulary practice. I sat in my desk, looking at the clock mounted on the wall, listening to a random letters and words, with no other connotation, explanation, or implication of them, occasionally checking to see how far along the line we had gotten so that I would be able to answer promptly when it was my turn. For my teacher, however, vocabulary practice time seemed like the best part of the school day, next to her lunch break. She really didn’t choose to put much effort into the practices at all. The students didn’t protest, of course. It was an easy part of the day for us too. The vocabulary quizzes, did make up a big part of our grade in the class, as the vocabulary practices did take up a great deal of class time.