devastatingly human

i got a teaching job at a neighbourhood school. teaching literature. i can't tell you how happy and grateful i am. i was just lying in bed one day in the morning shade, thinking of the jobless state i was in; and mumbled incoherent thoughts that went like something of a divine plea. and 2 seconds later my hp rang with a job offer. thank God. my favourite subject n i get to teach it :)

so, i was thrown with the Diary of Anne Frank. i was indifferent. but now i'm drawn into her world of despondency and childhood innocence. to think the germans, utter utter bestiality. just evil pure evil. and i have to teach this to my sec twos. imagine that! how can fourteen year olds ever comprehend the horror the world had to face just only half a century ago? and these so called eager young minds bombard me with questions like, "Teacher, why must study her diary? her diary so boring."
and i try to make them appreciate the hard times she had to go through. Indeed as hong said, subjects like physics, maths, chemistry, even english, merely require the understanding and grasping of concepts. but literature cannot be learnt, she must be appreciated. and my dear students get a kick out of Anne Frank, using her as a butthead for ridiculous banter. and they don't know how it breaks my heart reading her diary, seeing the world through her eyes, sensing her increasing restlessness and despondency, marvelling at her acute perceptiveness of the things around her, sharing her rising bosom of faith whenever her radio provides news of Allied invasions.

and we tell the Chinese to let go of the bitterness towards Japan. How? i'm a 3rd generation socialite and already i feel the pang of hatred and loathing towards such acts of revulsion. the slow burn ashing the edges of my heart. that truly was how the age of Man came crashing down.

so i give my kids photographs of the horrible holocaust to evoke some semblance of sympathy out of them, so that they can, once again, appreciate what Anne had to go through. i must concede it is manipulation on my part. and yet again, i was happily disappointed with their response. spectacles by the thousands on the ground beside Auschwitz, and this student raised his hand with a "it's only spectacles what Ms Lim".

-_-

and they say one death is a tragedy; a million, a statistic.

Joyce Lim unzipped at 12:07 AM with 2 comments
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Comments:

respect joyce
through you, anne frank will live for a brief moment, to open the eyes of those kids and truely educate them.

# posted by

Anonymous : 4/19/2005 8:43 AM

hah i seriously think i'm quite inept at education la. please disregard my occasional bragging at being good with kids.

# posted by

Joyce Lim : 4/19/2005 9:13 PM