Poem of choice : Children in the Darkness
There are children in the darkness
Who have not seen the light
There are children in the darkness
Who someone will teach to fight
Chalk and blackboards will not be
To this door there is no key
From this life they can not flee
And these children are not free
Could we simply light a candle
Could we give them half a chance
Could we teach them how to read
Could we teach them how to dance
Or will a war consume them
Their body and their soul
Will their life and blood be poured
Down some endless thirsty hole
Back into the darkness
From which there is no flight
Back into the darkness
Into which there shines no light
Henry M Bechtold
I know I know, I should try more difficult poems, but I do not think I am ready for those yet. So I will give Children in the Darkness a try first.
Task 1:
Basically, Children in the Darkness is a poem written by Henry M Bechtold. Henry M Bechtold was in his hotel room in Saigon just before Chrismas when he saw a news on the television which had a picture of a small boy with a helmet and an automatic rifle. The poem tells us about how children were raised to become soldiers in war.
Children nowadays are very lucky, being able to enjoy their childhood with their parents taking good care of them. Whenever they want something, with a plea or a tantrum, they are most likely be able to get it. You can say childhood for them is the best.
But sadly, there are still children who are unable to gain these benefits. As mentioned in the first paragraph, children in Vietnam are already exposed to firearms when children in other countries are carrying a toy. This is a significant difference and Henry M Bechtold wanted to express his concerns over these children in Vietnam.
In the first stanza, it states that there are children who are not raised as they should be and are to learn to fight at such a young age. In the second stanza, it states how these children are unable to have the benefits of having proper education like normal children do, with their lives not being able to escape from war and they will not be able to have freedom.
Moving on to the third stanza, it states how we are still able to give them a chance to have a better life and also a chance to become normal children who learn and play instead of learning to shoot and fight. And in the fourth stanza, it states how the children will end up dying in war if we are to not do anything to stop this. And lastly in the fifth stanza, it shows how this will never end if nothing is done about this.
With all these, I feel that the poem is well written, given that the fact that Henry M Bechtold was able to highlight how the war has being ruining the lives of the children in Vietnam and how this issue needs to be told to the public. Overall, I enjoyed reading the poem.
Task 2 ( I am unable to give the table form )
1. Point of view - Henry M Bechtold ( personal )
-Evidence : The poem was written in a manner whereby a person is expressing how he feels about a certain matter.
-Elaboration : When Henry M Bechtold saw the news, he immediately typed out this poem, not
wanting this idea to be lost, so the poem came to him and he just type out what he
had thought of, which is how he felt about the poem.
2. Situation and setting - Concern of how war affects children
Reference:
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/2010warpoetry.html
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Term 2...
Well...its been a long time since I posted up anything...
The truth is, I did not select LA as term 2 ACE choice. That is why I did not bother to blog.
To be honest, not only myself, but others too will only blog if they needed the ACE. This brings out a point that is so common in HCI, students only take initiative if they see that they can be awarded credit points, and not because they want to enhance their knowledge of things outside curriculum.
If you ask any student why projects day is important, he will most likely say this : " It is because projects day is 50% of my ACE subject for the whole year."
I mean, the school has implemented projects day in order to get students to learn things that are not taught in class, and through these projects, the students are also able to grasp leadership skills and also learn how to be a team worker. But in the eyes of the students, it is a source of burden and they will just treat as any assignment that is given out by teachers for them to complete, for them to present it to their fellow students. But this particular "assignment" has a lethal feature that forces every student to regard it as a do-well-or-die thing, and that lethal feature, is ACE.
With the projects day being 50% of the ACE subject for the whole year, it gives a feeling to the students that it is a torture that they must go through in order to carry on being in the current IP program. Students tend to go crazy over projects day, for they fear the fact that if they screw up the project, it will greatly affect their end of year ACE results, which is one of the deciding factors for what stream they get into, and nobody wants to end up in a O level class.
But I fear not projects day, but I fear this whole credit system the school have created, both ACE and OP. Ever since it was decided that ACE and OP will be individual subjects which are part of the end of year results, I, along with many students, have our burdens and worries increased a lot. When we first heard of this change, we were all shocked and worried. What the school did was a horrible thing. Before the decision of making ACE and OP into subjects, we already had a hard time coping with the amount of work needed to be done in order to get higher ACE and OP points. Now that they have become 2 important subjects that affects our streaming, it has made students change their learning attitude.
If you observe carefully in class, many students are beginning to vigorously ask questions and answer questions in class, to a certain extent that they go crazy whenever the teacher asks a question. An example would be my class : During chinese lessons, whenever the teacher asks a student to read a certain paragraph or answer a question, almost the entire class will in a blink of an eye raise their hand up, vying for the chance to speak up in class, leaving those quiet ones there to await the teacher to hand pick them to speak out. All these insanity just in order to get OP points.
An example for ACE would be class assignments. Whenever a teacher asks the class to do a certain activity, the first question that instantly pops out in the student's head : "Is there any ACE points?" It is like as if the students will only work hard for assignments if the assignment included ACE points. If you tell a student to give you a report which have no ACE points to be given to him, he will give you a half hearted and filled with many errors report. However if you tell him that there is ACE points to be awarded, you will receive a well written report. This shows that the current credit system has turned hwa chong students into points seeking humans, who only does things well if it had points to be awarded.
The whole point of ACE and OP was to get the students to learn better in class, but what it does is to make students become so obsessed with points that only credit points will attract them to do anything. Be it easy or difficult, as long as there is credit points are awarded, students will be willing to do it.
In conclusion, the whole credit system in HCI is causing students to adopt a wrong attitude towards learning, if the school wants the students to have the right learning attitude, it will have to come up with something better than the current credit system. I personally wish that there no such thing as ACE and OP... and also projects day, which I have not prepared yet...
The truth is, I did not select LA as term 2 ACE choice. That is why I did not bother to blog.
To be honest, not only myself, but others too will only blog if they needed the ACE. This brings out a point that is so common in HCI, students only take initiative if they see that they can be awarded credit points, and not because they want to enhance their knowledge of things outside curriculum.
If you ask any student why projects day is important, he will most likely say this : " It is because projects day is 50% of my ACE subject for the whole year."
I mean, the school has implemented projects day in order to get students to learn things that are not taught in class, and through these projects, the students are also able to grasp leadership skills and also learn how to be a team worker. But in the eyes of the students, it is a source of burden and they will just treat as any assignment that is given out by teachers for them to complete, for them to present it to their fellow students. But this particular "assignment" has a lethal feature that forces every student to regard it as a do-well-or-die thing, and that lethal feature, is ACE.
With the projects day being 50% of the ACE subject for the whole year, it gives a feeling to the students that it is a torture that they must go through in order to carry on being in the current IP program. Students tend to go crazy over projects day, for they fear the fact that if they screw up the project, it will greatly affect their end of year ACE results, which is one of the deciding factors for what stream they get into, and nobody wants to end up in a O level class.
But I fear not projects day, but I fear this whole credit system the school have created, both ACE and OP. Ever since it was decided that ACE and OP will be individual subjects which are part of the end of year results, I, along with many students, have our burdens and worries increased a lot. When we first heard of this change, we were all shocked and worried. What the school did was a horrible thing. Before the decision of making ACE and OP into subjects, we already had a hard time coping with the amount of work needed to be done in order to get higher ACE and OP points. Now that they have become 2 important subjects that affects our streaming, it has made students change their learning attitude.
If you observe carefully in class, many students are beginning to vigorously ask questions and answer questions in class, to a certain extent that they go crazy whenever the teacher asks a question. An example would be my class : During chinese lessons, whenever the teacher asks a student to read a certain paragraph or answer a question, almost the entire class will in a blink of an eye raise their hand up, vying for the chance to speak up in class, leaving those quiet ones there to await the teacher to hand pick them to speak out. All these insanity just in order to get OP points.
An example for ACE would be class assignments. Whenever a teacher asks the class to do a certain activity, the first question that instantly pops out in the student's head : "Is there any ACE points?" It is like as if the students will only work hard for assignments if the assignment included ACE points. If you tell a student to give you a report which have no ACE points to be given to him, he will give you a half hearted and filled with many errors report. However if you tell him that there is ACE points to be awarded, you will receive a well written report. This shows that the current credit system has turned hwa chong students into points seeking humans, who only does things well if it had points to be awarded.
The whole point of ACE and OP was to get the students to learn better in class, but what it does is to make students become so obsessed with points that only credit points will attract them to do anything. Be it easy or difficult, as long as there is credit points are awarded, students will be willing to do it.
In conclusion, the whole credit system in HCI is causing students to adopt a wrong attitude towards learning, if the school wants the students to have the right learning attitude, it will have to come up with something better than the current credit system. I personally wish that there no such thing as ACE and OP... and also projects day, which I have not prepared yet...
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