04 February, 2010

today

Today, I have nothing to say. Why? Because there is too much to say.

Few people bother to read poems these days and yet they teach us how to write them in school. They don't really teach us cool plays on words or really great puns beyond the cliched ones everyone knows. We have to learn about cinquains and haikus, but don't get taught the ballads or the sonnets. You have to go to university for that... and it can be boring unless you're really passionate about poetry.

I only write poetry, because it's interesting to see how my words will flow without much thought. Patterns emerge. Some more common, some less common, some boring, some without meaning. You understand. That's why this blog is unseen (besides the erratic posting). But that's fine with me, because that's how I want it to be. There, but unseen. A bit like an optical illusion. Hidden.

I begin uni soon. My last year. The hardest, most difficult, easiest-to-fail year. Next week in fact. Am I ready? I don't know much of the real world, but that's what school is for. It prepares you (or is supposed to) for the real world where people work and don't stay within the protected walls of definite rules. Society's rules are always changing. Always changing. What is rude to one is polite to another and vice-versa.

My problem is that I have not been taught some of the common courtesies used in today's society and those that I do not find important are all important to others. The world is strange.

It's funny how when a blog like this is written off the top of my head, it can be so awful. Makes me sound as if I grew up with English as a second or third language. That's why there's the poetry. You won't notice my hasty bad English so badly.

Australia, please teach your children proper grammatically used English before we have generation after generation with degenerating pieces (both poetry and prose, full of atrocious spelling and grammar mistakes) so commonly seen on internet sites and now in novels as well. Some of those people are over 30, some over 40. Many aspiring writers. Quite a few with awful English despite having grown up in an English speaking country.

I enter some primary and secondary schools now and the children can neither read nor write. They don't even know their times tables. Our education compared to many other countries of the world is awful and yet parents will complain that their children have too much homework, the work is too difficult. Kindergarten children in Malaysia and Singapore are able to tell me their timetables (albeit in terms of 'if X number of people have Y number of objects, how many altogether') when I ask them. Some Year 8's here can't even do that! Much less spell the word 'English' correctly.

Granted some are less adept at the language and slower in learning, but some are extremely bright... just untaught as yet. Untrained.

Now I've gone on a rant... And I said that I had nothing to say today. Honestly, some people.

Bring the cheeses to the pleasers
So the tasters can smell pasters.
Hide the wire in the lyre
Where the doters will catch the noters.
Count the apples
1, 2, 3
Spell the letters
A, B, C
Read the grammar
Colon-semi
Seed the learning
Period.

Teachers have some of the hardest work
At which some balk and others shirk
Yet the best will stay prepared to do
All that duty calls them to.
Responsibility doesn't let them leave
But holds them until they have reprieve.
Few truly notice their master pieces
Slow to form and growing reaches
But today I will acknowledge them
Their work, their heart, their academ.

Bad poems. I know.

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