Homework

Homework, as far as I can remember, was a chore. During my formative years, I first attended a school started by expatriates in the middle east. The teachers were mostly housewives who may know something about the subject they were assigned to teach. Homework was a great way to cover up the fact that they didn't teach the assigned material in the class - rather we got it as 'homework' or 'self-study'. So they gave us lots of homework. Ironically, the good teachers felt so enthusiastic about their subjects that they felt we should spend more time on that, so they too gave us lots of homework. Given that 100% of the teachers were either very good or very bad, we were doomed.

As soon as the Maghreb azaan was heard, it was 'down to the study table you go'. Dip your fountain pain into this Pelican inkpot and start on page 5 of English For Today.

One mathematics teacher we had in Grade 5 was the ledgendary Mr A. For his class, we had two notebooks, called c/w (Classwork) and h/w (Homework). Every chapter in our book had 20 easy questions, and 40 hard ones. He would do 10 of the easy questions on the board. Then have the smartest guy in class do the next 10. The remaining 40 hard ones would be 'homework'.

He was directly responsible for the detriment of my handwriting, improvement of my speedwriting and numerical association skills. Since his class was just after the break (called tiffin) we would spend the break happily skipping lunch while finishingcopying our homework from T (the smartest guy in the class). Overtime, the copying would represent a work of art in progress. A would copy from B, changing the statements slightly. C would then copy from B, changing the changed statements slightly. By the time Z copied from Y who had copied from X, the final copied answer differed so greatly from A that it was its own answer. Such, um, teamwork were later proved to be lifesaving during university days.

A: Let x be the number of apples in the cart.
B: Let y be the number of apples in the cart.
C: m is the number of apples in the cart.
D: n is the # of Apples.
E: a = # apples.
F: a = apples in cart (no.)
...
...
Z: refer to qn 1 where # of apples in cart is unknown, let this value be x.

Ah, school. Why the sudden nostalgia, you ask.

I was at my friend's place, and just overheard his 12-year-old brother talk to his classmate on the phone.

"Yo, Haseeb, you got the answers to no. 6? Good, come online and I will get them from you on MSN."

Kids nowadays.

Tags: Toronto Homework