queen_Lestat: you know, the students are SO BLOODY stupid it's not funny
devSaturnine: you should seen them on the unisa message boards
devSaturnine: they form study groups to study English comprehension
devSaturnine: some white guy was like "READ motherfuckers, and buy a dictionary"
queen_Lestat: LOL
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Talking about being asked stupid questions! As a student assistant – in the Academic Literacies unit of one of the renowned universities in Emzansi – I am asked nonsensical, I mean interesting questions everyday. As if I care, a student will ask: do I need to attend this workshop? This is when I start to show lack of interest in him/her attending, because it is stated in the invitation that the workshop is meant to ‘enhance his/her language and/or numeric proficiency’. Alternatively, one of Ours would call to ask what the charge fee for attending is. This is after we include the fact that ‘the workshops are free!’ in the invitation. But, Ours just do not read or, as ‘T’ puts it ‘God forbid they have to read’. I would put up a poster outside the Centre, saying: ‘the workshop has been cancelled, and has been rescheduled for Monday, the 10th of March’. However, a Super being will come to ask when the next workshop is! Another would call to say (with an American accent): can you please reserve a seat for me, for the workshop on numbers and stuff? This is confusing, since all the Quantitative Literacy workings are on numbers and stuff.
And this is from the future land surveyors and biochemists of this rainbow nation.
And this is from the future land surveyors and biochemists of this rainbow nation.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Legacy of Karl Marx
Students had to paraphrase a short passage on Karl Marx. Some of their sentences make no sense whatsoever, while some students prove to be very creative by making up words as they go along:
“Karl Marx contributed towards understanding Christianship [sometimes referred to as Christianality]. Religion can refer to ‘the opium of the people’ [sometimes referred to as the opinion of the people]. He believed that promising Christian ideals were used to proletariat.” (Whatever he means by that…)
“His seeing was part responsible for the understanding of Christian faith.” (This one obviously read Das Kapital)
“Karl Marx attributed towards the undergoing of faith in Christianity”
“To be over critical and judgive and prejudive”
“A piece was wrote on Christianity”
When asked to explain where the term “scapegoat” came from, one student wrote:
“On one goat all the sins were thrown and the other goat were offered to God.”
“Karl Marx contributed towards understanding Christianship [sometimes referred to as Christianality]. Religion can refer to ‘the opium of the people’ [sometimes referred to as the opinion of the people]. He believed that promising Christian ideals were used to proletariat.” (Whatever he means by that…)
“His seeing was part responsible for the understanding of Christian faith.” (This one obviously read Das Kapital)
“Karl Marx attributed towards the undergoing of faith in Christianity”
“To be over critical and judgive and prejudive”
“A piece was wrote on Christianity”
When asked to explain where the term “scapegoat” came from, one student wrote:
“On one goat all the sins were thrown and the other goat were offered to God.”
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
My first contribution is in no way profound, neither should it be. I basically just have one statement: If Homer J Simpson can work at a nuclear power plant as a safety controller, EOT students can work at ESKOM! And not endanger us all… (I’m being very optimistic…)
Sometimes you can forgive students for their silly mistakes, but then there are those super-human beings that come up with questions or sayings that should be pretty obvious. According to the Oxford Dictionary (something most students don’t seem to know) the word ‘obvious’ means “easy to see, recognize or understand”. And yet I am asked whether they should add their names to their essays (how else am I to allocate any marks to your name?) and some of them expected me to read a graph to them during a test. I was equally stunned when my Afrikaans students didn’t know who Martin Luther was and, far worse, they didn’t know what a Calvinist was. It’s like a Baptist that doesn’t know what a Baptist is… They seem to think that Ingrid Jonker, Breyten Breytenbach, MP van Wyk (sic) and Antjie Krog are singers and they spell Shakespeare as two words.
My students are also under the impression that the Angolan war of the seventies and the Anglo Boer War at the turn of the previous century is the same thing. And according to them Desiderius Erasmus – the greatest humanist in Western History – wrote his most famous book during the Second World War, despite the fact that he died in 1536.
As I’ve said, you can forgive them certain mistakes, especially in the light of our new school system, but the fact that they have no desire to know more, and God forbid they have to read, scares me. What will they teach their own children when they know nothing themselves? It truly worries me that young people who study at a tertiary institution have very few opinions and no desire to learn anything, unless it’s prescribed. And even then they think they’re wasting their time. When I think about universities in general and how they used to be places of protest and revolution, especially if you consider the French and American universities in the sixties and seventies, it surprises me that we have thousands of students who are simply numb with stupidity. And their legs buckle under the weight of their huge lack of interest.
It disturbs me even more when you have students who actually study important things like teaching, medicine or engineering and who can’t really think for themselves or read or write or calculate or argue a point properly. These are the people who will educate the minds of tomorrow, who will build our bridges, who will write “intellectual” articles in the Sunday newspaper.
But do I really need to be concerned about the state of brainlessness we encounter daily? After all, Homer hasn’t blown up Springfield just yet. Though he’s been pretty close…
Sometimes you can forgive students for their silly mistakes, but then there are those super-human beings that come up with questions or sayings that should be pretty obvious. According to the Oxford Dictionary (something most students don’t seem to know) the word ‘obvious’ means “easy to see, recognize or understand”. And yet I am asked whether they should add their names to their essays (how else am I to allocate any marks to your name?) and some of them expected me to read a graph to them during a test. I was equally stunned when my Afrikaans students didn’t know who Martin Luther was and, far worse, they didn’t know what a Calvinist was. It’s like a Baptist that doesn’t know what a Baptist is… They seem to think that Ingrid Jonker, Breyten Breytenbach, MP van Wyk (sic) and Antjie Krog are singers and they spell Shakespeare as two words.
My students are also under the impression that the Angolan war of the seventies and the Anglo Boer War at the turn of the previous century is the same thing. And according to them Desiderius Erasmus – the greatest humanist in Western History – wrote his most famous book during the Second World War, despite the fact that he died in 1536.
As I’ve said, you can forgive them certain mistakes, especially in the light of our new school system, but the fact that they have no desire to know more, and God forbid they have to read, scares me. What will they teach their own children when they know nothing themselves? It truly worries me that young people who study at a tertiary institution have very few opinions and no desire to learn anything, unless it’s prescribed. And even then they think they’re wasting their time. When I think about universities in general and how they used to be places of protest and revolution, especially if you consider the French and American universities in the sixties and seventies, it surprises me that we have thousands of students who are simply numb with stupidity. And their legs buckle under the weight of their huge lack of interest.
It disturbs me even more when you have students who actually study important things like teaching, medicine or engineering and who can’t really think for themselves or read or write or calculate or argue a point properly. These are the people who will educate the minds of tomorrow, who will build our bridges, who will write “intellectual” articles in the Sunday newspaper.
But do I really need to be concerned about the state of brainlessness we encounter daily? After all, Homer hasn’t blown up Springfield just yet. Though he’s been pretty close…
The weakest links?
Those found with HIV/Aids positive and other risk will be cancelled and if willing to disclose be supported by the company.
The African Elephant (the journey begins)
Very well, let me be the first to recollect several examples of sentences that first year students had to write on: "The African Elephant".
- African elephants have periods of 22 months.
- A matriarch is a female patriarch.
- The African elephant travels at speeds of 120 kilograms an hour.
- The African elephant spends approximately 60 years on this earth, and then dies [presumably moving on to a better world?].
- Matriarchs are cows. [So are several students, but whatever...]
Introduction and Disclaimer
By now, it's pretty obvious why we have elected to start a blog. We are a society of Superheroes. No, really we are. We are the powers who can instinctively spot a spelling error, we are the powers who can also instinctively point out how stupid you are.
We are also an uber alternative secret society for whom the stupidity and the sheer lack of logic there is in the world not only annoys us, but also saddens us. We deal with some of the dumbest people the world will ever see, and we suffer through this ordeal in the hope that someday we will waltz into heaven unafraid of meeting any of Ours. Ours is a term which covers the broad spectrum of idiot which is more often than not the garden variety of First Year University student. Not only do we often sit about and wonder how these people ever found themselves in a tertiary institution, but we also attempt doing something about our increasing frustration at having to deal with more and more stupidity crossing our paths.
So what do we do? We start a blog. We rant, rave and keep the dumbness of those we encounter as anonymous. While it may be hilarious to us, our charges don't really see the funny side of the things they come up with because the irony is often lost on them. Every effort will be made to respect the privacy of the dumbass in question, although if you ever had to encounter half the people we do, you'd wonder why on earth we're bothering to afford them that courtesy. Name and shame behbee. The problem occurs when we realise with alarming accuracy that some of the people we might name and shame might literally become the president/presidentess of our Great Land. Scary hey? Not half as scary as what you might find here.
Sooo, what do you expect to find here? Well, in a nutshell:
- The powers that be (the general system/bureaucracy which employs us)
- Spelling (of the atrocious and creative kind that students throw at us)
- Grammar (see above)
- The logic is where? (this is the speciality of the menu, our students tend to possess very little)
- LOL (the funny stuff we encounter on a daily basis)
- zOMG you got to University how? (these are shocking revelations into the minds of people who somehow or the other found themselves at university when ideally they should be in Grade 5)
- The genius that is (this often overlaps with the logic is where?, but this refers specifically to students who belong to a certain department. They never fail to amaze and amuse because they do things which tend to be terminally daft)
- Excuses excuses (every teacher on the face of the earth, probably thinks they've heard every excuse in the book from the dog ate my homework to the I did my work but left my book at home. Trust me, you've not heard/seen creative until you've seen what we offer.)
- Frankly my dear- I don't give a damn (we're really nice, up to a point, give us enough grief and you get the cold shoulder)
- When words fail (pictures or the feeling of so much horror that no other tag fits as a definitive)
rah*
P.S.
By Order of Management:
For the future of the human race, please ensure that you do not ever breed if you don't see the funny side in the things you will read here.
Monday, March 17, 2008
In the Beginning...
...there was a 0.9 accuracy rate.
And then the rubbish got weeded out from the even more rubbish. This resulted in us getting jobs. Speaks volumes I know, however bear with us for a while, and you'll begin to see why we stay...or not?!
Entertainment has never been this cheap. Literally and figuratively.
Step 1, get a google account
Step 2, use the labels logically, otherwise it becomes pointless. Was thinking about this one, basically we have issues of logic, general lols, spelling, grammar, the genius that is, and how did you get to university zOMG moments? Does that cover the full spectrum of just about anything one of Ours can throw at us?
Once this thing is up and running, all views pertaining to the superior intelligence of the human species might be rendered inadmissible. We have proof to the contrary. Lots of it.
And then the rubbish got weeded out from the even more rubbish. This resulted in us getting jobs. Speaks volumes I know, however bear with us for a while, and you'll begin to see why we stay...or not?!
Entertainment has never been this cheap. Literally and figuratively.
Step 1, get a google account
Step 2, use the labels logically, otherwise it becomes pointless. Was thinking about this one, basically we have issues of logic, general lols, spelling, grammar, the genius that is, and how did you get to university zOMG moments? Does that cover the full spectrum of just about anything one of Ours can throw at us?
Once this thing is up and running, all views pertaining to the superior intelligence of the human species might be rendered inadmissible. We have proof to the contrary. Lots of it.
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