[MERITS AVAILABLE] Frequent grammar error - Mr S scratches his head wondering how this issue came about...

Okay, so one of the errors I see quite often from students when they're producing written work is the addition of 'had' where you don't actually need it, e.g.

He had left the cinema.

instead of

He left the cinema.

So this is the start of my investigation into why this is such a frequent error among students! There will be MERITS awarded to the first three Middle School Students who email me with a correct explanation of why "He left the cinema" is different from "He had left the cinema". If you can, you should also try to send me your explanation of why students at our school sometimes get the two confused.

Good luck! :)

Funniest dentist-related video I've ever seen... my favourite part is, "Is this gonna be for ever???"

Why am I posting this? Well, one of my Yr 13s mentioned it this morning. We were discussing 'Long Day's Journey Into Night', a VERY good but VERY depressing play by an American guy called Eugene O'Neill. One of the characters (Mary) is addicted to a drug called morphine and spends most of the play being completely spaced out... and apparently this reminded my student of young David here.

Why is she spaced out? (Not the obvious answer - because she's on drugs - but more pertinently, why does O'Neill do this?) She is escaping from her reality. Her family love her but their love is not sufficient. She lives in a world she cannot control and she, and the rest of her family, seem to have no choice but to drown themselves in their own misery.

And if, after reading all that, you're completely depressed, then here is a joke to cheer you up.

Q: How many RS teachers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One... and yet three.

Comment if you know why that's (allegedly) funny.

Debate: To Quarantine or not to quarantine?

My Yr 9s had a cool debate in class today - we are studying 'I Am Legend' as a film study and during the film the whole of Manhattan (part of New York City) gets quarantined to stop a deadly virus spreading across the world. The whole thing reminded me of HK's SARS outbreak - so we debated whether it is right to force people into quarantine.

Is it a necessary step to protect the needs of the many? Or is it against human rights ever to imprison people that haven't done anything wrong?

Are you for or against the forced quarantine of virus sufferers in the event of an epidemic?

I'll post two 'witness statements' as a comment (they are fictional but the information contained in them is accurate) from people on both sides of the debate, and then feel free to add your thoughts to this discussion!

p.s. in class, the 'against quarantine' side definitely won... :)

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

Okay, so the whole 'animated Tennyson' thing is a bit freaky... but the soundtrack is Tennyson actually reading his own poem, which is v. cool. Is that how you would have read this poem?

This is an ultra-famous poem about a battle in the Crimean War where, due to some generals making some awful decisions, a load of British soldiers rode into the wrong part of the battlefield and were blown to smithereens. (They were on horses and the enemy had cannon. That's like turning up in Iraq with a water pistol...)

I always ask myself:

- Why doesn't Tennyson spend longer criticising the generals' decision-making? Why does he just concentrate on the bravery of the soldiers?
- If the same type of event happened in a modern war, would the press and the media react in a similar, or different, way to Tennyson?

By the way... extra points for anyone who can guess the link between Alfred Lord Tennyson and Mr S's credit card...

Sutton Who?

One of my Yr 8 students is reading a modern version of a very old poem called Beowulf. It was written around 1600 years ago and is about this heroic guy called Beowulf who fights monsters and saves people. He's kind of like Batman, but with fewer gadgets. And he's Swedish. Anyway...

There's an archeological site called Sutton Hoo in the UK which is the burial site of an Anglo-Saxon lord. It's of particular relevance to Beowulf because... well, I won't spoil the ending. But suffice it to say that someone gets buried, and in a very similar way to the burial at Sutton Hoo.

The artwork uncovered at Sutton Hoo is amazing, and the whole place tells us a lot about how the Anglo-Saxons regarded death. Their society was based around ideas of honour and the importance of kingship and religion, and all of that comes to life at Sutton Hoo. Worth exploring if you're ever in the area...

Meg Rosoff's 'How I Live Now'

Just read this book - really enjoyable. I found it hard to get into to start with, for two reasons:

1. The narrator speaks in enormous, unwieldy sentences that seem to go on forever - I found this tough to get used to.
2. The narrative voice is that of a teenager, with all the informality, slang and non-standard English that goes with it - so this reminded me too much of my marking.

I also thought for a second that the book was going to turn out to be a typical teenage love story or something, which is BORING. How wrong I was...

If you haven't read it already, I would definitely recommend it.

Gender in Literature

My Yr 12s are studying three texts, all of which are obvious candidates for an essay on gender.

Firstly, what is gender? The OED defines it as:

"In mod. (esp. feminist) use, a euphemism for the sex of a human being, often intended to emphasize the social and cultural, as opposed to the biological, distinctions between the sexes."

In other words, sex is about whether you are biologically male or female, whereas gender is about all the social implications that arise from that distinction - and from the blurring of it where this occurs.

Two great books connected with this subject are Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson and The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer.