Thursday, March 09, 2006

Glimmer of Hope

I was in MPH (Oh, so what’s new? Rolling eyes) and a quarterly publication caught my attention. Firstly, I’m a sucker for local works. I’m somewhat patriotic when it comes to local intellectual property. Aw, come on, they’re poor enough.
Secondly, the size of the publication is very unique. So, I bought it. Mostly because out of curiosity and I didn’t want to miss any cinema-ads of my Syriana movie. (which was good but requires tedious attention to their details).

I was very surprised to see the name of my uni’s lecturer (N) once again. Damn, why is it that I am never in her class? Btw, hor… my wonderful uni doesn’t allow the students to choose their minors nor other elective subjects. An advertising lecturer calls it ‘standard operating procedure’ and I made a very sarcastic joke about it. He was very sensitive and chided me for it. I was even MORE sensitive and we quarreled. It was ground-breaking man. I became an instant ‘star’ student after that. I always heard, “Neh, this one lar” pointed at my direction.

Back to perhaps the only true educator in my uni. N is also the key person of public speaking workshops in my faculty. I saw the flyer pasted on the notice board one day and decided to just join them for observation purposes.
I’m very impressed. It’s obvious that she’s doing this out of her own initiative.I described my experience to a friend via online '...very impressed by her 'aura'.Could easily recognise her dedication and passion for both learning and educating.' Many ‘educators’ in my uni just want to finish their work and punch their time- card. But N is actually making use of the extra-curricular time to truly educate us.

In her(N) contribution to the quarterly mag.
I spent weeks planning the class, doin the research into an area of history that had no presence in the students’ textbooks
….Teaching is no longer noble nor inspiring; it has become like any other job-a means to put food on the table, something that was all head and little heart.
….Paolo Freire states that “dialogue cannot exist without humility….”
“without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education”


There is still hope. =P

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