Page 24 - Real English 2024 Book 8

REAL ENGLISH 8

2. You can learn from everyone.

My adolescent friends and I wasted so much time that we
could have spent learning, snidely criticizing every teacher
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who wasn’t exactly like us, or our parents. Just because
your geography teacher wore shirts that looked like they

were made from curtain material doesn’t mean he didn’t
know anything.
I remember having a teacher once who had spent years
among Aboriginal communities. He could have taught my
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obnoxious snotty-nosed 15-year-old self so much, but we
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rejected him outright because he had one eye turned to the

right. So, when he glared at us and said, ‘You there, stand
up!’ two other students would get to their feet. It was
funny at that time, but cringeworthy now.
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3. Exam results do not define your life, but your attitude to
learning can.
It is absolutely OK to leave school not knowing

that potassium permanganate burns with a purple
flame. With all mankind’s knowledge just a Google
search away, it is not your marks compared to other
students’ that matter, but your marks compared to
how well you could have done. It is the habits and
attitudes formed by how hard you prepared for your

exams that will give you the life that you want.
I have spent twenty years trying to discover
what I want to do when I grow up. But it was

in an unkind and indirect only last year that I worked out the answer. That is why I now
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way wholeheartedly thank my teachers – particularly the ones I treated
relating to the indigenous so thoughtlessly – for showing me what legendary physicist Richard
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people of Australia Feynman called ‘the pleasure in finding things out’.
highly objectionable or When my son brought home his first report card last year,
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offensive
causing feelings of we had a great chat and I told him that, yes, I was pleased with his
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embarrassment or grades, but I was thrilled with his teacher’s comment that said,
awkwardness ‘Connor loves to learn.’
Marty Wilson

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