Sundays

I must say this morning I really could do with being able to pop down to the Waterfront in Cape Town, set myself down at one of the many cafes and order a big English breakfast while reading the Sunday Times!

Comfort zones come in many shapes and sizes, and breaking free of them is not always easy. For instance, I was sure that moving into a gypsy kind of lifestyle, my predeliction for clutter would be ameliorated, however, I find myself having to pick my way through bags, books and knick-knacks! I'm due for another de-cluttering, and fairly soon!

Some other comfort zones may include what you eat, who you read, what music you listen to etc. Of course, being pattern seekers, we tend to also be most comfortable when we live inside a pattern, a routine, a set of behaviours.

The age of a society

One of the blogs I follow posted about some mistreatment of a bear cub on a Korean TV show, and while I agree that the footage is pretty terrible, with terror evident, and that the obligatory Korean sound track of oohs and ahs and laughter is as terrible, I realized one thing. Maybe a society can have an age - some are infants, others children, and then adolescents and adults.

What would characterize the child? Well, most children have a distinct lack of empathy as illustrated in the above incident. The fact that animals generally get badly treated, and that their interactions with each other tend to be violent and physical, indicates that Korea is perhaps a child.

However, considering America and that they find so many of the humiliating and painful incidents depicted on America's funniest videos, well, funny, they have to rank right up there.

Are there any nations that can be considered adults? Who behave responsibly? I can think of only one, the Swiss. They stayed neutral in WWII, offering help and succour to wounded of both sides, they are trusted as the world's bankers (and some might argue with me that this gives them no credibility, since much of the money is stolen or tainted), and they have a low crime rate while upholding democracy.

Swine flu and other infections...

There are some things that will always amaze me, and one of these is the way in which people will react to a perceived threat as opposed to how they blithely live with actual ones. There was an article many years ago in New Scientist that discussed how people will not see that crossing a street has a greater risk factor than jumping out of an airplane with a parachute on, and other similar examples.

Since reading that article I have seen numerous examples of this in action, most notably in the field of medical risks. Forgive me, but I'm going to use some dance steps to illustrate just how ridiculous these were and are. To name just a few, there have been the 'Mad-cow disease panic boogie', the 'We're all gonna die of avian flu waltz', the 'Terrorists are going to post letters with anthrax in two-step' and now the 'Mexican flu is gonna kill us mambo'.

Let's put the latest and the previous flu virus outbreak into some perspective. Nearly 2.5 million (that's 2500000) people have died of TB in 2008. That's according to the World Health Organization's report. Over 5 million have died from malaria. OK, so malaria is not transmitted through contact with the infected person, but TB spreads in exactly the same way as flu does - an infected person coughs, sneezes or even just breathes in an enclosed space where others are and they can get infected. Compare that with the fact that in 2008 only 9 people died of avian flu. And that so far, worldwide, we have had just a little over 600 deaths and only about 120000 confirmed cases of the new dread disease, swine flu. Hell, more people die of the ordinary old garden variety of flu just in the USA (estimated between 30 and 40 thousand people).

Do I think that people should now drop all precautions against swine flu? Should we all just ignore it and return to normal? Not at all - washing your hands, practicing good hygiene, staying home when you are feeling unwell or getting treatment right away are good things to do. And that goes for TB infections as well.

All I'm saying is that we should drop the unreasoning panic about this new 'threat', as illustrated by the cancellation of the Choir Competition that was due to take place this week here in Korea. And that the SA Youth Choir, when they heard about this while en route, chose to spend a miserable 48 hours at Dubai airport rather than fly on to Korea and spend their time until they could get flights back to SA in a comfortable hostel, because 'they are not setting foot in a country where there is swine flu.'

Grading on the curve

I've completed the 'speaking test' for two out of the three grades here in middle school, and will complete the remaining grade tomorrow.

As we were giving feedback to the completed grades, I once again realised just how futile my efforts to educate are, given the following:

Points scored in main test Points Awarded Points scored in speaking test Points Awarded

16 - 20 20 6 - 7 10

13 - 15 19 4 - 5  9

10 - 12 18 2 - 3  8

 7 -  9 17 0 - 1  7

 0 - 6 16

From this it can be seen that a student who has scored 0 on both tests will still have 23 out of a possible 30 points! If this is how the English grading works, I'm pretty sure that the other subjects follow suit.

Why, oh why, should anyone try to learn in such circumstances? Those students who love learning for its own sake are the 30 out of 30 students, but for how long can they remain motivated by that? They end up expending their efforts on the subjects they love, and blow off the rest since they will pass anyway!

And, even worse, the attitude to a test being meaningless carries over until they are then confronted with one that does, and then the stress sets in and we have students killing themselves because of the failure they were set up for.