Emily has been tutoring a 5 year old girl for 1.5 months. The girl is her colleague’s niece. Well… what about her? Nothing much. A cute and cheeky 5 year old who believes in fairy tales. Let’s call her Peekaboo for convenience’s sake.
This morning, Emily told me that Peekaboo flunked her ‘general papers’. I was like “Whatttt ?? A 5 year old flunked her ‘general papers’???” Emily nodded. I was thinking – what the fuck!? I don’t remember there was even such a thing as ‘general papers’, not even in my secondary years.
I refused to believe that… so, I asked to have a look at her test papers. Fair enough – it was indeed ‘general papers’. For a kids in their nursery years. In English. When I was 5, I didn’t even know how to hold a pen properly… and kids nowadays are doing their ‘general papers’ in their nursery. *shakes head in disbelief*
Alright, I went a step further to check what kind of questions those 5 year olds have to answer in their ‘general papers’. The first question was
Q: How many moons does planet Saturn have ? (options : 8, 12, 24).
Geez… can you believe that? Someone actually expected a 5 year old to know how many satellites are there orbiting a cold piece of rock a few million miles off from our planet. Even I myself don’t fucking know how many moons does planet Saturn have (like it’s suppose to be very important thing to know). But then, Peekaboo actually got the correct answer for this one. (shame on me)
There were approximately 20 over questions with a mix of both objective and subjective — all testing the little kid’s general knowledge. Peekaboo flunked because she answered a few of them wrong — a couple of funny ones that I can remember :
Q: What do you do after rescuing a drowning person?
Peekaboo answered : Apply medicated oil. (I laughed till I almost blacked out ..)
Q: Good manners are very important for good personal grooming. Name 3 other very important things.
Peekaboo answered : Table manners, Chair manners, [blank]. (close to near death experience from laughing)
Alright, I don’t know whether this is just me, but I think the education standard nowadays are wayyyy much higher than my time. I was dumbfucked by their education level.
I felt so intellectually challenged now. Leave me alone.