"Cirriculum time is meant for teaching and learning, nothing else."

That's what my VP said when she strutted into my Sec. 1 Music class today to confiscate a handphone from a student. The 1.5 hour lesson is not really rigorously planned, as the guitars have not arrived in school and I don't enjoy boring the students with all that music theory jargon. So I decided I'll get them some materials to read about the history of guitars and gave handouts of some guitar-like instruments. Mainly for enrichment, optional to the students.

Being students, they looked through the handouts, filed them and then went on to do their own "work". Some studied, some read books, some decorated the classroom for the upcoming CNY, others were engaged in the usual adolescence ranting, ever so energised to talk and laugh loudly at almost anything.

My VP is rather a conservative person. Not much fashion sense I guess, considering she has her pants pulled very high up, not waist level but perhaps "stomach level"? Anyway, she gave the class a good shelling about the purpose of education and the usual do's and don'ts. I was actually quite pleased to have someone scold the class on my behalf for all that ear damaging noise.

But I really thought what she said about cirriculum being all learning is absurd. Students are not machines and you can't expect them to behave like some DVD writer, spinning and storing data all day long. There's got to be times when you got to let them mingle, yell, yack, chat, else it's just not complete for their character development.

I believe my students have just found a new public enemy in school.