So what exactly was the point of that quiz yesterday anyway?
Some students has a hard time following instructions from the subs on Monday and Tuesday. Some students chose confrontation rather than compliance. This might not be as big of a deal here at school, but as the adults in your life probably tell you, the habits you learn now are the habits that will stay with you through adulthood. If you choose to inappropriately challenge authority here at school, you are going to have a difficult time finding and keeping a job, and you are going to have trouble with “authority” in the “real” world.
If someone tells you to do something you don’t want to do, ask yourself if it will really hurt you to just comply. In your future, the people who have authority in your life will tell you to do things that you don’t want to do. Unless the task is morally or ethically objectional, it’s usually easier to just do it, and deal with your own frustrations later. Of course, you don’t have to do this, but I advise you to learn to do so so that oyu can skip the little confrontations that won’t matter 10 minutes or a day later.
Ambiguity. Defined as having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns. Why were the questions on the quiz so hard to understand? They were intentionally ambiguous. Think about how you learn. If someone gives you a list of stuff to memorize, do you learn about the stuff, or do you just memorize it for the sake of memorizing it, and move on to the next forced feeding and regurgitation? While you can learn facts by memorizing or being told something to remember for a test, you don’t gain understanding of the subject. You don’t gain comprehension of the subject and its context (i.e. you memorize some stuff, but don’t know what it means or why it’s important). If the questions on the test had been simple choices, like (A) smack the sub, (B) fight the sub until they call the office, or (C) just try to get along for 50 minutes, some people would think about it, but most people would just pick an answer and move on.
Given, some of the silliness in the quiz may have made the questions more confusing, but hopefully it made you think. And one of the “jokes” was even a little inappropriate, but you can discuss that with me if you wish.
And finally, in the context of getting along with people, think about this: do you think that reporting someone to their boss or supervisor is better than talking to that person one on one? For example, if one of your teachers says something with which you disagree, or you think is offensive, which reaction do you think will help you in your relationship with your teacher? Talking to the teacher, discussing it at the wrong time in class, going straight to the principal, or having your parents talk to the principal. If you answered anything other than the first choice, you don’t understand relationships in a way that will help you get along better with people, and possibly get them on your side? Which way is most likely to make that teacher not want to be on your side?
When you start working for someone, and they do something that you know is against the rules or inappropriate, and that person is some of authority, and you run to their supervisor, you can bet that you won’t get any favors or help from them. Of course, they not supposed to retaliate (which means keeping you from being promoted or treating you differently as your supervisor), but they won’t be helping you when you show up an hour late to work or have to leave at lunch to meet the plumber at your house.
btw, the quiz is a completion grade – no scores will be recorded as long as you finished the quiz.
