My French teacher’s newest French-revolution-style torture device is making the whole class sing some ridiculous kid song translated into French. Today, it was Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. At which point the whole class had to stand up, sing this crap in French, and “do the motions”, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah. This makes us learn faster. Mind you, it JUST SO HAPPENS that I remember all the body parts except the ones we practiced with this song. Ok, so I remember “head” and “toes”, but not shoulders and knees. Therefore, I think we can safely conclude that singing this idiotic kid song does not contribute to the learning process. Or, at the very least, MY learning process. Now, my learning process happens to be faster than the learning processes of most of the other students in the room. Therefore, if I still can’t remember it, they probably can’t either. Especially since they don’t care about their education nearly as much as I do.

Not to mention that it was just embarassing. I hate leaning over so that everyone can see my arse. I wish teachers would remember their teenagerhoods when teaching teenagers. They would do well to remember our constant self-consciousness and at least ATTEMPT to teach without making us miserable and worried. Maybe, if you subtract the social pressures from this equation of learning, the end result will be a greater amount of learning. You know, just saying.

Once, we had to sing a song that was made up of the past participles of a bunch of verbs we were supposed to remember the past participles. Whether I memorized them because of the song or of my own accord, I can fairly say that I don’t remember. However, the stupid tune did get stuck in my head for extended periods of time. I mean, come on. French is 4th period for me. That means 3 more periods during which I’ll be annoying the crap out of my classmates by humming/singing/tapping it.

So, please. If you teach French, stick to French. I didn’t take choir for a reason.

school, French, activities, singing