"Not doing too well at school?"

I can hear one country asking another. I can hear the response, "Oh, we're doing okay. It could be better but we are doing okay."

In reality we are not doing terribly well if those international results mean anything. 

I was talking to a couple of local teens yesterday. They had come around to pick up some parcels their mother had asked to be delivered here. Like most younger teens they don't willingly engage in conversation with someone much older than themselves they don't really know. I had limited my greeting to "Hi guys." 

We were working out how they were going to carry what had arrived. They had come on their skateboards, something I was sure their mother did not know about. We juggled things around. I found another bag and then another. 

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation we got to talking about the fact school will shortly be finished for the year. Were they planning anything for the summer? I know they won't be going away as both their parents will be working. Yes...and they were going to a summer school for cricket. I managed a convincing show of interest in that. 

"It'll be good anyway. School has been so boring this year, " the older of the two (by about eight minutes - they are twins) told me.

"Any special reason why it has been boring...or just boring?" I asked/ I was genuinely curious about that as they both very good students.

They looked at each other and I said, "I'm really interested in the answer to that one."

"Yeah well...look Cat it's because we don't get to do stuff. It's like people don't want to learn things and maybe even the teachers don't want to do it." 

And they were off. They told me about noisy classrooms, the lack of discipline, the "boring" assignments, and more. This is one of the local high schools. These are teens. I allowed for exaggeration but I was hearing things I have heard from teachers. "The teachers try to tell us things but some of the others muck around. It's like they don't want to be there at all. It means nobody gets to do it properly."

Their mother called me later in the evening to thank me and I told her what they had said. She sighed. 

"Yes, they keep telling us things like that but what can we do? The discipline's not good but how can they (the teachers) do it when they can't punish the kids involved? Our two have known some of those rabble rousers since they started school and they haven't changed."

She doesn't think her two are perfect but, what little I have seen of them, I like. It was interesting to discover that the behaviour which impedes learning in the classroom is something they understand. It was also interesting to find they believe school might be more interesting if this was not the case. 

I am not too concerned about the twins because they are also regular visitors to the library. I think they go to the "coding club" there and I know their library cards are well used. They might pick up some more knowledge over the summer and, hopefully, it won't be "boring".