The Brainwashing Sessions. (Part 3)

The above is a fairly accurate sketch of Mr G, probably drawn in one of his Advising lessons by a very bored individual, tired of listening to the same things over and over again. Imagine watching that hideous face for one hour straight, with no breaks or discussion. How he can continue to blab on and on about that rubbish is beyond me. EVERY videoconference, he will never fail to mention that Choueifat is in fact, the best school in the world before citing his obscure "friends" as references who agree with him. I recently heard that he actually thinks he's fooling us as well.

"[You know you went to Choueifat if] You wondered if Mr. Germanos really did have friends in the CIA and the FBI." - Choueifat=Hell? Facebook Group

See, Mr G likes to tell us anecdotes about his so called friends and family. These can range from his son who cryed when he fell down the stairs, to his friends in the CIA who were simply "amazed" by the SABIS system. Well they might not be that far from the truth; I mean, I was amazed as well. He tells us about how inefficient and unproductive other schools are. He tells us about how Ivy League and Oxbridge univerities are "hungry" for students like us. Basically, he talks about Choueifat as if it were more than just an insignificant speck-stain on the planet.

Choueifat Approved Activities

"No playing cards of any kind allowed in school. Cards are associated with gambling and students can always take part in a more productive activity". - School Rules

My friends and I have a total of at least eighteen card decks currently with the head supervisor. Why we can't play "Spades" or "Bluff" in the breaks, I'll never understand. Seriously, we're not ALL gambling addicts who are just looking for a fix at school. If that were the case, I assure you that we would have found some other way to do it. Gambling isn't really Choueifat's main problem with playing cards because even bloody Pokemon Cards were confiscated from the primary kids!

What could the motive be behind banning cards then? Read the excerpt from the rules I quoted above: "students can always take part in a more productive activity". Choueifat wants the students to be PRODUCTIVE in their breaktimes. They want them to put down anything and everything they enjoy and go back to WORK. Children are enlisted as hall monitors (read: guards) and "environment prefects" (read: cleaners) instead of being allowed to play tag. Some students are actually brainwashed into thinking that their duties are fun.

How sick and twisted.

(Thanks for the idea, Alexa)

The Books. (Part 1)

And now I’m finally on the topic of Choueifati books! There’s just so much to say…where can we start? The English course, you say? Okay.

The year before I first moved to Choueifat, I read the likes of Beowulf and The Merchant of Venice in school. Once I moved in the eighth grade, we had to read biographies of Henry the Great and Thomas Jefferson. First of all, who the hell assigns eighth graders to read biographies? They should be given famous creative literary works instead of simplified life stories of politicians. Secondly, the books were something like 80 pages thick with double spaced fonts. I was reading books that size at age 10, and I was still reading a lot less than most of the people in my grade at the time.

Along with these “Class Reader” books, we had Dictionaries and Vocabulary Lists picking on particular words in the stories. We had to memorise definitions and circle the correct answer in the exam, regardless of how obscure the definition would be or how irrelevant the word was. We would then proceed to forget the words after the exam. This may work to some extent in the lower primary grades, but one cannot expect high school students to put up with it.

The literature syllabus in Choueifat needs to be thoroughly revised and updated. The “SABIS approved” class readers aren’t doing much good for the students at all.