commiseration

I am speaking to Kapten Hokk when the man hangs his head in despair. I am shocked. It is almost literally a hanging of head. He goes slack and I almost have to catch him under the chin. (No, not Premierløjtnant Chin.) He is slack-jawed and laughing and unhappy all at once. So I feed him the spirit of the grain and try again. And he tells me a story.

Once upon a time, in an East Asian Tiger Economy, an educational bureaucrat actually has quite good an idea. He thinks of enhancing teacher appraisal with something almost is like a criterion-based system. (I like this kind of system. Is more fair.) So the system is given to the schools, and all are quite happy. But friend Hokk continues, in his school, the Big Hokkien Boss left it to the Aunties to run. And the Aunties, they have made a mess of it and all the appraisals are wrongly done. So is stupid. And worse, is silly. He rambles on about how the Sister-In-Law came to make right the situation, but was not well-received.

I am sad for him. He is quite clever you know. So I pray to Hegel and Kant for the sake of his mind. I even recite part of the gospel of St Marx. I am about to Kierkegaard him, when he growls at me. He is not having any of it, he says, "Don't mock me." I see he is serious, so I leave him alone and ask myself, "How come a good school can have such behaviours in it?"