Real Insight

Of late I've been keeping myself gainfully occupied grading the oral examination for Language & Literature for the International Baccalaureate. It calls for some intense listening but makes a nice break from the usual marking of written scripts. There's a certain fascination when you start listening to a new recording and have to deal with a new accent and distinctly individualised version of English.

It's also heartening that so many kids seem genuinely enthusiastic about what they've studied. Of course, this could just be a bluff calculated to get the long-suffering examiner on their side, but it's difficult to fake for the full fifteen minutes or so of the exam and you rarely notice the mask slipping.

Today one candidate finished her exam talking about how she not had any awareness at all originally of how an advertisement she had been analysing actually worked on its audience. Her analysis had been a solid one, not terribly exciting but saying the obvious in a clear and persuasive manner. At least, that's what I originally thought, but then I came to realise that for her the obvious was something new and interesting and she was feeling a very real sense of being granted real and important insights that she had been completely unaware of when first encountering the text. Through her I felt that excitement we are granted when we know something is happening to our view of the world that will change that view for ever.

I could almost remember what it was like to be seventeen.