Marking is entertaining*

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 02 May 2009 11:24:21

I was catching up on some long over due marking the other day and found myself in fits of laughter. The topic was Buddhism and, having looked at the five precepts, I asked them to write a day in the life of a Buddhist doing their best to follow these precepts. There were an amazing number who craved bacon for breakfast but decided they couldn't because that would be going against the precept of 'I will avoid taking life'. The precept for 'I will avoid sexually harmful behaviour' resulted in people turning down dates because they were married, others noted 'I made love to my wife, but it wasn't harmful' which really did give me a giggle. However the best was the boy who wrote about how he worked helping disabled people (very commendable one might say) , however his actual job wasn't quite what I expected in that he worked in factory producing wheelchairs. Of course this is important but surprising nonetheless. Later, in demonstrating the precept 'I will avoid saying what is not true', he happened to be in the wheelchair shop when someone came in looking for a new wheelchair. The customer asked him if a certain wheelchair suited him, "I had to tell him it didn't really and suggested he tried a different one". I suppose I hadn't really thought about people choosing a wheelchair like that before.

* very occasionally