- although its not something I’m ever likely to make a habit of, you understand. Admitting that I’m wrong, I mean. Oh yes, it would be lovely to give up being wrong , but that ain’t going to happen any time soon. However, I digress.
You’ll probably be aware that we are rapidly approaching the end of the school year. This Thursday just gone we took a number of pupils to Oakwood Park, which is a theme Park in West Wales, about 90 minutes drive from school. A good time was had by all. The trip marked the part of the school year where it has become traditional for the timetable to be suspended to make way for special activities which pupils can choose between. Friday was an activities day, and this coming Monday will be one as well. All day Monday I’ll be giving origami classes, and good fun it is too. However I did something different on Friday.
For the last two years I’ve run a school Mastermind competition at the end of term. I first did it 2 years ago, which was the year my final was broadcast, when I had half a mind that we’d get a photo in the paper and a bit of good publicity for the school from it. I’m glad to say that this was the case. Last year I did it again, mainly because it had been fun. Still, this year I decided to go with something a little different. So what I did was actually an Eggheads style quiz. I say Eggheads, although it probably owed a little more to the format of Are You An Egghead. In two semi finals, and then the final, two teams of 4 pupils battled it out over 4 categories of questions. Each time a team won a category, then they could select a teacher Egghead to help them out in the last round, which was of course General Knowledge. Each team member had to take on one of the specialist categories by themselves, but the General rounds were team rounds.
Why am I admitting that I am wrong ? Simply this. In this very blog I have gone on record as saying that children in general today do not have a good general knowledge, no matter how smart they are. Well, Friday went some way to proving me wrong on this one. I have to say, all of those pupils who played on Friday did brilliantly. Yes I wrote the questions for what I thought pupils between 12 and 15 might be able to answer, but even so the standard of the contestants was really impressive. So much so that only one question was answered incorrectly in the four individual rounds of the final, and the GK round in the final was actually won by 5 points out of 5 to the other team’s 4 points out of 5. It might not exactly have brought a tear to the eye of this particular wizened old quiz veteran, but I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t warm the cockles of my heart a bit.
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