School days – I learn the nitty-gritty of the English language

Rev Br Shannon looked hard at the boy and then opened the exercise book in which the boy had written his essay. Rev Br Shannon held up the open book for all of us to see and what we saw sent shudders down our spines – the page was riddled with red marks. Right from the top to the bottom – even the margins were not spared.
The poor boy remained standing and shivering in his pants and it was then that Rev Br Shannon opened up. He began from the first red mark and went on to explain why he had put that red mark.

The mistakes ranged from the spelling of words to syntax errors and grammatical errors. He kept on explaining and we kept gobbling up each of his words. It was a real revelation to us. None of our earlier teachers had ever taken so much time or spent so much effort to go deep into the failure of each and every student and apprise him of his shortcomings. After finishing with the critical analysis of the first student, he went on the next and the process went on for the whole day – he had analyzed all 33 essays and had given his feedback as no one had ever done.
The effect of his criticism was tremendous – all of us students vowed in our minds to ensure that he did not get a chance to put his ‘red’ trademark on our essays again. And, we did achieve that near perfection but it took us a long time. (to be continued ..)
Another interesting blog - Violence and atrocities through the eyes of a 70-year-old