6-May-2009
Battle of the Books for Secondary Schools
The RCHK team was in a pretty good second position after the first 6 rounds. But the last round against Kellet was particularly humiliating – RCHK did not score any point until the last question. At the end, Macau International was the clear winner by a 20-point margin, while the other 3 schools are only a few points apart. The judges admitted that their individually kept scores did not match each others.
Last year RCHK was dead last, and this year it has improved quite a bit. But the preparation can and should improve. From what I heard, the general attendance rate for the preparation meetings was poor. There was at least one incident where only 5 people showed up.
In this year and the last, the BOB team was organized as one of the many available extra-curriculum activities, instead of as a team representing the school to compete with other schools. Thus the mind set was much more relax and not very spirited. While the ultimate purpose of BOB is to get kids to enjoy reading, having a competitive spirit could add quite a bit motivation to finish reading all the books.
Another common complaint on the preparation is the lack of access to books on the BOB list. My kid missed at least two books simply because the books could not be located. With more and more schools joining the BOB, the books could only get harder to borrow.
