Job Discussion Forums

[Joanne Light Miller]

If you are so foolish to go to Hong Kong, as I was, (contact [email protected] for information about this abyssmal country) I spent seven months in this and its sister school, St. Patrick's Catholic Primary School, and I may never recover from working in this horrid scheme with the evilest ""English Panel Chairs" (as they are called) or department heads I have ever encountered. What they are doing in education is beyond me. No, actually, I know why they are there: to promote themselves and get money, the only things these careerist connivers care about.

If you want my story, you can write to me.

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

Joanne,

It sounds like sour grapes to me. To refer to NESTA as 'spineless' to the EMB and to start some legal fund (probably for your cause) and to vent a one-sided story on the web is absurd. Come on Joanne, we were paid quite a lot of money to be professional here. so, behave and do your job. to refer to a chair as 'evil' is classic deflectionary theory. Why was she evil? What could you have done better?

[prplfairy]

Freddie Unbelievable,

You're falling into the classic "blame the victim" syndrome. Someone tells you that an English Chair is "evil" and you don't sympathize knowing how difficult even the average person on the street can be in Hong Kong you ask, "What could you have done better?"

In addition if you are going to allude to another posting then please don't forget to include the context. Her previous posting did say that NESTA is "spineless" but it is said it in the context of a letter sent by Mark Aldred. So Mark Aldred said NESTA is spineless not Joanne Light Miller.

I've dealt with the EMB regularly and quite often they are unsympathetic, uninformed and simply complacent. They need a good kick in the a** from a legal fund or anyone else able to do so. It is so irritating to deal with an organization that is regarded as the last word on educational issues only to have them routinely lose documents, not return correspondences and be unable to answer critical questions. Such is the nature of bureaucracy but if you're going to blame people why not spread the wealth around to where it belongs.

The EMB, English Panel Chairs and NESTA are all also well paid to be professional and in this women's case and in many I have witnessed myself they are not. Where is your criticism of them? Why are you so eager to deny the validity of this woman's story (which I would like to hear in detail)? Who are these people who when they hear about a teacher being mistreated automatically accuse the teacher of being incompetent, unqualified and unprofessional? Obviously, this may be the case in some situations but what is it that predisposes them to blame the teacher when there are numerous organizations screening and regulating every aspect of a teacher's job? Why wouldn't you assume the opposite? That an unchallenged and unchecked bureaucracy might be more likely to mistreat individuals in a vast system of schools and educational organizations. The fact is you don't know this person, neither do I, and are not familiar with the specific situation, or you are and trying to hide your identity, but you choose to blame the teacher. Why is that?

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

Fairy,

Yes, I would agree with you. I was simply trying to get Joanne to tell her story. But, I suspect it will be one-sided.

[Bertrand]

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear Freddy,

I'm not sure why you became a teacher, Freddy. You only mentioned being paid alot of money so, may I ask you pointedly, "Did you become this "professional" of which you speak for financial gain?"

At the least, I would venture to guess that your idea and my idea of "professional" are quite different. To my way of thinking, I was invited to Hong Kong because I have proven, in my teaching life, that I can instill in students (and this is why I became a teacher) an enthusiasm and joy for learning (because this I how I feel about life, about art, drama, music and language).

When I was five and consciously witnessed my first rainbow, I wanted to write about it, study it, understand it and express how I felt about it. I remember being so enamoured with the phenomemon of this rainbow, I could think of little else for weeks. I became a teacher because I wanted children to feel the same joy and excitement I felt. Also, I felt and feel the same today that all children are born with this innate interest in discovering and I wanted to be around to help them develop it.

The medium I was representing in my recent situation (or did until I could stand the system no longer) was the English language. Professional, to me, in this situation, means engendering the above (toward that language) in students and passing on whatever information, skills and content I have picked up along the way over the past 28 years since I first taught. Also, my definition of professional doesn't eliminate the reality that, when my values are disrespected and rejected the way mine were by various Hong Kong "professionals", who told me, in so many ways, that they knew much better than I did how to teach English, I will fight for these values. I owe this much to the professors, writers and children and other teachers I have learned from during this time. Also, when I am told by the assistant manager of the PNET scheme that "I am not cut out to be a PNET teacher" I get chills, because I wonder, if not the above, what a PNET teacher to her is supposed to be. And I am sad and hurt because why can't she see that I am getting spectacular results and the kids love my classes and all those other things that are necessary in order to accomplish the short term goals of the curriculum that she is supposed to be representing? (Forgive me for the braggadoccio (sp?). Hong Kong has made me boastful. No one else (expcept a few brave friends, who are also treated badly in their schools) has stuck up for me or the students and parents who wanted me there, so I'm doing it now, be it a distasteful western attribute or not.

And if this involves speaking out against a system which I think needs educating regarding ESL teaching in the year 2003 and also sorely needs to be criticised for abusing civil liberties and human rights, I will do so. Obviously, this will make me many enemies as I threaten many contented individuals.

But my experience is only mine. I know there are many wonderful and highly qualified Hong Kong teachers and administrators who are indeed grateful to have the PNETS on board. But I didn't have this experience. I even think one of my principals, Miss Liu, is a dedicated professional but she hired some distasteful, rather unqualified people who were in control of me and who, out of me not wanting them to lose face, and wanting to get along, I allowed to bully and boss me around for far too long (for the good of my health). Thus I am in the situation I am in and I have learned that to put up and shut up is not the way to a good life.

Basically I was just shocked over and over again in Hong Kong (and I mean shocked to my socks) because every time an opportunity to explore, learn, discover or catalyze learning among teachers and/or students presented itself, the heavy thud of power politics stamped out or tried to stamp out the experience. The regime and its formal representation is "all" in Hong Kong. That the margin for the header on a worksheet is exactly placed according to the school standard is VERY important (Let's spend an hour discussing it at a meeting) but to give a class of students the opportunity to write to children in Canada** (For this strategy, I was told I had poor time management skills by my panel chair because I had approached a primary four teacher with a list of penfriends and was then ordered to cease and desist such contact; the primary four teacher just scuttled away, gripped in fear) was seen as subversion and character weakness by my panel chair.

**Said penfriend scheme involved hours and hours of developmental work ("What is a letter, teacher?")put in by eight Canadian teachers, over one hundred primary five and six students from Canada, some work by a few Hong Kong teachers and me. In response to the letters, stamps, stickers, coins and pictures sent to the Hong Kong students, my school officials could only say, "The Canadians are so messy. We can't even read their writing." This is not my idea of putting the curriculum guidelines (understanding other cultures) into successful practise.

Human caring did not exist in my situation. As one of my local colleagues put it, "In Hong Kong, we neither love nor hate, we are too busy!" So, can it be any wonder that in this repressive atmosphere, unsavoury individuals grasp power and hurt others (Remember the German people--too concerned about their livelihood to question the activities of one Herr)

I can understand how you might be afraid of speaking your mind in such a system where the money buys so much silence, but I have learned the hard way that to put money first only brings heartache and ill health.

You mentioned that I was exhibiting sour grapes. I understand that image to symbolize someone who is jealous of what someone else has. I had everything. I had noone to envy but, freedom in a vacuum, is despair. I would suggest that it was the system in my schools (particularly the power structure of the panel chairs) who were sour grapes because they saw that I had the love and respect of the students (for trying very hard to bring everything I could to their table) and so tried and succeeded in making my life miserable.

Noone spends thousands of dollars getting to a place so that they can speak out against it and then spend thousands of getting out ot it. Only the rich can afford to display the luxury of being critical. I certainly didn't come to Hong Kong to condemn its system. I came to teach its children English, but I found the school system so alien to and uninterested in the type of professional I was, and so hostile to me as a person, one serious and excited about the new curriculum guidelines (as the management asked us to be), I became ill from despair and stress.

I think part of the problem is that the local teachers were ordered to take part in the PNET Scheme but were not alleviated of the old system (which is more than enough work for any person putting in a 50 + hour work week). The mindless workbooks, model answers, memorization and correcting of same takes up so much time, it is no wonder they resented me with all my good teaching practises and were uninterested in seeing that students were actually speaking, writing and reading in English and enjoying it.

By the way, alot of my friends are in this scheme and I worry about them and what they will think of me speaking out, but I have to speak out anyway. I may no longer have them and friends after I have spoken out.

I do believe that good and evil manifest in human personality and, though unaware of the damage they cause to others, these "people of the lie" (to quote Scott Peck's book on the existence of evil in the human psyche) operate by scapegoating and blaming others. To me, this process is going on in the Hong Kong school system, where children are ridiculed to put fear into them, where young teachers are bullied by older teachers in charge and forced to do unbelievable amounts of work with no praise. Where I was picked on daily by two panel chairs who have no university degrees just so they could exert their power over...something Hong Kong loves to do. Personally, this "evil" wore me down.

I know my words are sharp and hitting. I feel, as the other responder to my submission here said, that they have to be. I feel it when I think of all the students I disappointed by deserting them. I feel it when I think of all the hundreds of hours trying to please my panel chairs, all for just more abuse. (I hold on to the joy and success I may have helped those fifty students of the Oral Speech Festival group at St. Patrick's School feel as my contribution in the short time I survived in Hong Kong.) I feel it when I no longer can ride my prize Canadian hybrid bike that I had to leave in Hong Kong (didn't save enough money to ship it). When I think of eight years' of ESL files compiled while working in Asia I had to ditch as they were also too expensive to bring.

I feel it, Freddy, so I speak it. That's all I can do now.


Below is a short piece I wrote about another example of this type of experience I endured every day for seven months.

A NUTTY STORY FROM HONG KONG

Unfortunately it's not fiction.


"She didn't buy the plastic forks!" my English Panel Chair grumbled loudly to the Vice Principal at the next desk.

It was after school on a November afternoon in Kowloon and my English Oral Speech Team had just returned from the speech festival, triumphant in their third place win (in a field of thirteen schools) in the competition. I had promised them a pizza party after the competition was over, and it was finally over, after ten weeks of twice-weekly practices, bumped up to almost every day for the last little while. My English Panel Chair, the group's most vocal critic over the period that another teacher and I had been coaching the group of fifty, had been making life miserable for me, refusing to look at my deployment ;I work seven days a week and get four hours sleep a night; being her only response to my repeated requests for review of my schedule. As far as the students' rendition of 'Daddy Fell into the Pond', she could only harp: "They're terrible. They won't take it seriously.We have to kick out the soloist. He's too bad." When I promised the pizza party, she quickly stepped in to pay for it saying that "It was her duty as panel chair to pay for it." Does this excuse all the abuse the students and I had endured from her for weeks?

I had told the group at the beginning of rehearsals (as it was my belief and cultural practice to support, encourage and praise) that I believed in them; that they could do it--master the difficult sounds and rhythms of English. Now, even after the win, it was still her unkind words I was hearing.

I had tried to explain as I returned from my trip to the store (on her orders) to buy paper plates, cups and plastic forks for the pizza: 'You don't eat pizza with forks anyway.' (I had formerly said this to myself while looking at the exorbitantly-priced disposable utensils on the store shelf.) 'And, the kids are going to be standing up so can't use the forks anyway.' It seemed like a smart idea not to buy them, I thought, but I was forgetting one thing. In Hong Kong schools, teachers don't have ideas or thoughts. The cultural practice is to do what supervisors say. And herein, I thought, lies the problem of my employment (and the answer to my despair) on this particular day when I had thought I would be, and had been, feeling so triumphant and happy.

No nanosecond in this life as a teacher in Hong Kong exists when you aren't under the gun, ready to be criticized, ridiculed, abused and reported on, no matter how hard you try or how well you did your job. It is the horrible reality of people politics in Hong Kong: squash or be squashed. We do look like ants here, don't you agree?

This life as an ant started when I was chosen as a Primary Native English Teacher (PNET) by the Ministry of Education to apply new teaching strategies to the process of second language acquisition among Hong Kong students. I was soundly indoctrinated, at the beginning of my tenure, into the ministry's curriculum guidelines to do the above at a series of orientation sessions where I was called an "agent of change" ("Did he say change or chains?" I later wondered) by the project manager and challenged to "not let change stop at the school's door".

The Hong Kong ministry was betting heavily (billions of taxpayer money) that I could wrestle with the set ways of the Hong Kong system and make the practices of memorization, dictation, model answers and low communication ability beg for mercy amid my repertoire of interactive, student-centred, highly experiential tactics. I was also told that the Hong Kong school system had a strict adherence to rules, which I learned meant school rules (sometimes called those of the SS, Gestapo (in other times)) not curriculum rules.

The problem, I have come to speculate, with the PNET Scheme is that no matter that we are dealing in the realm of foreign culture, one of whose chief components is its language, the Hong Kong teachers really believe that they know best how to teach this language which they rarely use or understand. They have neither kept up with the literature on how people acquire foreign languages or even want to hear about it, but they are not willing to admit this.

Let's look at a hypothetical reverse situation. (Let me form a story to illustrate this situation.)

Once upon a time...

Mandarin was the up and coming language to learn in North America. North American teachers, whose grades were not high enough to teach math or science or even English, began filling the need for this new subject by becoming Mandarin teachers, sometimes with few skills in the language but enough to bluff their way along (though no native speaking Chinese could ever understand what the North Americans were saying). Because of the inability of their graduates to compete in a world where Mandarin was the language of communication, the government (always hoping to appeal to the voters) decided to throw a bucket (the size of Shea Stadium) of money into a scheme to bring in expert Chinese teachers from China.

Seeing an opportunity to live in a new culture and finding the salary attractive (even though the process of getting themselves there was monstrously frustrating and expensive), droves of Mandarin native speaking teachers, who had taught Mandarin to non-Mandarin speakers in China for decades; who had spoken the language since birth; and who understood implicitly why and how all types of speech in the language were used (not to mention that they had, over the years, amassed tons of materials and knowledge about how best to learn Mandarin (given that they had tried many strategies and stuck with the ones which worked best in the context of the language's inherent social, linguistic and peculiar aspects) ) came to North America to teach the North American teachers how to teach their language from their culture to the non-Mandarin speaking students.

When the Mandarin teachers arrived, they were unundated with information about North American culture, while their counterparts were told nothing about the new arrivals' culture. And, even though the officials had told the incoming professionals that they would be in charge of changing the ways their local counterparts taught Mandarin, nothing was said, to the local teachers, about the cultural morays these foreign teachers represented and expressed (the well from which the language in question sprang) and were using to instill a love and interest in it upon students. They were deemed agents of change perhaps but noone understood anything about them or seemed interested in learning anything about their world.

So, instead of having an interest and openness to learn their ways and teaching strategies, the native Mandarin teachers found themselves being told, by the North American teachers, how to teach their native Chinese language by using North American cultural ways in a North American classroom because, as North Americans, they said, only they understood how the North American students learned.

Well, enough of this hypothetical situation. Suffice it to see that this would not be a happy situation. And it is the exact situation of the PNET scheme's bungled deployment in Hong Kong.

In short, the global jury is no longer sequestered, in linguistic circles, whether or not you can teach second language acquisition as a subject, which the North American teachers, in our story above, were so confident (being culturally cloistered in the hallowed halls of their ways) they could.

But we're still missing the point perhaps. It's this, as I have understood it from studying linguistics. Language is social and social means society and society means culture, so you cannot teach a language without being open to its cultural and social context. You cannot ask native professionals to come teach their own language and then tell them that all their methods are wrong because only you understand your students. Humanity is bigger than that. Otherwise, none of us could ever learn a word of another language.

So the problem with the PNET Scheme, and it is a gigantic problem, is that the receiving body--the Hong Kong Schools--are not permeable to the foreign objects--the PNET teachers--who were assured by the experiment's managers that their force (guided by the new curriculum) would penetrate the membrane of fear, racial prejudice, arrogance and self-service that it encountered. Not so. The architects of this scheme had pretended to be progressive but were, alas, only political and that bottom line is always CYOB (cover your own behind). They didn't order the local teachers to abandon their longstanding ineffective strategies and open their then less-burdened arms to the new practices, as they could and should have. They just pretended to be doing something for ESL education in Hong Kong. It was a facade. The commanders led their elite troops to battle but left them to be massacred by angry local teachers, whose heavy load was not lifted to allow the new load to come in. Who else did those local teachers have to destroy but the interlopers, the innocent lambs who had been led, by fake saviours, into the pen, only to be slaughtered by the real world of entrenched-in-inane-practices and overworked local teachers?

When my Panel Chair made yet another complaint about me, even on the day I had brought her school honour and glory, she was very much in the real world: her own economic and political survival (albeit a paranoic one); the only principle operating in Hong Kong Schools and government departments today, despite the glorious whitewashing and elaborate pastiche created by hocus-pocus bogus schemes like the nutty PNET one.


- Joanne Miller

B.A., B.Ed., B.F.A., M.A. Adv. Cert. in TESOL and Applied Linguistics is the author of four books and two teaching manuals. She is presently trying to recover from working seven months in the Hong Kong PNET Scheme

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear Freddy,

I'm not sure why you became a teacher, Freddy. You only mentioned being paid alot of money so, may I ask you pointedly, "Did you become this "professional" of which you speak for financial gain?"

At the least, I would venture to guess that your idea and my idea of "professional" are quite different. To my way of thinking, I was invited to Hong Kong because I have proven, in my teaching life, that I can instill in students (and this is why I became a teacher) an enthusiasm and joy for learning (because this I how I feel about life, about art, drama, music and language).

When I was five and consciously witnessed my first rainbow, I wanted to write about it, study it, understand it and express how I felt about it. I remember being so enamoured with the phenomemon of this rainbow, I could think of little else for weeks. I became a teacher because I wanted children to feel the same joy and excitement I felt. Also, I felt and feel the same today that all children are born with this innate interest in discovering and I wanted to be around to help them develop it.

The medium I was representing in my recent situation (or did until I could stand the system no longer) was the English language. Professional, to me, in this situation, means engendering the above (toward that language) in students and passing on whatever information, skills and content I have picked up along the way over the past 28 years since I first taught. Also, my definition of professional doesn't eliminate the reality that, when my values are disrespected and rejected the way mine were by various Hong Kong "professionals", who told me, in so many ways, that they knew much better than I did how to teach English, I will fight for these values. I owe this much to the professors, writers and children and other teachers I have learned from during this time. Also, when I am told by the assistant manager of the PNET scheme that "I am not cut out to be a PNET teacher" I get chills, because I wonder, if not the above, what a PNET teacher to her is supposed to be. And I am sad and hurt because why can't she see that I am getting spectacular results and the kids love my classes and all those other things that are necessary in order to accomplish the short term goals of the curriculum that she is supposed to be representing? (Forgive me for the braggadoccio (sp?). Hong Kong has made me boastful. No one else (expcept a few brave friends, who are also treated badly in their schools) has stuck up for me or the students and parents who wanted me there, so I'm doing it now, be it a distasteful western attribute or not.

And if this involves speaking out against a system which I think needs educating regarding ESL teaching in the year 2003 and also sorely needs to be criticised for abusing civil liberties and human rights, I will do so. Obviously, this will make me many enemies as I threaten many contented individuals.

But my experience is only mine. I know there are many wonderful and highly qualified Hong Kong teachers and administrators who are indeed grateful to have the PNETS on board. But I didn't have this experience. I even think one of my principals, Miss Liu, is a dedicated professional but she hired some distasteful, rather unqualified people who were in control of me and who, out of me not wanting them to lose face, and wanting to get along, I allowed to bully and boss me around for far too long (for the good of my health). Thus I am in the situation I am in and I have learned that to put up and shut up is not the way to a good life.

Basically I was just shocked over and over again in Hong Kong (and I mean shocked to my socks) because every time an opportunity to explore, learn, discover or catalyze learning among teachers and/or students presented itself, the heavy thud of power politics stamped out or tried to stamp out the experience. The regime and its formal representation is "all" in Hong Kong. That the margin for the header on a worksheet is exactly placed according to the school standard is VERY important (Let's spend an hour discussing it at a meeting) but to give a class of students the opportunity to write to children in Canada** (For this strategy, I was told I had poor time management skills by my panel chair because I had approached a primary four teacher with a list of penfriends and was then ordered to cease and desist such contact; the primary four teacher just scuttled away, gripped in fear) was seen as subversion and character weakness by my panel chair.

**Said penfriend scheme involved hours and hours of developmental work ("What is a letter, teacher?")put in by eight Canadian teachers, over one hundred primary five and six students from Canada, some work by a few Hong Kong teachers and me. In response to the letters, stamps, stickers, coins and pictures sent to the Hong Kong students, my school officials could only say, "The Canadians are so messy. We can't even read their writing." This is not my idea of putting the curriculum guidelines (understanding other cultures) into successful practise.

Human caring did not exist in my situation. As one of my local colleagues put it, "In Hong Kong, we neither love nor hate, we are too busy!" So, can it be any wonder that in this repressive atmosphere, unsavoury individuals grasp power and hurt others (Remember the German people--too concerned about their livelihood to question the activities of one Herr)

I can understand how you might be afraid of speaking your mind in such a system where the money buys so much silence, but I have learned the hard way that to put money first only brings heartache and ill health.

You mentioned that I was exhibiting sour grapes. I understand that image to symbolize someone who is jealous of what someone else has. I had everything. I had noone to envy but, freedom in a vacuum, is despair. I would suggest that it was the system in my schools (particularly the power structure of the panel chairs) who were sour grapes because they saw that I had the love and respect of the students (for trying very hard to bring everything I could to their table) and so tried and succeeded in making my life miserable.

Noone spends thousands of dollars getting to a place so that they can speak out against it and then spend thousands of getting out ot it. Only the rich can afford to display the luxury of being critical. I certainly didn't come to Hong Kong to condemn its system. I came to teach its children English, but I found the school system so alien to and uninterested in the type of professional I was, and so hostile to me as a person, one serious and excited about the new curriculum guidelines (as the management asked us to be), I became ill from despair and stress.

I think part of the problem is that the local teachers were ordered to take part in the PNET Scheme but were not alleviated of the old system (which is more than enough work for any person putting in a 50 + hour work week). The mindless workbooks, model answers, memorization and correcting of same takes up so much time, it is no wonder they resented me with all my good teaching practises and were uninterested in seeing that students were actually speaking, writing and reading in English and enjoying it.

By the way, alot of my friends are in this scheme and I worry about them and what they will think of me speaking out, but I have to speak out anyway. I may no longer have them and friends after I have spoken out.

I do believe that good and evil manifest in human personality and, though unaware of the damage they cause to others, these "people of the lie" (to quote Scott Peck's book on the existence of evil in the human psyche) operate by scapegoating and blaming others. To me, this process is going on in the Hong Kong school system, where children are ridiculed to put fear into them, where young teachers are bullied by older teachers in charge and forced to do unbelievable amounts of work with no praise. Where I was picked on daily by two panel chairs who have no university degrees just so they could exert their power over...something Hong Kong loves to do. Personally, this "evil" wore me down.

I know my words are sharp and hitting. I feel, as the other responder to my submission here said, that they have to be. I feel it when I think of all the students I disappointed by deserting them. I feel it when I think of all the hundreds of hours trying to please my panel chairs, all for just more abuse. (I hold on to the joy and success I may have helped those fifty students of the Oral Speech Festival group at St. Patrick's School feel as my contribution in the short time I survived in Hong Kong.) I feel it when I no longer can ride my prize Canadian hybrid bike that I had to leave in Hong Kong (didn't save enough money to ship it). When I think of eight years' of ESL files compiled while working in Asia I had to ditch as they were also too expensive to bring.

I feel it, Freddy, so I speak it. That's all I can do now.


Below is a short piece I wrote about another example of this type of experience I endured every day for seven months.

A NUTTY STORY FROM HONG KONG

Unfortunately it's not fiction.


"She didn't buy the plastic forks!" my English Panel Chair grumbled loudly to the Vice Principal at the next desk.

It was after school on a November afternoon in Kowloon and my English Oral Speech Team had just returned from the speech festival, triumphant in their third place win (in a field of thirteen schools) in the competition. I had promised them a pizza party after the competition was over, and it was finally over, after ten weeks of twice-weekly practices, bumped up to almost every day for the last little while. My English Panel Chair, the group's most vocal critic over the period that another teacher and I had been coaching the group of fifty, had been making life miserable for me, refusing to look at my deployment ;I work seven days a week and get four hours sleep a night; being her only response to my repeated requests for review of my schedule. As far as the students' rendition of 'Daddy Fell into the Pond', she could only harp: "They're terrible. They won't take it seriously.We have to kick out the soloist. He's too bad." When I promised the pizza party, she quickly stepped in to pay for it saying that "It was her duty as panel chair to pay for it." Does this excuse all the abuse the students and I had endured from her for weeks?

I had told the group at the beginning of rehearsals (as it was my belief and cultural practice to support, encourage and praise) that I believed in them; that they could do it--master the difficult sounds and rhythms of English. Now, even after the win, it was still her unkind words I was hearing.

I had tried to explain as I returned from my trip to the store (on her orders) to buy paper plates, cups and plastic forks for the pizza: 'You don't eat pizza with forks anyway.' (I had formerly said this to myself while looking at the exorbitantly-priced disposable utensils on the store shelf.) 'And, the kids are going to be standing up so can't use the forks anyway.' It seemed like a smart idea not to buy them, I thought, but I was forgetting one thing. In Hong Kong schools, teachers don't have ideas or thoughts. The cultural practice is to do what supervisors say. And herein, I thought, lies the problem of my employment (and the answer to my despair) on this particular day when I had thought I would be, and had been, feeling so triumphant and happy.

No nanosecond in this life as a teacher in Hong Kong exists when you aren't under the gun, ready to be criticized, ridiculed, abused and reported on, no matter how hard you try or how well you did your job. It is the horrible reality of people politics in Hong Kong: squash or be squashed. We do look like ants here, don't you agree?

This life as an ant started when I was chosen as a Primary Native English Teacher (PNET) by the Ministry of Education to apply new teaching strategies to the process of second language acquisition among Hong Kong students. I was soundly indoctrinated, at the beginning of my tenure, into the ministry's curriculum guidelines to do the above at a series of orientation sessions where I was called an "agent of change" ("Did he say change or chains?" I later wondered) by the project manager and challenged to "not let change stop at the school's door".

The Hong Kong ministry was betting heavily (billions of taxpayer money) that I could wrestle with the set ways of the Hong Kong system and make the practices of memorization, dictation, model answers and low communication ability beg for mercy amid my repertoire of interactive, student-centred, highly experiential tactics. I was also told that the Hong Kong school system had a strict adherence to rules, which I learned meant school rules (sometimes called those of the SS, Gestapo (in other times)) not curriculum rules.

The problem, I have come to speculate, with the PNET Scheme is that no matter that we are dealing in the realm of foreign culture, one of whose chief components is its language, the Hong Kong teachers really believe that they know best how to teach this language which they rarely use or understand. They have neither kept up with the literature on how people acquire foreign languages or even want to hear about it, but they are not willing to admit this.

Let's look at a hypothetical reverse situation. (Let me form a story to illustrate this situation.)

Once upon a time...

Mandarin was the up and coming language to learn in North America. North American teachers, whose grades were not high enough to teach math or science or even English, began filling the need for this new subject by becoming Mandarin teachers, sometimes with few skills in the language but enough to bluff their way along (though no native speaking Chinese could ever understand what the North Americans were saying). Because of the inability of their graduates to compete in a world where Mandarin was the language of communication, the government (always hoping to appeal to the voters) decided to throw a bucket (the size of Shea Stadium) of money into a scheme to bring in expert Chinese teachers from China.

Seeing an opportunity to live in a new culture and finding the salary attractive (even though the process of getting themselves there was monstrously frustrating and expensive), droves of Mandarin native speaking teachers, who had taught Mandarin to non-Mandarin speakers in China for decades; who had spoken the language since birth; and who understood implicitly why and how all types of speech in the language were used (not to mention that they had, over the years, amassed tons of materials and knowledge about how best to learn Mandarin (given that they had tried many strategies and stuck with the ones which worked best in the context of the language's inherent social, linguistic and peculiar aspects) ) came to North America to teach the North American teachers how to teach their language from their culture to the non-Mandarin speaking students.

When the Mandarin teachers arrived, they were unundated with information about North American culture, while their counterparts were told nothing about the new arrivals' culture. And, even though the officials had told the incoming professionals that they would be in charge of changing the ways their local counterparts taught Mandarin, nothing was said, to the local teachers, about the cultural morays these foreign teachers represented and expressed (the well from which the language in question sprang) and were using to instill a love and interest in it upon students. They were deemed agents of change perhaps but noone understood anything about them or seemed interested in learning anything about their world.

So, instead of having an interest and openness to learn their ways and teaching strategies, the native Mandarin teachers found themselves being told, by the North American teachers, how to teach their native Chinese language by using North American cultural ways in a North American classroom because, as North Americans, they said, only they understood how the North American students learned.

Well, enough of this hypothetical situation. Suffice it to see that this would not be a happy situation. And it is the exact situation of the PNET scheme's bungled deployment in Hong Kong.

In short, the global jury is no longer sequestered, in linguistic circles, whether or not you can teach second language acquisition as a subject, which the North American teachers, in our story above, were so confident (being culturally cloistered in the hallowed halls of their ways) they could.

But we're still missing the point perhaps. It's this, as I have understood it from studying linguistics. Language is social and social means society and society means culture, so you cannot teach a language without being open to its cultural and social context. You cannot ask native professionals to come teach their own language and then tell them that all their methods are wrong because only you understand your students. Humanity is bigger than that. Otherwise, none of us could ever learn a word of another language.

So the problem with the PNET Scheme, and it is a gigantic problem, is that the receiving body--the Hong Kong Schools--are not permeable to the foreign objects--the PNET teachers--who were assured by the experiment's managers that their force (guided by the new curriculum) would penetrate the membrane of fear, racial prejudice, arrogance and self-service that it encountered. Not so. The architects of this scheme had pretended to be progressive but were, alas, only political and that bottom line is always CYOB (cover your own behind). They didn't order the local teachers to abandon their longstanding ineffective strategies and open their then less-burdened arms to the new practices, as they could and should have. They just pretended to be doing something for ESL education in Hong Kong. It was a facade. The commanders led their elite troops to battle but left them to be massacred by angry local teachers, whose heavy load was not lifted to allow the new load to come in. Who else did those local teachers have to destroy but the interlopers, the innocent lambs who had been led, by fake saviours, into the pen, only to be slaughtered by the real world of entrenched-in-inane-practices and overworked local teachers?

When my Panel Chair made yet another complaint about me, even on the day I had brought her school honour and glory, she was very much in the real world: her own economic and political survival (albeit a paranoic one); the only principle operating in Hong Kong Schools and government departments today, despite the glorious whitewashing and elaborate pastiche created by hocus-pocus bogus schemes like the nutty PNET one.


- Joanne Miller

B.A., B.Ed., B.F.A., M.A. Adv. Cert. in TESOL and Applied Linguistics is the author of four books and two teaching manuals. She is presently trying to recover from working seven months in the Hong Kong PNET Scheme

[Bertrand]

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear Dr. "Bertrand",

I understand that English is a system like any other that can be studied, as you say. However, I was speaking about helping primary children acquire English as a Second Language. Few children can learn and successfully use a second language without being introduced to it in an interactive social context. They may acquire some of its rudiments through study of grammar and rote memorisation but it has been my experience, through working with children and reading the literature in applied linguistics that we remember language because we have been stimulated socially (and sensorally (sp?) (catalyzed by the teacher). This is the same as babies learning a first language from their mother or father. Sorry I confused you.

Joanne Light Miller

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear "Freddy",

Are you sure you're qualified to start an English Language School? Using "your" for "you're" ("Yor in your own world.) is a pretty basic grammatical mistake and is an indicator of how little you know about English. Of course, that's the advantage of working with people who don't know English, isn't it? I think I may be understanding why you became an ESL teacher.

Despite what you wrote, I am not starting a legal fund (ETA) for my own defense. If you read my words again, you'll see that it is being started by other PNET teachers with whom I was in contact. They asked me to spread the word around about this new organization, ETA (Expat Teachers' Association) so that's why I mentioned it. There are at least several teachers of whom I know, who have been treated badly, so someone is trying to help them.

I did come to Hong Kong to teach, not change the world. Unfortunately, I was ganged up on by my schools for bringing in activities from the curriculum guidelines short term objectives as I was told to do. By the way, I was also doing everything my schools wanted me to do, not rocking the boat, being compliant, etc. This double load took its toll on me physically and mentally. I did not want to die (which I highly suspected I might), so I left. I guess it's like a wounded animal goes in to a cave to recover from its injuries. Everyone who knew how I was being treated couldn't believe I stayed as long as I did. My husband only lasted two months.

You wrote that "you went crying back to Canada. Boo hoo hoo" I am not in Canada and I am not crying. Where did you get that idea?

Do you have a sister who was your parents' favourite child or something because the way you write about me as "crying", "grow up", "Pay your own way. That is the way the world works." it sounds like you're extremely jealous of someone.

Noone has paid my way since I was sixteen. You are batting a thousand with me on every count. X X X

Thanks for giving me the pep talk "Now, if you can write books you can get some material together to teach a lesson. So teach and do your job." But 'me getting a lesson plan together' was not the problem. I wrote curriculum for my schools, combining the curriculum guidelines for interactive activities with the panel chair and teachers' requests. But everything I submitted to them, they picked away at, tore apart, told me to revise. It was just a power game to them. I got disheartened that educators were only in playing power games. "This cartoon man's head is too dark." "This margin isn't wide enough." "You didn't do the header correctly." "You have poor time management skills."

Congratulations on being a strong person. I was just not as strong.

Good luck with "you're new school", What are you calling it, "The Grammar Ghetto".

By the way, I wouldn't write too much publicly if you want any business. You don't come across well at all. Oh, I forgot. 'Your' in Hong Kong. Guess it doesn't matter. I take back the good luck part.

Sincerely,

Joanne Light Miller

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear Freddy,

I didn't apply to teach at "you're" school.

Sincerely,

Joanne Light Miller

[khmerhit]

Joanne,
Thanks for the interesting post. Have you attempted to draw any broad conclusions about teaching in Hong Kong, or do you think your experience was an unusual one? It sounds as if the usual suspect, "face", had a role to play. Or is this too simple an explanation?
Regards
Khmerhit

[Joanne Light Miller]

Dear Kmerhit,

I can only say that I know of quite a few people who have had a very hard time in their schools but can't speak out, for fear of losing their jobs or, at the least, being treated worse.

It's interesting that HK is protesting Bill 23 at the moment. I don't think HK authorities really need Bill 23. Their strategies of intimidation, abuse and being able to make people feel discomfort are highly-tuned and in full practise already. This was my experience. It's a case of people feeling paranoid and fearful and making sure they do it to someone before someone does it to them. One of the first things my Panel Chair said to me was, "You can't take my job." I couldn't believe where her head was at although, after I learned that she was an English teacher and panel chair only because she had gone to Canada and learned to speak a little English I could understand why she felt threatened. She really had no right to be in that job. She spent the next four months taking courses to get her qualifications up at night school.

I know of these things:

1/ One PNET was told he had to teach every Saturday and he literally couldn't get to his school out in the boonies on these days due to some transportation problem so his principal fired him.

2/ Another had a similar experience to me and so left the government system.

3/ Another is being verbally abused by her prinicpal and is trying to find help but no help exists,

4/ Another is starting an organization ETA (Expat Teacher's Association) to help teachers by setting up a legal fund to take on cases

5/ Another had every aspect of his teaching criticized and raked over the coals by the whole English department. He had taught in four other countries with no problem.

6/ Another's school was trying to fire him. I don't know what happened there.

7/ One was constantly having her lesson plans used by the local teachers during the weeks she was not present. She also had her schedule changed without notice so her preparation was a waste of time. She was called on to work times when she wasn't supposed to. She had her annual vacation slashed to two weeks and to fight tooth and nail to increase it.

I'm not sure how far reaching the problem is. I think it is occurring for some of the reasons I write about in my article on this site--PNET: A NUTTY STORY.

Alot of teachers have never been abroad before and therefore think it's exciting to be in a big metropolis or they have family financial committments (or just put money as the number one priority) and find the salary attractive. Who knows what health problems they are incurring by just taking the abuse.

The smart teachers are the ones who put a stop to it before the department heads can gang up on them through their power politics. I know one teacher wh went straight to her principal and advisor and demanded a meeting to put a stop to a panel chair criticising her teaching. She's had no problems since.

But I (and maybe some others) tried to comply and be polite to save the face of the person(s) concerned.

Are you a PNET teacher?

[Freddie_Unbelievable]

Joanne,
I'm a gonna call it "The Grammer Ghetto". Do you seriously think I pay attention to form and function on message board.

I think if you put as much time into your posts here, you and your husband would of had enough time to almost complete half a contract.

I got the idea to throw in a 'grow up' from PHD Bertrand.