Job Discussion Forums

[limits601]

Chinese people seem to be the problem at my school. Seems to be so many of them. Hmm, what can be done :+P

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Such evacuatory insights are more suitable for toilet stall walls.

[limits601]

If i actually could enter one of the so called 'washrooms' here in China without, i would, but since i cant because the stench is just so overpowering, this will do.

And it smells so much nicer here :+)

[rickinbeijing]

Kev,

Good thread topic. I tend to agree with you: a severe lack of communication is what most ails the schools, regardless of size, type, or level. Once, while teaching at the Foreign Affairs College, which is run by the Foreign Ministry rather than the State Education Commission, I offered to put together a brief manual of sorts on professional courtesies in the West complete with simple and specific advice on how to help new experts and teachers acclimate themselves to the campus and surrounding environs. My offer was met by the waiban with utter disinterest.

I often ask myself why this reaction, given that it was and remains the ONLY school at both the tertiary and secondary level which makes some semblance of an effort to communicate with its foreign faculty. After two years I'm still not sure what the real explanation is.

Certainly a lot of it involves concern over the potential for loss of face in direct interactions, whether one-on-one meetings or larger more informal gatherings, etc. And, we mustn't forget that in the English departments, many (if not most) of our Chinese colleagues worry that their English isn't good enough to talk to us freely. But that doesn't explain it all.

I must say, regrettably, that mainland Chinese educational administrators are the most unorganized I have encountered anywhere in the world. Note that I said UNorganized as opposed to DISorganized. See, I don't think many of them initiate any concerted effort to address this problem. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that most either don't think it's worth their time and attention or haven't even bothered to consider that a lack of communication is a major source of friction between their offices and us. On a broader level, much of the perceived ineptness in planning, whether curricular or social, can be blamed on the organizational structure of Chinese schools, especially universities. There are duplicate, rigid hierarchies of decision-making at both the departmental and college levels that make it tedious for any given Chinese to breach.

Lin Yutang, the great modern Chinese social commentator, once noted that the Chinese have a big streak of indifference in them. He implied it was so deeply rooted in the culture as to have become part of both the individual and national psyche. Part of it he believed was motivated by the need for self-preservation in a society lacking in legal protection and a civic outlook. Part of it he also attributed to the strong sense of obligation to the nuclear family at the expense of anyone and anything else.

I now take his contentions one step further (since he wrote before the 1949 Revolution). I contend, that in addition to all things mentioned above, the Communist/Socialist ideological machine has both distorted and extenuated these cultural habits of thought and action.

Now I'll take it one step further but in a different direction: I think some of blame for the indifference and/or ineptness can be assigned to lack of opportunity to exercise individual initiative without first doing a whole lot of consulting with others. One of my best friends, who I've known for six years, wanted very much to change the status quo at the key university where we taught in Beijing. She was met first with suspicion and then resistance and some of her Chinese colleagues insinuated that she was returning a favor for the supposed personal advantages she garnered from daily contact with us. All five of us (three foreign experts and two FT's) Americans independently noted the insidious disdain for anyone who was perceived as rocking the boat, even if there aim was to benefit the entire department. After two years, she became disillusioned and left the university and is now on the faculty of a top university in Hong Kong.

And so it goes.

[rickinbeijing]

Kev,

Just remember: there's a lot of weed these days in Yangshuo which makes certain OPers here think of washrooms and such and forces them to replace real thinking for a compilation of links to other people's thinking. The reason this certain OPer constantly provides us with dictionary definitions is not to remind us of what we already know but to help him focus as he writes.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

rickinbeijing...we share a respect for Lin YuTang. Actually, that specific quote was one of 3 I used in a brief article w/photos in an article in Taipei's China News, in 1990 on the 1st anniversary of TianAnMen.

The other related to how China would change Communism more than the reverse.

The 3rd Lin YuTang quote was about China not yet having reached its cultural adulthood, which awaits it "if it has the courage for further spiritual adventure."

How do we help others develop courage? My strategy is to minimize the criticism/sarcasm and to maximize the encouragement.

[tofuman]

CMM,

Rick may be on to something. I never have understood the reason that you, as one who presumes to teach others, is apparently unable to assimilate, condense and then teach others what you have learned.

Perhaps Rick is correct when he says that you are unable to think.
This is the biggest problem that I see in my classroom. Students constantly stand up and read from a text in response to a question. They hear and recognize but do not understand what they are saying. If I ask them to explain what they just read in their own words, nothing. If I ask them the meaning of the words in the sentence they just read, nothing.

I'm familiar with this phenomenom because I can do the same thing with Hebrew or Greek. I could read the entire torah to you (not that you would want to hear it) but I would have little idea of what I was saying.

I sense that somewhere in your knowledge base there is information that would be useful to me, but the way you present it is as boring as hell; consequently, I read a bit and lose interest.

No offense intended.

[rickinbeijing]

CMM,

Hope you proofread the article before you sent it to the publisher. It's Tiananmen.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Tofuman,

BELOW is a short article relating to some of your points. NOTE that the article is dated 2000, but most of us haven't seen much reform in the schools yet.

RE:Your point about MEMORIZING:

As a way around those mind-numbing habits, Constructivism offers invaluable insights.(See BELOW.)

For example, today my class viewed a segment from My Fair Lady--the scene in which the Professor (Rex Harrison) is trying to teach Co' 'ckney Audrey Hepburn to say words beginning with "h." The scene has many action words. The student (beginners) and I CONSTRUCTED a basic sequential story as we watched the scene on pause and on A>><<B loop. As I told it, I often used slightly different words/constructions, to give them some I+1 action (Krashen).

I then wrote key word/phrases/sentences on the board. They'd look at the TV screen; I'd ask them to say what they see; they'd often look at the board, of course. BUT...as the loop continued, they looked less and less.
Then I had them copy the words/phrases/sentences in preparation for the Mid-Term after the vacation. Then I erased the words, and we worked on telling the story again. We've already done "Say+Do" "Do+Say" w/pairs of students. So we'll link that up with this story in succeeding classes.

Of course, one problem is the generic students have been conditioned to think that English class means repeating sentence patterns from a book. That's one of many reasons why I'm highly motivated to develop my own learning community in Yangshuo. Learners and Native Speakers will be carefully selected, and will also self-select themselves...in the spirit of the Olympics or Movie-making. Highly-motivated folks together can accomplish new things in China's English/Chinese pedagogy.
===============================================
China Introduces New Curricula into High Schools China has introduced new curricula in its senior middle schools this autumn in an effort to step up educational reform. The new courses have been adopted in high schools in ten provinces and municipalities on a trial basis, according to the Ministry of Education. The new curricula features updated science and technology information as well as more selective courses, and it encourages class discussion and debate. The reform aims to improve students' creativity, independence and imagination, according to ministry officials, adding that it will help Chinese students learn things that are not explained by the textbooks. For 20 years the challenging college entrance examinations have driven students to memorize their textbooks word for word, depriving them of flexibility in the way they think, according to educational experts. Students have complained that they have had no time to read what they like or to express what they really think. Many of them have said they know little about what really happens outside of shool. The Ministry of Education began to develop new curricula for high school students in 1996. (People�s Daily 10/19/2000)
=============================================




... Many regard constructivism as a metatheory, in that it encompasses a number of cognitive ... Bruner (1983)focuses on language learning in young children. ...
www.educationau.edu.au/archives/cp/04c.htm - 8k - Cached - Similar pages

Neural Constructivism and Language Acquisition. Ash Asudeh
... in the domain of language acquisition, to examine the new constructivism and...refute previous arguments against constructivism as a learning theory. ...
fccl.ksu.ru/papers/gp002.htm - 55k - Cached - Similar pages

TIP: Theories
... Bruner (1983) focuses on language learning in young children. Note that Constructivism is a very broad conceptual framework in philosophy and science ...
tip.psychology.org/bruner.html - 12k - Cached - Similar pages

A journey into Constructivism - Martin Dougiamas
An essay detailing my initial learning about constructivism, ... I want to write about the application of constructivism to language teaching. ...
dougiamas.com/writing/constructivism.html - 101k - 26 Apr 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

[rickinbeijing]

tofuman,

I shudder as I script this. It just dawned on me that the OP we've been criticizing is not, in fact, human. It is an early version of Arthur Clarke's HAL 9000 Computer. We are being fed programmed information from a next-generation computer. Oh, no!

[ChinaMovieMagic]

IT IS because every one under Heaven
recognizes beauty as beauty,
that the idea of ugliness exists.
And equally if every one
recognized virtue as virtue,
this would merely create
fresh conceptions of wickedness...
Therefore the Sage relies on actionless activity,
Carries on wordless teaching,
But the myriad creatures
are worked upon by him;
he does not disown them.
He rears them,
but does not lay claim to them...

Tao Te Ching

[kev7161]

Wait, doesn't "OP" stand for "Original Poster"? That would be me. CMM is just the "UP" (Usurping Poster) - - nothing personal, CMM, but I have to agree with the majority. I tend to just skip over your posts these days - - even if they are brief and actually something directly from you (and not resources). I've been burned too many times in thinking that I was going to read something original from you and then realize that wasn't to be.

Anyway, back to the OT (original topic): If I could list my TOP three problems with my school it would be:

1. Lack of communication
2. (Seeming) Lack of organization
3. Lack of caring

[mlomker]

[rickinbeijing]

Kev,

Not referring to you. Didn't know OP meant "original poster." I'm not of that generation that keeps up with Internet jargon/acronyms.

I agree with you: lack of communication and lack of organization are the direct result of indifference and all too prevalent in Chinese schools.

What matters most is the APPEARANCE that something is being done.

The East Asian proclivity for form over function shows few signs of abating.

]As for the Wikipedia poster on this forum, it may indeed be a prototype of the HAL 9000 computer. Only time (and space) will tell.

[Talkdoc]