Job Discussion Forums

[vikdk]

First of all Russell � if you looked through my posts, especially in the thread help kindergarten � you will discover more of my views on how things can be changed in my particular field � Chinese pre- school care � in a manner that I believe is positive.

Change itself is in concept a non-stoppable and inevitable process �and just employing foreigners (regardless of their teaching abilities) within the Chinese education system instituted massive change. Raising academic standards and promoting cultural contact of course was an essential point in instigating this process � but, Russell, as I�m sure you can well appreciate from your own experiences on the front line, the smell of money seems to have rather led the course of change a astray. This deviation from what I would consider as �education with good intentions� towards �education aimed at profit� could be viewed from a standpoint that Roger put forward � people somehow deserve what they get. Roger talks about the strange notion of the Chinese deserving modern day china � (who deserves their country � who is the standard citizen who deserves the standard way of life a country can offer ) � however this type of logic suddenly becomes interesting when considering the role of the FT in China. Change in China has made it so incredibly easy for so many travelers to come to teach in China � people often with hardly any or no qualifications related to teaching � the vast majority without that, which would be considered back home as a license to work, i.e. specialist qualifications required to teach in specific fields of employment� that it could be argued � by propping up a system that seems to value profit over educational quality - the vast majority FT�s deserve the often sub-standard levels of unemployment they find in China.

I actually don�t want to believe we deserve it (although on many occasions I�m so tempted) � for the one very important reason � that by sitting back in such a situation and sighing �well that�s China� � we will create a real group of losers, our pupils � a group who always seem to come off worse in the �spiel� between incompetent management and under-trained, poorly motivate, inexperienced FT�s.

But happily I believe things are a changing � here are few points where I believe change can take place in a positive manner �

� Competition between education companies in the cities is getting stiffer � and amazingly the concept of quality is becoming more and more important. Unfortunately our Chinese masters often have the unfortunate tendency to guarantee results � if only our students were machines �and as an insurance policy with regard to their over optimistic boasts they are searching out (and paying higher prices for) teaching that comes from a solid professional background. If this ensures quality and results is a loaded question � indeed what is quality � but at least some form of quality control, that we as foreigners can recognize is entering the larger city markets.
� Increasing numbers of FT�s who are choosing China as a home � not as stop over travel destination - a group not willing to accept the low level of pay (especially in the larger cities), and willing to invest that effort that could lead to a positive change in educational quality. As professionals we work for remuneration � and even for all my boasts of doing volunteer work �the foundation of my day-to-day life revolves around being paid for my qualifications, experience and the quality of my daily work. Knowing what these efforts can generate I make sure I get a very fare share in the decision-making and the profits of my work place � other FT�s are following the same path � once again change in progress.
� Chinese educational profession having a stronger voice � at the moment there is a doctors/teachers/artists party � a group, which supposedly is completely independent of CPC � that has a voice in urban politics. Of course a long cry away from the power teaching groups have back home � but a small start, which also heralds change towards Chinese teachers actually getting a greater say in their own professions.
� The effects of globalization � I first can here in 1987 � if you don�t think China and the Chinese are becoming more and more like us, well������������. Ancient traditions or not, today's China is very much online � and I don�t anyone is going to make it go off!

Of course there must be a million and one other changes here that have an effect on our education (just think I'm also only harping on about the education of the elite - think on rural education - Roger is very right about the have and have not society), but as far as most FT�s are concerned it is today that counts � so with today in mind � and my original gripe about teaching the under 10�s I�ll finish this post with one last question - Do young Chinese Children deserve the level education they are receiving from the average FT? When we find a good answer to that question, those of us who are interested in teaching Chinese young will at least be better able to lobby for positive change in forums like Daves.

[vikdk]

Before this thread finally dies Id just like to add my last �tupence worth� by quoting a little more Roger �

[Roger]

He can be more congenial if he wants to be, our friend vikdk; thanks for the flattering use of a comment to support some of your statements, but let me dwell on the reason why I stay the course of my arguments.

I don't think the recent political upheavals would in any which way explain even a shadow of the reason why Chinese parents invest a disproportionate amount of their income in their kids' education.
I think a rational thinker would in fact shy away from forcing his own child to undergo the same mind tortures he underwent in his own childhood.
If you have even a remote idea of what was going on in China a generation ago you would think that anything that smacks of state-controlled mind-shaping has to be avoided; it's ironic that at about the same time that Mao's Red Guard thugs descended on teachers and intellectuals, the rock band PINK FLOYD belted the song "We Don't need no Education". That was a powerful song that I wish I could make my Chinese students understand!

The parents of our young learners often have experienced the most disgraceful humiliations, utter violence, brutal brain-washing. How on Earth can anyone believe they still want their kids to go to the same schools?

Yes, they do, but for DIFFERENT reasons.

I do not buy into the argument Chinese people revere educated folks. They may say so but what they mean by "educated" is another matter entirely than when I or you utter this phrase.

To us Westerners, an educated person is an empowered person. He or she makes rational decisions. He doesn't need AUTHORITY to wave a carrot in front of him to make him bite the truth the Authority wants him to swallow.
He often is openly at odds with the elite of his country or the ruling cliques that we in the West have too.

A CHinese person, however, doesn't act in such an autonomous mode.
He or she follows the currently policially correct trend. He will try not to stand taller than his fellow citizens because standing taller carries a high risk here.

This is why people put their kids through school as a politically correct exercise in patriotism. (That's an oxymoron: there only are C "patriotic" acts anyway).
While State institutions of learning do now collect high tuition fees and a host of other charges the ordinary citizen still feels his child can only be successful in this society if he or she has acquired the correct attitutde and educational baggage that schools hand down.

This is not just a communist perversion of education and its humanist purposes; this is a Confucian tradition that you can observe anywhere from Vietnam to Korea and Japan. In these socieites, blind obedience is the only way to grow up relatively trouble-free. These socieites have inherent fascist tendencies - witness Japan's near-uniform mindset until the end of WW II, witness Chinese reactions to world political issues i.e. Japanese history and Japanese imperialism but also Chinese' curious amnesia vis-a-vis the horrors they visited upon themselves over the last 50 years.

This is why I keep saying: Every people have the government they deserve. And rephrasing this: every people have the education they deserve!

Too few Chinese are individualistic enough to see through the facades of China's education horror story. To them, education is a formative stage they must pass through in their younger years in order to become useful members of a very homogenic, nay: conformist society!

Education has little to do with acquiring knowledge and developing skills; instead it is a form of reverence to the rulers of their country: imagine if all these kids never went to school and instead became early bread-winners! Imagine if these early bread-winners had no patriotic mind!

CHinese "with education" - who have passed all exams up to the university seldom do jobs for which they have trained or learnt theories; study places are allocated almost by a sort of lottery - you want (ideally) to study medicine? There aren't enough study places this term for medical students; you will be asssigned to, perhaps, a normal university and must study to become a "teacher". What incentive do these people have to study???

A good question. The only answer is: those with tertiary education have better access to passports, study places overseas, well-paid positions in China etc. The quality of these positions doesn't matter - the material circumstances do.

And anybody believing graduates from such universities really care about their proficiencies is delusional! Education is viewed by Chinese not as an end in itself but as a means to further their own material goals: a child, preferably boy who doesn't study is a burden on the parents, hence he must study - so that he can support his parents once they reach retirement age.

In such a society idealism has little room. Education must help secure a more materially improved life.

[Russell123]

This thread has strayed a long way from it's original purpose, but thanks to you both for sticking with it and helping me better understand the problems facing this country. It's tempting oversimplify the current situation in China, and particularly its system of education, based on our own preconceptions and perhaps even the human need to feel we are in some way helping this place.

I would still be interested in hearing your speculaltions on the future of China, and what you hope for in the next fifty years or so, but perhaps that is for another thread. When one speaks of a country of 1.3 billion people, it seems almost ridiculous to speak of it as though it is a single entity, despite the remarkable amount of homogeneity in the society. There are bound to be many Chinas, and those of us working in ESL teaching are bound to be stuck with our necessarily limited perspectives and contacts, particularly those of us new to the country.

Sometimes, I see those kids who can't continue their schooling past the age of 15 or 16 as the lucky ones, and the real hope for this country. But that might just be the romantic delusion of another Pink Floyd fan...

Cheers!

[Roger]

[KES]

[quote="Roger
I engaged a long time ago in a discussion in another forum on how to prepare a textbook for the specific needs of Chinese English learners; it was an interesting back-and-forth and finally it became transparent that many TEFLers had no better ideas on what's needed in China than the Chinese publishers and educationalists themselves.
I am still interested in reneweing that debate, but am right now mulloing over how to initiate such a debate.
A balance has to be struck between the needs of the learner and the abilities of FTs of imparting skills.[/quote]

Roger,
I hope you will renew the discussion. There are too many poor textbooks out there.

Schools and teachers are all different. It is not all bleak.

I see Chinese children learning and enjoying English lessons. If you don't see that, maybe you are in the wrong school; or the wrong teacher.

Roger, it sounds like you and your students have a good time. I feel sorry for those who don't.

[Roger]

Thanks, KES, for your encouraging words.
I am mulling over when and how to initiate such a thread; obviously I want to pick the most cooperative brains!