Job Discussion Forums

[gaijinalways]

I was trying to remember if I had seen something like this on Dave's before. Often of course, as teachers we have to consider the local culture of students that we teach. But depending on the classes that we teach, we may wish to introduce topics that are controversial in our own cultures, never mind in our host countries.

I have encountered teachers who fall generally in 3 camps, those that bend over backwards to avoid introducing any topic remotely controversial, those that introduce almost any topic, and those who consider carefully before embarking on areas that might be troublesome. Of course some topics may not be local cultural landmines per se, but rather something dangerous to discuss with that particular student or students.

So I was wondering, how much thought do you give to choosing topics or guiding discussions in class? I would imagine that teachers with mixed nationality classes would maybe have more serious challenges in this area.

[Deicide]

[Dragonlady]

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out of date

[Sherri]

Luckily I have always worked in schools with no rules on topics--I have only taught adults by the way. I think any topic potentially could be discussed. I have had discussions with Japanese students on all manor of topics like WWII, comfort women, same sex marriages, religion, AIDS, whaling, whatever they were interested and wanted to talk about. I think any topic has potential. I worked at a school where the topics were chosen for us, sometimes I liked the topic, sometimes I didn't, the same for the students. But I told them to remember that it is not that I am a history/ religion/ liberal arts teacher, we are merely using the topic to broaden their vocabulary and expression. Obviously the more advanced the students, the more abstract topics should be to stretch their ability to express their ideas and understand the issues involved. I don't take sides and I am happy to play devil's advocate, and I encourage my students to do the same.
Best
Sherri

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[gaijinalways]

I hear you Sherri, though many of my students are lower level at the moment, so I doubt we would get into anything too complicated. I find many of the Japanese students tend to pull the 'no opinion' stance, so it may be difficult to get them to debate or discuss anything even if they have some background knowledge; they tend to want to avoid the issue all together.

And yes, expansion is good, I especially like it when I learn stuff (I often research pretty heavily pre-selected topics so that I can steer students to facts (if it's a pc lab class) or give them some plausible stances for various issues.

As to general stuff that comes up, it's usually not too heavy, though one place I work at states in the work rules to avoid the controversial WWII stuff. I thought the best discussion we had was about the suicide manual that came out in Japan, and the Internet suicide groups.

[denise]

In some of my jobs, I felt free to introduce (carefully, of course!) controversial topics. In Peru (working in a strict Catholic university) and now in Oman, silence is the best option! It's a shame, because classes can get very dull if you limit yourself, as I am now very deliberately doing, to superficial topics.

d

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

Welcome, Denise, to the Gulf-TEFL induced state of dysphoria ...

[dmb]

^Ok you are in the Gulf so don't talk about women, religion or the royal family. Apart from football, cars and mobile phones it was the only thing my students could/ would talk about. The key is to just agree with their opinions.

[Sheikh Inal Ovar]

I'm guessing your students weren't female ...

[Sherri]

[MELEE]

Unfortunately, I've become a specialist in beginners. They learn to intronduce themselves, give personal data, describe their family, dailyroutine, school, house, city, and talk about what they did last weekend and their plans for the coming weekend. Then they move on to another teacher.
But when I occasionaly get to have contact with the higher level students, I think it's the teachers job to get them thinking. I work in a public university BTW. I don't care what their opinion is, but I want them to be able to express it and be able to listen to contridictory opinions and wiegh the pros and cons. That's what education is all about. I know a lot of you don't work in education and will probably disagree.
When I was in Japan, I found that if you introduced a topics like say animal rights, the students didn't have opinions because they had never thought about the topic before. That's a great opportunity to bring in a variety of different readings and get them to find different opinions and arguments to support those opinions and then forumulate their own thoughts on the subject. You teach them English, and they learn something else at the same time.

I'm with Sherri, there are so many reasons not to work in the Middle East that I don't even have to think about taboo topics being among them.

[Sherri]

[jonniboy]

One way round the no opinion thing I've found is to split the students into groups and make one group argue the pros and the other the cons of a topic. It's not an infallible solution as many will fall back on the "I think the same as Gunta" refrain.

Disagreeing with students is never a good idea I've found and I often have to bite my tongue when they come out with outlandish anti-immigrant nonsense for example (as I'm white they don't seem to feel problems offloading about it )

~~~Added after: sorry just saw that Sherri has made exactly the same point~~~

[wildchild]