Let's hear it for immaturity!

Well, that's not exactly what I mean. But ever since I got to Taiwan, something has been in the back of my mind about cultural differences when it comes to going to school.

Two things - one general and one more specific - have been on my mind. The more general one is the fact that several teachers I had in high school used to bemoan the fact that American kids weren't more like Asian ones when it came to work ethic. We were always told tales of kids spending twice as long at school every day and studying twice as hard at night and loving it all. Furthermore, we would always hear, they were going to eat us for breakfast in the rat race once we graduated.

The more specific one was a rather ugly and borderline racist cartoon my 12th-grade calculus teacher had pinned up in her classroom, which drove the same point home. The cartoon depicted an American teenager and a Japanese one, and the dialogue went something like this:

"Bummer! I hate the first day of school!"
"Not me! In Japan we go to school twelve hours a day, all year long. I love it!"
"Yeah? What does that make you? A nerd? A know-it-all? A schoolboy?"
"Your boss."

(I say "borderline racist," by the way, because the Japanese kid's facial features were very overdone in the drawing. I concede that that part of the story was probably unintentional on the cartoonist's part, but still...)

So, is there any accuracy to all the stories we heard for all those years?

If my experience is any guide, not really. Yes, kids here do spend far more time in school than they do back home, but they're still kids, and the "I love it!" part of the story appears to be totally mythical. Do they really learn that much more? It's hard for me to judge since I only teach one subject, but it doesn't appear that way to me. Certainly, most of them aren't much better at their second language than I was with mine when I was their age. (I suppose French is easier for a native English-speaker to learn than English is for a Chinese-native, but they also spend a lot more time at it than I did.) The long hours really show, too, in the form of school clothes that tend to be awfully dirty and in their tired faces. Also, outside of English class, most of them attend Chinese schools where every class is apparently about the size of a Big Ten intro-to-communications class. They wear numbers on their clothes to identify them - I really do hope they're too young to recognize some of the uglier connotations of all that! But I think they probably are, and it is more a part of the culture here anyway, for better or worse.

And they certainly aren't little machines the way the Japanese kids were so often portrayed to us back in the day. No, they're kids, and they like junk food and comic books and bad music and worse jokes just like so many of us did. I suppose my job would be a lot easier if the stereotypes were true. But nonetheless, I've found it immensely comforting that they're not. It's been great to discover that kids really are kids everywhere and that if one system has some advantages over another, the one still isn't any closer to perfection than the other.

I do, however, kind of wish I were still in touch with my old teachers so I could explain all this to them. Somehow I doubt they'd buy it, though. Given what public school teachers in America have to go through these days, I suspect a lot of them just have to believe that there's a place somewhere where kids act like adults and everyone thirsts constantly for knowledge.
It ain't here, babe.

New Link

I actually added it a few days ago now, but allow me to extend an official introduction to Comm-Post, run by a Canadian friend with whom I engaged in all manner of craziness back in DC a few years ago. He's been on a variety of adventures around Europe and the Middle East recently, which stand up well to lunchtime reading. While you're there, be sure to ask him all about how a Slurpee can get you out of trouble with a highway cop!

(Okay, Pat, now it's your turn to add a plug. ;)

Still alive and well in Longtan

Whew, two weeks already! Blogging might turn out to be more time-consuming than I had thought. Anyway, things are still going along at a fast pace on the "new" job, on which I am already nearing the two-month mark. And still it just feels like I'm getting my feet wet in the world of teaching. Still, every time I set foot in the classroom, it feels like I'm a bit more in control.

On the free-time front, I finally finished slogging through "Tender is the Night" last week (what a disappointment!) and decided to take a break from catching up on my Dead White Males literary fest to delve into Dead White Female territory for a bit. I'd been meaning to read "The Bell Jar" since high school and never got around to it, until now. It's something else! All I can think to say is, what a frank and intimate look at the world of depression. Definitely worth your while. But do yourself a favor and read something fun afterwards!

Baby Workout!

So, after a month and a half, I find it my turn to lead Exercise Time for the first time on Monday. I know not what to make of this honor.

Exercise time is the first event of every day at our school. One of the English teachers leads an exercise routine set to three songs of our choosing and two songs from the kindy CD, the latter two usually being something either educational in English or encouraging good manners or both. It's often hard to get the kids to play along, but it's a lot of fun to watch when they do. For the past few weeks, we've been treated to 50 or so five-year-olds dancing to "Video Killed the Radio Star" - and singing the title line at the top of their little lungs, even though I'm sure they don't know what it means. Too cute. I'll miss that image, especially now that it'll be my turn to lead the event for a few weeks.
I do have my music tape ready to go. I settled on three energetic selections from a mix-CD I burned just before I left DC: "You Can't Kill Hope With a Gun" by The Kennedys (my own subtle reaction to the popularity of toy pistols among my kids lately, not that I expect them to take a lesson from it all), "Montego Bay" by Bobby Bloom (nice perky melody, good for warming up), and "When My Dreamboat Comes Home" by Fats Domino, just for fun - can't get the kids started on oldies too early. Now, of course, I have to figure out what exercises to perform along to those songs for the 10-15 minutes I'll be up there. I will probably wind up following the advice I've gotten so far from the more senior teachers: "when in doubt, do jumping jacks. The kids love 'em." Good to know! I can't wait to discuss in depth how this is going to turn out.

Only in Taiwan

It occurred to me this morning that I had intended this blog to be mostly about experiences I've had here which I wouldn't have elsewhere, or at least not at home. I had one while waiting for a subway train in Taipei yesterday afternoon. It was an announcement over the loudspeaker, in Chinese and English: "In order to keep our stations and trains clean, please do not smoke, eat, drink, or chew gum or betel nuts."

Betel nuts are indeed everywhere here, and are always recognizable for the stands where they are sold, which are always staffed by scantily clad women sitting up all night under fluorescent lights. (Guess what the new teachers in town always think the women are selling, before someone explains it to them?) Juice stains are always visible on the ground anywhere near a stand, and apparently the juice stains your teeth so badly that it wouldn't have made much difference if Bloody Mary had used Pepsident after all.

But you won't see the stains in the subway stations!

Nothing like Hollywood

I almost witnessed a man getting hit by a car last week.

I guess you could say I did witness it, if you count hearing the screeching tires and that terrible but undescribable sound of the impact, which you recognize instantly even if you've never heard it before and you didn't actually see the accident. I was facing in the other direction, while walking to school, when it happened. When I turned around, there it all was: a guy laid out flat in the street, his bicycle lying several feet away, and the driver of the car rushing over to help. I started back to offer a hand as well, until I remembered that I know little about first aid and less about speaking enough Chinese to be of any real use. So, to avoid getting in the way, I headed on to work. Every few feet, I turned around to see if the guy had managed to sit up or even move at all, but as far as I could see, he hadn't. At least other people were arriving on the scene to help, and there's a hospital just a block or two away from where it happened.

I haven't heard anything more about what became of the guy or even exactly what happened. Since Longtan doesn't have an English language newspaper and the accident wasn't big enough news to make it into the China Post or anything, I probably never will hear. I certainly hope he'll recover.

It happened on an awfully hazardous road, and one that I walk down every day! The main drag through Longtan is busy and crowded, and Taiwanese drivers in general really do treat most traffic regulations as if they were only suggestions. I know we all say that about every place we've been, but I've never seen another place more deserving of that description than Taiwan. The point being, of course, that I can't begin to imagine who might have been at fault that morning. Perhaps the bicyclist pulled out into the road without looking, or perhaps the driver of the car started to turn without using his blinker, or maybe they were both doing something dumb. I know it doesn't matter, but anyone who has ever taken Psychology 101 is likely to try to make sense of these things, even if there's no sense to be made of them. In a sad coincidence, a colleague of mine had mentioned just a week or so before that when she first arrived in Longtan, "another teacher told us the only safe way to travel down that street is to drive a cement truck." It really isn't much of an exaggeration. At least seeing the craziness every day keeps me in line whenever I get tempted to buy a scooter like so many other teachers have.

Needless to say, what I saw made the rest of the day, well, interesting. Every time I hugged one of my kindy kids, every time I reprimanded the class troublemaker, every time I laughed at another teacher's joke at lunchtime, every time I wished I didn't have to correct so much homework...it all seemed so relatively insignificant.
I sure hope that guy will be okay!

Crime of Passion?

I finally went to see "The Passion of the Christ" Saturday night. It was never high on my list of must-sees, but the alternative was "Along Came Polly." Yuck. And a bad night out of Longtan is still a night out of Longtan.

I'd heard from a number of sources I respect that the movie was anti-Semitic, but I'd always figured I really ought to see it myself before passing judgment of my own. I couldn't help but think of the morons who think "Huckleberry Finn" is racist just because it portrays racism honestly, or a number of people I knew in college who refused to watch "Forrest Gump" on the grounds that it was "a celebration of anti-intellectualism" - most of whom had never seen the movie. I never missed a chance to ask "How can you tell if you haven't seen it?", but to the best of my recollections I never got a reply. In any case, no matter the risk of spending my money on something that would only offend me, I was not about to fall into that uninformed opinion club.

And the verdict? Well, there's no question that it serves as fodder for those who already are anti-Semites, but I'm a firm believer in not judging a work of art by what some extremely unreasonable people might think of it. Then there's Mel Gibson's own family background and his history of support for right-wing causes, which shouldn't be ignored. But taken at face value, I see nothing especially offensive. It tells the story of the crucifixion as it is commonly accepted, nothing less or more. The Roman soldiers are presented as at least as much at fault as the Jews, if not much more so. And as a Christian friend of mine said in the cab we took home from the theater, "The 'they murdered my lord' thing isn't even close to any real Christian doctrine anyway." So from where I sit, it's offensive only to people who want it to be.

Which is not to say the movie is for everyone. For one thing, it's extremely graphic. I don't think I've ever seen a more violent movie (unless you count "Kill Bill," but that violence was cartoonistic and clearly not intended to be taken seriously), and the subject matter is obviously going to be of an extremely emotional nature to a lot of people. Still, I think a lot of the controversy is overblown. And at least I can say I've now earned the right to say so.

By the way, could someone explain the pamphlets they give you at the box office when you buy the tickets? They didn't have any of them in English at the theater we went to. I seem to recall reading something about them being part of an effort to smooth the waters around the movie. Thanks.