Related posts:

1. CP12: Funemployment
2. CP5: Usher and Ethan
3. CP10: Cultural Criticisms

Related posts:

1. CP4: Graduation Day
2. CP5: Usher and Ethan
3. CP3: Treatment of Children

We left off my work situation with me growing increasingly unhappy at my school. The headmaster, the Chinese teachers, the treatment of the children, and the general environment was all becoming too much.

When I started my job, I promised myself that I would put up with everything negative for as long as I could. I would help the kids in whatever way possible, and just deal with the stress for as long as possible, but not longer.

I didn’t want it to change me or affect me too much; I didn’t want to become one of those miserable, pessimistic teachers that — whether or not he intends to — ends up passing on that despair to the students.

I was at that point with my old school.

My original class that I started with in February had left for primary school. I had new students that didn’t know me at all, which essentially reset all of my progress with new teaching methods back to zero. And I had taken over a former teacher’s class, with new students and a small-minded, fearful assistant. (See Episode 7).

I told my agency (we’re technically employees of hiring agencies, not the actual schools) and asked what they could do about it. The short version is this: they basically told me to go back to work, shut up, and finish my contract.

I’m going to skip a lot of the struggle I had to go through with my agency, but I’ll likely cover it later in an audio post. It’s a perfect example of Chinese business culture, and their culture in general, but in the interest of time I’m going to skip the details.

Since my agency wouldn’t move me to another school, I tried to quit.

What do I mean by “tried?” I told them I had offers at other schools and was considering them. They told me they would — in more words — fuck me six ways from Sunday.

They would keep my most recent paycheck ($1000), my airfare bonus ($1000), my TEFL certification, and cancel my working visa.

Some of that I agreed to lose if I broke the contract (paycheck, airfare bonus) but still, withholding those things is at the company’s discretion. And it was very clear that they were choosing to enforce those parts of the contract out of spite. Many people leave the agency on “bad terms” (disappearing after payday, for example) and suffer little to no consequences. I had been dealing with them up front and honestly my entire time in China, even when it came to conflicts we had.

And it was more than just losing some money, they were going to cancel my working visa, which according to most people can cause you some serious problems.

McCoy and I came to China, and worked for several months, with a business visa. There are many, many foreigners that do this. A lot have been here for years, just continually renewing their business visas. But after a few months our agency offered us working visas.

We went with them, assuming that being as legal as possible would only benefit us. Wrong.

When you quit a company while working on a business visa, there are essentially no consequences. You go your separate ways. But with a working visa it’s different. Your legal status in the country is tied to a company, and if that company is willing to put in the legwork, they can dissolve that status.

Couldn’t I just apply for a new visa and be fine? Maybe.

Here’s why it’s hard to know:

1. The visa laws are a huge bureaucratic mess. And nobody — even the middle-man companies whose service is navigating the bureaucracy — seems to have a clear answer. One visa company told me that once I lost my working visa I would be unable to reapply for anything other than a tourist visa. Meaning: I’d have to leave the country. Another visa company told me that if I flew to Hong Kong and reapplied for a business visa, I would be fine, but I’d still have complications with getting another working visa. And I’d heard stories about people who broke a contract, lost their working visa, reapplied for a business visa, and still got deported.
2. Foreigners have almost no legal recourse in China. Maybe a well-connected company, but just a random guy like me would have nobody to go to. And even if I did, the outcome would be determined by who was willing to spend the most money on lawyers or arbitration. And in the end, it would still be a foreigner versus a Chinese company. The odds are not in my favor.
3. Even if the law somehow was on my side, everything is subject to the rule of bureaucratic guanxi. That should probably be capitalized: The Rule of Bureaucratic Guanxi. Whoever has the most political pull or influential connections will find a way to win, no matter what the specifics of the law might be.

Because of this, I was stuck. I spent weeks trying to figure out a way to get out of my contract, but nothing that was certain, or even close to certain.

In the meantime, I had to force the agency to move me to a new school. I had no luck convincing them, so I had to resort to more indirect methods.

I called in sick until my headmaster was furious and demanded I be fired. I don’t like doing things like that, becoming a “bad” employee, but I didn’t have much choice.

My agency caved and moved me through two new more schools — each with the same bad things as my original school, if not worse. Similar tactics kept me from staying at either permanently.

Part of me kept saying “just stick it out for three more months and be done with it.” But the rest of me couldn’t take it. I was burned out, exhausted, miserable from having to witness kids being treated like crap, and angry at how my agency was treating me.

Finally, though, I was moved to a school that wasn’t a terrible, Chinese, crush-the-souls-of-children institution. And that’s where I started my first day today.

The school is a training center, not a kindergarten. And my job is pretty simple: Parents stop by the school with their kids and I perform a thirty-minute demonstration of the classes available. If the kids enjoy it, the parents sign up and bring them back for regular classes once a week.

It’s easy and simple and the kids are treated great. The people who run the training center aren’t like typical Chinese headmasters and all of the assistants are happy and gentle.

It’s not the best school I could be at — I missed out on some opportunities at Montessori schools because I couldn’t get out of my contract — but it’s a great place to wait out the remaining months of my contract.

So that’s where I’m at. Once my contract is over in February I’ll have to make some more decisions, but for now at least, I’m pretty comfortable.

Related posts:

1. You’ve Been To China You Know How Things Work
2. Letter From A High School Teacher
3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

The video shows a Chinese kindergarten teacher repeatedly pushing, pulling, and hitting a little girl. The girl’s mother got the recording from the school and posted it online.

The story, according to ChinaSmack’s translation of the mother’s post, is this:

I am already almost at my wit’s end, but I just want to get some justice for my child!!

My daughter is only two and a half years old, and attends Xuzhou City children’s art school [nursery/kindergarten]. On the morning of September 1st, she had a quarrel with another child in her class over a small stool. Allegedly, my daughter scratched that child’s hand. That child’s mother just so happens to be a teacher at the nursery, and when she heard what happened, she rushed over to vent anger for her daughter. That child’s mother, Teacher Chen, then not only shoved but also hit my daughter for 10 minutes, and throughout all of this, all of the other teachers uniformly stood by and did nothing, not a single person going forth to intervene.

After my daughter was hit, the kindergarten teacher even called me and said that my daughter hit bit the other child, and wanted me to take the child that was bitten to go get a rabies vaccination!

After rushing to the school, I had a quarrel with that child’s mother, and only after I had requested during the quarrel to watch the video footage did I learn how my daughter was hit. I no longer want to remember that heartbreaking scene, but I forcefully copied the video recording from the kindergarten, am posting it here, hoping to ask everyone to help me, using legal channels to safeguard our personal rights!

I know this is something nobody wants to see, but here is the video:

It’s obviously vile and terrible. And it’s shocking to actually see it being done.

But I have to point out that although this is a worse-than-normal case, it is by no means uncommon. This type of treatment is very common. It’s usually not this intense, but it can be at times. I’ve witnessed it. And so have many other foreign teachers.

And as for the exposure this video is getting, I doubt much will come of it. Maybe, maybe the teacher will be fired. Besides that, this will just be ignored.

There are probably government officials who are just happy this wasn’t another kindergarten stabbing.

Related posts:

1. Letter From A High School Teacher
2. You Look Down But Far From Out
3. G-Day Plus 1

Note: Just a heads up, at one point I drop the F-bomb about ten times. I also sing. Just letting you know in case you find that (the singing) offensive.

Related posts:

1. CP4: Graduation Day
2. CP5: Usher and Ethan
3. CP8: Subtle Abuse

Update: I realized I mentioned “scantily clad Chinese girls” in my podcast and I failed to deliver any visual representations of those aforementioned subjects. So in the interest of good journalism, here are some photos from the festival:



Is it me, or is she a little bit cross-eyed? She looks like a Chinese Cheri Oteri.

Related posts:

1. CP11: Jayden and Artists
2. CP5: Usher and Ethan
3. CP4: Graduation Day

Note: It’s forty-eight minutes long. Forty-eight minutes of baller. Don’t hate.

Related posts:

1. CP4: Graduation Day
2. CP8: Subtle Abuse
3. CP11: Jayden and Artists

Before I explain that further, I just wanted to thank everyone and anyone who listened to the initial podcast and offered me advice or support. It really, really meant a lot to me. Thank you.

Okay, so I did what I thought was most risky, but also had the greatest chance of getting Cathy fired. I called a parent behind the headmaster’s back.

I talked to one of the parents I trusted and told her about what happened. If the headmaster ever found out, I would be immediately fired. She would be extremely embarrassed — it would be a huge loss of face — and she’d feel completely betrayed. But I thought it was my best shot.

Anyway, the parent told me that her daughter, and other children, had complained about Cathy, and other parents knew she wasn’t a good teacher.

Until my phone call, they thought she was just a mean person. I explained that it was much worse than that: she is a violent, terrible person.

We talked for almost twenty minutes, and the parent was very sympathetic and understanding and sounded very concerned. But she didn’t want to call and demand that Cathy be fired. She told me she would pass along the info to the other parents (without my name) and maybe they would decide to do something. But, she said, probably the best thing to do was just wait and see what happened over the next few weeks.

Yeah. Part of me is hopeful that the rest of the parents will decide to take action. But most of me just feels frustrated and defeated. If I can’t even get foreigner parents to take a hard stance on this, what can I do? It’s depressing.

After we talked, the parent sent me an email saying that it might be better that Cathy didn’t get fired. Now she’ll be watched closer and won’t just transfer to another school and do the same things. It just sounded like she was trying to justify her inaction to herself. I didn’t bother replying.

So Cathy is back in the classroom. And the general climate in the school is pretty cold right now.

It’s not all bad. I heard from one assistant that not all of the other teachers are angry about what I did. Some of them know Cathy is terrible but felt like they couldn’t speak out against her. The pressure to protect other teachers is too strong. But they are glad that I did something.

Still, it’s not a victory. It’s a not-fully-crushing defeat. But I guess I’ll have to take it…

Cathy is still here. But so am I.

Related posts:

1. G-Day Plus 1
2. Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
3. Anderson’s First Day

I spoke to the headmaster in the morning about the events on Graduation Day. She seemed genuinely upset. Now, the headmaster has a reputation for being a bit of an actress. She can put on a nice little show to look enthusiastic or shocked or excited or touched or whatever, especially in front of parents and foreigners. So I was a little skeptical at first, but by the end of the conversation I believed she was actually very upset.

Of course, she might just be upset because of the position it puts the school in, but I’m fine with that, as long as she does what I want. And what I want is for her to drop the ban hammer on Cathy. I want her fired and I want every other teacher to know why.

I didn’t make any threats or suggestions during the conversation. Bill, Charlotte, and Casey commented that I should make the it’s-in-the-school’s-best-interest-to-fire-Cathy case, rather than any kind of ultimatums. I think that was sound advice. But for the first conversation I wanted to play it very slow and gauge the headmaster’s response.

When the conversation ended, the headmaster thanked me for telling her and said she was going to speak with the other teachers who were in the room. In fact, she asked a lot about the other teachers and what they did in reaction to Cathy’s behavior. Maybe she just wants to know how they reacted so that she can corroborate my story. But I got the distinct sense that she was angry with them.

Now, I understand being angry at the other teachers. I’m a little angry with them. I wish they would’ve stood up next to me instead of retreating in shock (or pretending nothing happened.) But really, punishing them or being angry at them seems like such a secondary concern. Cathy is the one who needs the attention here, not my assistant and the other teacher. Cathy needs to have her shit kicked out of the goddamn door immediately. Then there will be time for being angry at the others.

In the afternoon the headmaster left the school for a doctor’s appointment, so I went to my assistant to get the scoop on what happened. The headmaster still hadn’t spoken with my assistant or the other teachers in my class and she still hadn’t spoken with Cathy.

What she did do, was tell one of the other administrators to reprimand Cathy during a meeting. And apparently this was the same administrator that I told on Friday. And she did the same thing on Friday: reprimand Cathy in a meeting.

So for two meetings in a row, Cathy has been singled out and bitched at in front of the rest of the teachers in the school.

This is not what I want.

In fact, I was pretty angry to hear this. The only thing it does is humiliate Cathy in front of the other teachers. There is a part of me that says “well at least that’s something.” But it really isn’t. It does nothing to stop the problem. And it just makes the other teachers feel sympathy for her.

My assistant confirmed it; the other teachers felt bad for Cathy. My assistant even said “Maybe if I was helping her organize the children this never would have happened and she wouldn’t be in trouble.” No. Stop.

Oh, and of course the administrator announced who it was that reported what Cathy did.

Poor Cathy. She was stressed out and was getting no help and just made one mistake. But the foreigner has to run around reporting her and making a big deal out of it.

As of right now, this problem is the exact opposite of solved.

Does anyone feel for the little girl? No. Not enough to actually protect her.

Is Cathy viewed as the bad guy? Nope. Anderson is the trouble maker here.

Are the kids any better off? Maybe, but criticizing and shaming abusive people doesn’t tend to make them less abusive. Cathy will just try harder not to get caught, which will make it even harder to protect the children.

What am I planning to do? I haven’t decided yet. The headmaster is here all day today so I’m hoping she does something (even if it’s just talking to those involved) that will help me decide. I won’t threaten to quit or tell parents. Not yet.

I’m probably going to try making the case that she should be fired.

I also have another option. I could skip dealing with the administrators entirely and just go straight to a parent. If a parent called in and said something like “my daughter told me one of your teachers pushed a little girl on Friday…” it would probably help to get Cathy fired more than anything I can do.

That’s a dangerous game though. If the parent told the headmaster she was calling because of me, I would probably be fired too.

I need to be careful with whatever I decide. And I’ll keep everyone updated.

And before I finish this post, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented. It really meant a lot to have your support and to read your advice. This would be infinitely harder if there weren’t people here and at home who had my back. Thank you.

Related posts:

1. You Look Down But Far From Out
2. Anderson’s First Day
3. My New School (and What’s Been Up The Past Past Couple Months)

Note: It’s a bit rambly, just so you know going in.

Related posts:

1. CP5: Usher and Ethan
2. CP8: Subtle Abuse
3. CP7: I Don’t Give A Figgity Figgity Figgity What?

As always, leave your comments or email me.

Related posts:

1. CP5: Usher and Ethan
2. CP4: Graduation Day
3. CP8: Subtle Abuse

Note 1: yes, I know it’s pronounced “in-ter-rog-a-tive.” I’m living in China, just be happy I can form any real sentences.

Note 2: I didn’t mean “only 15 episodes” sarcastically. I realized it sounded that way upon re-listening. That wasn’t my intent. I’m genuinely impressed at how quickly Brett Veinotte started addressing family issues in the School Sucks Podcast.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Related posts:

1. CP4: Graduation Day
2. CP5: Usher and Ethan
3. CP3: Treatment of Children

Nearly one in ten young Chinese under the age of 17 have some sort of mental disorders, a recent survey suggests.

The Beijing Anding Hospital and the Chinese Medical Association hosted an international conference about the mental health of young people on Sunday.

At the meeting, Chinese scholars said that at least 30 million minors in China are plagued with mental disorders or behavior problems.

By the year 2007, China had 341 million minors, accounting for 26 percent of the country’s total population.

“The number 30 million is based on regional researches in recent years. Since the mental health of children must have worsened over time, the real number could be even higher,” said Cui Yonghua, a child psychiatrist with the Beijing Anding Hospital.

“Child patients have been increasing sharply over the past years. Now we do not have enough beds for them,” said psychiatrist Cui.

This is tragic, truly. But I’m going to make a maybe somewhat controversial statement that this is a good thing. In fact, I’m sure every generation prior to this one has had a higher percentage of mental disorder. These kids acting out and receiving actual psychological attention (and media attention) means that things may get better for them and for future generations.

Still, this is a powerful and sad indicator of the terrible treatment of children.

Reader Will also juxtaposed the mental disorder story with this one from the day before. I think it speaks for itself.

Related posts:

1. CP3: Treatment of Children
2. “Injustice has a cause, debt has an owner, out the door and to the left is the government building.”
3. Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl

You can subscribe using this feed. You can subscribe in iTunes here.

Related posts:

1. CP4: Graduation Day
2. CP8: Subtle Abuse
3. CP11: Jayden and Artists

But I have been here for over 3 months, so I want to try. Remember, I’m just going off what I’ve experienced and extending it with a little reason. If I’m totally off-base and you think everything I’m saying is nonsense, please let me know.

Okay, enough qualifying. Here’s what I’m going to say about Chinese people: They lacky the passion.

Among almost all the Chinese people I have met and talked with, I find a total absence of passion.

In order to understand what I mean when I talk about passion, we’re going to have to use the West (specifically America) as a comparison. Which means I’m going to have to paint another culture with a broad brush.

Genuine Passion

When I think about passion in the West I usually break it down into two categories. The first is genuine passion.

Genuine passion is a deep love and enthusiasm and drive for something. It’s easy to associate this with artists. People who truly and deeply care about painting, or music, or cinema, or literature. But it could be about anything.

I consider Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan some of the most passionate authors I’ve read. It’s science and reason and truth that they are passionate about, and you can feel their enthusiasm in almost everything they write.

I think you can have that same enthusiasm and joy toward anything and everything, from stamp collecting to webdesign to philosophy to psychology to baking to chemistry to life itself. And I think most passionate people are passionate about everything they do, not just their main interests.

It’s sometimes hard to quantify, but you just know. You can tell by the way the person talks and by their body language. You can sense their excitement or awe or enthusiasm.

I’m sure you’ve probably experienced both sides of this. You’ve been able to tell when someone you’re talking to really cares about the subject, when it excites them and energizes them. And you know what it’s like to talk about something you really love. (At least I hope you know what it’s like.)

This type of passion — genuine passion — I also associate with a few other traits.

One of them is a level of disregard for what other people think. Passionate people pursue the things they love, despite what anyone else (friends, family, society) thinks about them. It’s part of that drive that a passionate person has. They are individuals, not conformists. Social norms aren’t going to stop them.

Another set of traits I find in most passionate people is honesty, openness, and curiosity. They don’t hide or hedge or minimize the things they believe and value. They are open about how they feel and what they think. And at the same time they are often curious and willing — in fact happy — to listen to other people’s thoughts and opinions. Passionate people are excited by others who want to engage them on the things they care about.

(I would say this is true even for passionate religious people. In my experience, people who are really passionate about religion are often the ones willing to listen to my (very opposing) ideas. It is your average my-parents-were-religious-so-now-I-am religious people that get defensive or evasive about their beliefs.)

(Oh, and I would also like to clarify that I don’t count zealotry and fanaticism as being passionate. I see that more as an unhealthy obsession. So, just like I wouldn’t call a heroin addict “a person who is passionate about heroin,” I don’t consider a fanatic “just a really passionate person.”)

Bandwagon Passion

I see genuine passion here and there in the West, but overall it’s pretty rare. What I see a lot more of is a watered-down version of passion, something I’ll call bandwagon passion.

This pseudo-passion copies the enthusiasm of real passion, but little else. It leaves out the true dedication, and joy, and individualism, and curiosity found in genuine passion. And it’s easy. It’s so easy.

This is embodied in almost every popular issue or movement in America. From environmentalism to health-care reform to supporting the troops to helping the poor to protecting small business owners to blah blah blah. Just pick an easy issue and jump on board.

Listen to celebrities talk about environmentalism as they fly around in their Gulfstreams. Or the conservative politicians talk about family values as they cheat on their wives. Or the college kid who thinks it’s so important to stop war as he supports a president sending 10,000 more young men to die in the desert. Yes, psuedo-passion almost always comes with a healthy helping of hypocrisy.

I do realize that some of the people who care about these issues are genuinely passionate and not hypocritical. But they are the rare ones. Most are just followers who are defensive when challenged and always ready to jump on the next up-and-coming topic.

Raise a flag for some trendy social issue and watch these slithering bandwagon passionistas gather round.

Wasn’t This Supposed To Be About China?

Yes. There was a reason for those tangents. And here it is: I see none of that in China.

The genuine passion, already a rare thing, is unsurprisingly absent. But so is the bandwagon passion.

Most young Chinese people I talk to — not all, but most — are totally devoid of either form of passion. I met an American girl in a bar and one of the first things she talked about was how she is “really into human rights.” Whether it’s genuine or bandwagon passion, this doesn’t happen when you talk to Chinese people.

I ask Chinese people what they care about and what they are really interested in and I usually get the most mundane answers: hanging out with friends, going shopping, going to the movies with friends. I mentioned this to my Chinese assistant and she said “Chinese girls do care about things. They care about shopping and shopping and make-up.” She was being funny, but there was some truth to it.

And it isn’t just the content of the interests. It’s also the way they talk about them. That spark of enthusiasm and excitement I talked about before, I don’t see that. They sound bored with their own interests. They sound bored that you even asked them a question about their interests.

Again, there are exceptions.

I was talking with a 26-year-old Chinese girl the other day who was extremely passionate about everything she brought up, even her job. I was so surprised that I actually said something to her.

“You know, I really think it’s cool how passionate you are. Most people I talk to here aren’t really excited about anything. You’re pretty enthusiastic about everything.”

She looked at me and smiled, “I love life. Being pretty will fade when I get old, but I hope I always keep my passion.”

Ballin’.

As cool as that was, it was only shocking because it’s so counter to my normal experiences with Chinese people.

Show Me The Passion

Obviously, I don’t want Chinese people to fix this problem by following Americans and jumping on every trendy bandwagon. But at least that Western pseudo-passion reveals an underlying desire to be enthusiastic and excited about something. A desire I’m having real trouble finding in China.

I have some ideas about why there is this lack of passion. Most of them have to do with parenting and the treatment of children. It’s also part of the culture in general. It’s a topic that needs a lot more thought and investigation.

I can say this: The biggest exception to everything I’ve been describing is children. Children are absolutely not like this. My students are passionate and enthusiastic and excited every day, about all kinds of things. I can’t even count the number of times a day one of my 5-year-olds runs up to me and breathlessly explains something they are excited about. And when I respond with enthusiasm, they get even more passionate.

So don’t think I’m describing some genetic problem or anything like that. This is a result of nurture, not nature. The kids in China start out just as passionate as all children. It’s ground out of them by the usual suspects: parents, teachers, and politicians.

How in particular is something I’m not sure about. And why it is different than in the West. Why isn’t there at least bandwagon passion here?

In the comments let me know what you think of this. Am I right or wrong? What do you think the causes are? And tell me your thoughts on why I’ve found China to be a passionless desert.

Related posts:

1. McCoy’s First Day
2. 30 Million Children With Mental Disorders
3. CP5: Usher and Ethan

In the past few weeks there have been multiple stabbings in Chinese kindergartens.

Last Thursday, a man in Taixing city injured at least 28 four-year-olds when he entered the kindergarten and started attacking people with a knife. Two other attacks had happened before that and schools are terrified of more attacks. McCoy’s school, and many others around Beijing, have had guards posted in the mornings and are under lock-down during the day. No visitors are allowed to come or go.

There have been a lot of articles speculating why this keeps happening and why people are targeting schools. I’ve seen a bunch of different explanations ranging from “romantic issues” to “mental illness” to “frustration over the increasing economic disparity.” But I want to focus on one article by a Chinese blogger Han Han.

Han Han is a novelist and one of China’s most famous bloggers. He’s also a racecar driver. (Before you say something like “that doesn’t make sense,” I’m going to have to remind you that this is China.)

Anyway, his article is full of criticism for how the Chinese government has been handling the attacks. You can read the full thing here. And below are some highlights:

Aside from Yang Jia, nearly all killers choose to begin by killing the weak. If they feel there’s no way out in society, then killing those even weaker than themselves becomes their only way out. I recommend that all the police guarding the doors of local officials nationwide be transferred to guard kindergartens. A government that can’t even protect children doesn’t need so many people protecting it.

…

After the Taizhou kindergarten murder incident, the media was controlled. These children were born at the wrong time [i.e., unlucky] and they died at an even worse time. In this jubilant atmosphere [of the opening of the Shanghai Expo], this incident is just noise to the relevant government departments. All we know is that according to the government, 32 people were injured and no one died, but on the streets there are rumors that many children were killed. So who should I believe? If the government is telling the truth, then why are they not letting parents see their children? They’ve also blocked off the hospital and shut off the news, and there are no photographs or video of children. Moreover, a murderer chops up thirty two people with a knife and no one dies? Was he really committing murder or performing surgery?

…

I was very astonished. The Taizhou government has successfully sealed information, closed the hospital, controlled the media, forbidden visitors, and diverted public attention, but now they have successfully taken the people’s anger at the killer and directed it at themselves, and for what?

…

It’s their usual process: eat, drink and be merry all night until something happens, then hide, isolate, remove the media, make prohibitions, send press releases, make compensations, cremate the bodies — then go back to eating and drinking. Their way of dealing with things isn’t much more noble than a murderer’s. No wonder I saw online a kindergarten hanging a banner: “Injustice has a cause, debt has an owner, out the door and to the left is the government building.”

…

I don’t want to delve into the social reasons for the killing, I just want to tell everyone here that a man rushing into a kindergarten and stabbing children can’t even make the news.

Ready for his powerful final paragraph? If you don’t love Han Han already, you will after this:

Perhaps in the eyes of those old men, you children are just spoiling their fun.

Wretched children, it is you who are poisoned by milk powder, harmed by vaccines, crushed by earthquakes, and burnt in fires. Even if there’s a problem with rules in the adult world, you are the ones adults stab in retaliation. I truly hope it is as the Taizhou government says, and you’re all just injured and no one has died. We elders have failed in our duties. I hope that when you grow up, you will not only protect your own children but build a society that protects everyone’s children.

Related posts:

1. Chinese Tests Black Eagle
2. Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
3. Google, No Flowers For You

I was always perplexed by these responses. They were part straw-man — suggesting that anarchists naively believed in a conflict free world — and part invalid deduction — asserting that if there was conflict then it was necessary for an authority figure to resolve it.

The first part wasn’t hard to understand. Straw-man arguments are a dime a dozen. But the second part seemed so illogical; how could anyone reach such a conclusion?

Why would so many people automatically associate the resolution of conflict with the necessity of authority?

Now I know at least part of the answer.

Everyday in school I see my students being taught two lessons that lead directly to the acceptance of statism:

Lesson 1: Conflict Is Bad

This is the first and less obvious lesson that is being reinforced constantly.

Conflict is a bad thing. It’s bad when it happens. It should be avoided at all costs. Conflict is the worst possible outcome of any interaction.

That’s what kids learn.

Teachers and assistants hover over children during every activity. And at the first sign of a disagreement they swoop down to “break it up.” The result of their interference is often that somebody gets in trouble.

These situations occur dozens of times every day. Two kids will argue over who gets to play with a toy or who gets to be first in line for their snack. They get into conflicts over taking each others’ crayons or books or whatever. They fight over who holds the jump rope they’re using to tie up their teacher and tickle him (I always get them back).

Almost every time something like this happens a teacher or assistant is waiting to step in and stop the disagreement — and sometimes to punish the student “responsible.”

This sends one message: conflict is bad.

Conflict Is Natural

Conflict isn’t bad. And it isn’t good either. I wouldn’t use any moral labels when defining conflict. Conflict is neutral.

Conflict is the natural result of interacting with other human beings. Every person has their own values, desires, and needs and everyone has different ways of satisfying those needs. In any relationship or community or society it is absolutely NORMAL that these different and competing interests result in conflict. It’s not a bad thing. How could it be?

What I would apply terms like “good” and “bad” to are the ways of handling conflict. For instance, violence is a pretty bad way of handling conflict (I’m looking at you, statists). Peaceful negotiation, on the other hand, is generally a pretty good way of handling conflict.

When a conflict is handled poorly the consequences can be devastating, as surely all of us have experienced. But a when a conflict is handled well, it can be a great thing and actually improve the relationship.

It is the bad ways of handling conflicts that causes teachers and assistants to interfere. They want to prevent the children from hitting or fighting or name calling. It’s well-intentioned. But by constantly interfering they don’t teach children real conflict resolution skills, they just teach them that conflict is a bad thing.

It also teaches them the second lesson, that when there is a conflict, the best thing to do is appeal to authority.

Lesson 2: Authority Resolves Conflicts

This is the second lesson. It’s more overt but it is also more dangerous.

The consequence of training kids that conflict is bad and that an authority will always be there to intervene imprints this programming onto them: when there is a conflict, an authority figure will resolve it.

On my first day of class — no exaggeration, my very first day — a student I had never spoken to before came up to me and said, “Arthur took my pen, will you give him a frowny face?”

I can’t remember the rest of the conversation, but it went something like this:

“No sorry, Eric, I don’t think I’m going to give him a frowny face.”

“He took my pencil!”

“He didn’t take my pencil, though, why should I give him a frowny face?”

Cue the blank stare I’ve seen hundreds of times by now. “But…but…you’re the teacher!”

“Want me to go talk to Arthur with you?”

“No, I want you to go beat him up and get my pencil back.”

The point of that dialogue is to show you just how much children are trained that authority is the ultimate conflict resolver. Whenever there is a disagreement, if you handle it on your own, an authority will intervene anyway and you’ll get in trouble. But if you appeal immediately to authority you might just get your way.

Authority is there to resolve your conflicts, whether or not you want it.

Conclusion

The connections to statism should be blatantly obvious.

Instead of teaching children infinitely valuable conflict resolution skills so that they can learn to handle disagreements peacefully and efficiently, they are taught to fear and avoid conflict. And in the case conflict does arise, they are trained to run immediately to the nearest authority figure and plead their case, otherwise there will be punishment.

This is what most children are exposed to for 12 years of school — and probably longer in their homes.

Is it any surprise that they become adults and can’t imagine a world where conflict is resolved without authority?

Related posts:

1. From Childhood To Statism: Introduction
2. 3 Things Wrong With The Rewards System
3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

I want to show some of the ways that schools, teachers, and parents train children to become statists.

In this introductory post I want to set up and explain what this series will cover.

For starters, this is not a complete analysis of the origins of statism in childhood. I will use the examples that I have seen first-hand. It will be based on my experiences.

Secondly, it is not about the origin of statism as an intellectual theory. I don’t want to examine where the idea of statism came from, but rather where the psychological acceptance of that idea comes from.

In order to explain the difference, we should start with some definitions.

Statism

Statism is the ideology that proposes and supports the use of states — or governments — to organize human society.

A state, if we go by the standard political science definition provided by Max Weber, is an entity which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. This is actually a pretty good definition, considering it’s widely accepted by academics.

Let’s break down a little bit more, just so we can be really clear on what we’re talking about when we say “statism.”

The word entity is of course meant very loosely in the definition. There is not a physical thing that exists called The State. There is a group of people. They may be fixed or they may be a rotating group of people but they are just people. They are the bureaucrats, politicians, policemen (and so on and so on) that fill offices and buildings and barracks. This aggregation of people is what we call the state.

And this group of people “claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.” What does that mean? It means they claim that in a given area, only the people making up the state are allowed to use violence and it is moral for them to do so but immoral for anyone else to do so.

This is starting to sound a little bit like “I’m allowed to hit you, but you’re not allowed to hit me.” And it should, because at its basic and truest form that’s the idea of statism. One group of people is allowed to use violence against the rest.

As Leo Tolstoy famously put it: “Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

Acceptance of Statism

Despite the endless justifications for statism (“voting this” and “social contract that”) the core premise is completely…retarded and insane.

The idea that you can solve complex social problems like education or health care or poverty by allowing one small group of people threaten and coerce everybody else is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. And one reasonable people would never accept. But almost everyone does…maybe even you.

I’m not here to convince you that statism is evil and supporting it is immoral — maybe I’ll do that in another post. So before you start writing me emails saying, “But Anderson, if one group of people didn’t have a monopoly on violence who would build the roads?” I want to remind you that my purpose in this series is to identify why people accept such a clearly retarded and wrong idea.

Because, although the idea may be wrong, it’s only dangerous when people buy into it.

If I had the idea that every human being should drink bleach, well, without widespread acceptance it’s just a stupid idea. But imagine if everyone starting believing in it and supporting it? That’s where the real danger lies.

The same analogy can be made with slavery. The idea that one person should be able to own another is an evil idea — and an idea not unrelated to statism — but it was only truly vile because people accepted it.

That is why I’m not interested in the origin of the theories that promote and support statism, but rather the origin of the acceptance of statism.

It is the acceptance of statism that has allowed it to become a plague on this planet. In the 20th century alone states have murdered over 260 million people — I’m talking about unarmed, innocent people, not soldiers in war. Faced with this pile of bodies, most people still never question whether or not statism is a good idea.

And as I said in the first section, I believe it is because we are trained to accept it as children.

So, over the next few posts I want to talk about some of the “lessons” I see that lead directly to this unquestioning acceptance.

Check back soon…

Related posts:

1. From Childhood To Statism: Conflict Resolution
2. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?
3. CP3: Treatment of Children

She describes some of the horrible circumstances that parents have put both her and their own children in. Here’s an excerpt:

His mother told the co-teacher that her son really likes me, but that she’s worried because he sees me as his friend, not his teacher. She also said that he has an older brother at home and that they play very rough together and fight, so she is worried that he is too wild for me and that I can’t handle him.

Then she said that she wants me to “scare” him into listening because he doesn’t behave and needs discipline.

I was furious. Of course I flat out refused to do that. Scare him? How can this woman even be serious? This is her son she’s talking about. Why would you ever want anyone, let alone his teacher, who is still practically a stranger, to deliberately threaten and scare him? Why would anyone want to do that to a five-year-old child? (Of course, I do know the potential answers to that but it still seems incomprehensible to me.)

You guys should definitely check out the complete post and leave a comment telling her what a great job she is doing in such a terrible situation.

As far as my own commentary on this goes, I haven’t actually experienced it first hand with my own students’ parents. The maltreatment I see usually comes from the Chinese assistants.

I do know my kids well enough to be able to guess what kind of parents they have. Being extremely over-protective is one of the traits I suspect is most common, which is preferrable to asking a stranger to scare and discipline your child. Jesus Christ.

I have a theory that the over-protectiveness when it comes to Chinese parents is not out of true genuine concern for their children but rather a side-effect of the one-child policy. That is a mere opinion though and I can’t back it up with any empirical verification.

Anyway, head over to It’s Always Sunny In South Korea and give Casey some support.

Related posts:

1. IASISK – Shanghai
2. Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
3. You Look Down But Far From Out

Over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with a lot of different games and teaching activities. Sometimes they are spontaneous ideas created during class — like turning a ball throwing game into Hot Potato — and other times I plan them out.

The game I’ve put the most work into has been my version of Jeopardy. Jeopardy totally got the administration off my back today when they saw it in action. I had been getting critiqued all week and the senior consultant wasn’t happy with my experimental lessons. Today I whipped out my trusty Jeopardy and blew her balls off. So this post is dedicated to Jeopardy, how I developed it and why it’s awesome.

Originally it was a spur of the moment decision. About ten minutes before class started I decided that I would draw a grid on the white board, fill it with different point values (first row 100, second row 200, etc.), and divide the class into two teams. Each team got a turn — no buzzing in — to pick one of the spots on the grid.

I would ask them to repeat an English word, phrase, or sentence and they would have to answer all together at first and then one-by-one. I told them that everyone on the team had to say their English correctly in order to get points, but in reality I gave them the points no matter what.

I scaled the difficulty of the phrase or sentence based on how many points they stood to gain, and I always included the key words they needed to learn for that week.

And I used the rule that only the team answering can talk. This is a great way to keep the classroom relatively quiet. I’m planning another post about rules, rewards, and punishments and the contexts that I’m starting to find them both useful and appropriate, so more on that later.

This set up worked pretty well for about ten minutes. Pretty quickly the kids realized that since it was just going back and forth and nobody ever lost points it wasn’t really a competition at all. They kept playing, but I could sense that the interest wouldn’t last long.

I toyed with the idea of removing the turn based system and figuring out a way to let them buzz in. Maybe I could give each team leader a bell to ring. At least there would be competition over who could ring first. But in Jeopardy you buzz in when you know the correct response to a clue, in my game all you have to do is say an English phrase, so they would be ringing their bells constantly. Oh, also they are five-year-olds. Giving bells to five-year-olds is like giving crack to five-year-olds.

So I tried another modifications. I attempted to be strict with the scoring. Both my Chinese assistant and I explained to them that it was just a game and it was okay to lose points but that I was going to be judging more harshly. There were nods of understanding. This actually might work. They know it’s a game, they don’t actually care about points.

The first round of the game one of the girls refused to say her English phrase. “That’s okay,” I said, “but I’m only going to be able to give the team 400 points instead of 500.” The team leader instantly burst into tears. Right, terrible idea Anderson. Better luck next time.

I introduced different category columns in the grid. I wanted this to provide an incentive other than point value. The kids would have to balance how comfortable they were with certain topics with how many points were available. This helped, a little — it made the game more interesting. But since they still knew they were going to be getting full points anyway, it didn’t really motivate them to act that differently.

Right now, the game still has column categories. But it has a huge point bonus if one team clears an entire column. It also has Daily Doubles (but no wagering, you just get twice the point value of that question.)

The introduction of these things has taken a little time — since they all increased the game’s complexity — but it has made it so much more fun and engaging.

It scales really well now. Some of the kids don’t really care about anything other than saying the phrases and knowing they got points awarded. Others are really into the strategy of going after a whole column versus just going after the highest point values.

Today during snack-time I found the two team leaders sitting together discussing the different strategies. (One them informed me that four Daily Doubles would be more fair than just three.) It reminded me of staying up all night playing Unreal Tournament with my friends from home. We would spend the time either playing or just sitting around talking about strategy while eating Doritos. It was fun, and I was glad my students were so into the game that they were doing the same thing.

And it has some randomness now — the Daily Doubles — which really keeps the game interesting and actually makes it more competitive. Obviously, too much randomness makes a game pointless, but a certain amount makes it more fun, more competitive, and more interesting to keep playing.

Too much randomness and you have a slot machine, no randomness and you have chess. A good balance of randomness and you get poker. (Not sure if gameplay theory is an interesting topic for you guys, but I could on forever about it.)

As it is right now Jeopardy is definitely my best teaching tool. It engages the kids of all skill levels, it has both strategy and randomness, it has an internal reward and rule system, it’s competitive, it has variety, and it lets them practice English individually.

I’m sure as we keep playing I’ll have to adapt the game more and more, so if you have any ideas about how to make it even more effective let me know. Also feel free to steal this and use it, I hope it works as well for you as it did for me.

Related posts:

1. 5 Reasons To Love The Lava Bridge Game
2. My Day
3. My Kids’ Day (Or At Least How I Imagine Their Day Is)

“First of all, I don’t believe you are causing any harm to your students. If you are caring and truly concerned in their learning, it can never hurt them. Be sure it is the students you are really focused on and not your own needs and desires. This is hard to differentiate sometimes. Kids pick up on sincerity and embrace you. Otherwise, you are just tolerated or discounted. You must think solely for the kids and what it is they need. These are extremely young; my experiences have only been as low as a second grade level, but I have worked with some of these wee ones too along the way. Give them what they need to blossom and grow. Each student is different, so their needs differ. You can’t teach them as a whole.

I understand you are having difficulty in the participation concept as far as building a classroom code. I have attended workshops on that and utilized it in my classrooms the past 3-4 years. It works on some levels, but not others. On the level it did work, it would apply too to the younger grades.

With obstacles of culture and language it would be difficult but not impossible. The best means to get this across to such a young age group would be to ask questions that lead them to creating the concept. Go towards your goal by breaking it down into steps forward. Just jumping into a discussion about rules or determining class conduct is too broad and abstract for that age group. For instance, simply ask: “How do you think I should be treated as a teacher?” You could simplify it even further if needed. Break it down to “How do you talk to a teacher? How do you act in class? What do you do when you have never played that game?” They of course will answer the standards–with respect, with attention, behaving well…

You can then ask other leading questions to get to the areas you want…Ask- -How about joining in my activities? How about asking questions when you don’t understand me? How about trying something new even if you are worried about it…and so on. Starting with the teacher focus would probably be easiest. Then you do the same to draw them into how they want to be treated by you. Ask: “How do you want me to act towards you?” If they don’t respond, ask other leading questions: Do you want me to talk to you away from your classmates? Do you want me to listen to your ideas? Do you want me to let you come up with some topics to study?” You get the idea. Bring in too how they want their classmates to treat them in the same way. You have to be really fundamental with them. Just start simply with one basic question. Grow from there.

Maybe you could just do one each day for a bit. What I did, you could do too. I would place a large piece of paper on the front board and responses were written on it. You can simplify it with just 1-2 words. If you did one a day, you could put your heading on it and put it aside, then at the end you could put them all together and post them. You can also use symbols (stick figures, images) to promote your ideas. For example teacher stick figure with a really big ear for listening to you or bunches of little stick figures holding hands and playing with the big teacher face smiling. Something like that might break through the language problems. Think Charades in images.

That level is quite young to get this philosophy across. It may be too young. I think you could start a framework for it, though. You know the students better than I, so you will know if it is possible or not. Maybe you could just choose one concept to address for a while and focus all your attention to that. Try talking to some Chinese non-teaching acquaintances for their input on the matter too. They may have some good ideas for you. I found many teachers in opposition to this concept. I had to present it at a faculty meeting. Talk about not speaking the same language…oh boy! Change is a dirty word to most, no matter what arena. My students also were weirded out by it too, at first. Be patient. It all takes time. You build up to what you want. Just do it from the heart, not the head. You’ll get across to them. Let me know how this progresses for you. It will be interesting.”

Related posts:

1. Chinese Teacher Repeatedly Hits 2-Year-Old Little Girl
2. My New School (and What’s Been Up The Past Past Couple Months)
3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

I’m getting a lot of “advice” about disciplining my students from the administration and the Chinese assistants. For the first few days it would just be things like:

• “The students don’t respect you enough.”
• “You are too nice to them.”
• “You let them do whatever they want.”

One even said to me, “The students, they don’t fear you.” To which I responded, “Correct.”

The assistants aren’t saying it to criticize me, they like me and are trying to help me manage the classroom. They are also afraid of the headmaster. She has a reputation of popping into classrooms and being very unhappy if they children are “out of control.” However I run the classroom also affects them and their jobs, which they obviously don’t want to lose.

Most of the time I just nod my head and listen to what they say. Now and then I make comments back that try to explain my position. “They are not military. They are five.” When I say something like that the assistants usually looked defeated, or annoyed, or both.

A few days ago, though, my main assistant actually made a point that gave me pause. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. She told me that Chinese primary schools were very strict and the teachers could be very mean. “If the children don’t learn to sit quietly and listen to the teacher now, they will have many problems in primary school.”

That was an interesting argument to me. What if I was actually going to cause them to be attacked and abused even more?

I’m here teaching English, but one of my main goals is actually just to show these kids that they deserve respect and equal treatment. I want to give them an example of an adult that treats them like they are real people, not the typical slave treatment that most kids — especially in China — get from adults.

The more I’m successful the more these kids will view authority based on power as being illegitimate. They’ll see that just because someone is an “authority figure” doesn’t mean they have the right to bully you or coerce you or treat you badly.

The more that becomes a conscious thought the more you resist bullying, controls, force, and authority.

And what happens when these children go to primary school and are faced with authoritarian teachers? If I have been successful, they’ll have less respect for their new teachers. And what will that result in? The likely outcome is that even more bullying, coercion, and brutalization will be spewed in their direction.

This problem reminds me of an issue that many people from bad families face when they have younger siblings. Should they tell the younger siblings the truth about their parents? Should they explain to them the nature of the conflicts in their family? Giving the younger brother or sister a better awareness of their situation might make their home life absolute hell. Some argue that it is better to let the sibling build up defenses until they are able to leave the home. Others argue that they deserve to know the truth no matter what, and waiting until they are out of the house might be too late.

I don’t think there is a clear answer, but you can see the similarities between that situation and mine.

Is it better for these kids just to build up defenses and get through school? Will becoming aware of how badly they are going to be treated make things any better?

Obviously, me being more strict or authoritarian is not a possible solution. And I refuse to accept that these children would have better lives if they never met me. But I also can’t deny that they may have a harder childhood in school because of me.

So, what does it mean? Is it possible that I’m making it worse for my students?

Like I said, I’m not looking for an answer or a solution. But it’s a question that I’ve been thinking a lot about and I would love to hear your thoughts.

Let me know what you think: leave a comment or email me.

Related posts:

1. From Childhood To Statism: Conflict Resolution
2. Anderson’s First Day
3. Letter From A High School Teacher

I try a lot of different games with my students. Sometimes they are part of English lessons — I created a flash card baseball game today, it was awesome — and sometimes they are just for fun during free time.

This week I taught the kids a game I learned during an orientation weekend for a scholarship I won. I don’t remember the official name of the game, but I call it Lava Bridge.

Here’s how it works: The students have to get from point A to point B. Between whatever you choose for A and B there is lava.

The students have to cross the lava and you provide them some objects to use that are safe — we used hula hoops. As long as they kids are standing in a hula hoop they can’t be burned, but if they touch the ground outside of a hula hoop they are out.

There aren’t enough hula hoops to just lay straight across from A to B. Instead, the kids have to lay them down and walk across them then pick ones up from behind and put them in front. Repeating this relay motion until they are all across.

But you can only pick up a hula hoop and move it to the front if it is empty. (You aren’t allowed to move it if someone is in it, including sliding it.) The students are forced to fit on all but one hoop so that they can keep moving. Depending on the number of players and hoops this can get pretty difficult.

I had about twelve kids today making their way across with three hoops. Which means every time they needed to pick one up to move it, they had to all squeeze onto the remaining two hoops. Fitting six kids in one hula hoop is not easy. But it is hilarious and fun.

So that’s how it works. You have this pack of kids laying down hoops, then squeezing onto the front few so that they can pick up the last one and move it to the front. Rinse and repeat until they make it across.

I know it sounds a little complicated. If you have no idea what I’m talking about let me know in the comments and I’ll try to come up with a better explanation.

Anyway, like I was saying this is the most popular game with my kids. I spent some time trying to figure out why and I came up with the following reasons.

1. Everyone Who Plays, Participates

I’m sure that sounds a little redundant, so let me explain. There are a lot of games that everyone will play in, but not actually get a chance to participate in.

I organized a soccer game last Friday and a lot of the kids wanted to play. Once the game started, though, only a few kids were actually participating. The kids who were better or more confident when it came to soccer were the most involved.

Even when I play flash card games, there is always a tendency for the kids who speak the best English to dominate and they end up participating way more than the kids who actually need the flash card practice.

There isn’t anything wrong with the best kids at a certain game being the most involved. It’s perfectly normal. But it is nice to have a game where you don’t have to worry about that happening.

In Lava Bridge, every single kid who wants to play is very included and involved. They are all holding onto each other on a tiny hoop trying not to fall into the molten hot lava, there is no way not to be involved. Which leads us to number two…

2. It Is An Amazing Teamwork Game

Everyone has to work together moving from hoop to hoop. And then picking up the last hoop and handing it to the person in the front. All this while they are trying to keep their balance and make sure nobody else falls. There is a lot of working together both physically and with verbal communication.

It really is a great teamwork game, which is why it is used as a team building exercise even for adults.

And — like any good teamwork scenario — it allows certain students to take the leadership roles. They can be the ones to come up with ideas of how to move next, or who should be in the back or the front, or any of the other stuff that needs to be worked out. Any student confident enough can attempt to take on a leadership position and try to communicate and organize the rest of the team.

3. You Can Scale The Difficulty

At any time during the game you can do things to affect the difficulty.

You can add new rules limiting how far apart hoops can be, or how many students per hoop, or create certain obstacles they have to go around. The rule that they must start over if anybody falls off makes it really difficult.

You can add or remove hoops to make it easier or harder on the fly.

You can also add a second team and make it a race scenario. Or make them gather certain items at point B and then make it back to point A. Which means they have to do the same thing they just did, but now while carrying something.

There are so many possible rules and variations that the game can stay fresh and fun forever. And by the way, it is fun.

4. The Game Is Really Fun

It is such a blast to play the game. Especially if you have it set up so it’s just challenging enough to be rewarding, but not so hard that it frustrates the kids.

Every single time my kids laid down the final hoop and made it the last little bit to point B, they cheered so loud. All the reasons I just named give the students a great sense of accomplishment.

And it is pretty fun to watch too.

5. It Has Lava

Kids love lava. Seriously, how many times did you play some game growing up involving lava?

We used to jump from pieces of furniture pretending the floor was lava. And I remember only walking on certain tiles in elementary school because we’d all decided the rest of the color tiles were lava.

Even in China, the kids know, love, and respect the power of lava.

Related posts:

1. What Is Jeopardy?
2. My Kids’ Day (Or At Least How I Imagine Their Day Is)
3. Timeline Of My Work Day

Every week I alternate between teaching in the morning or the afternoon. Whatever period I don’t teach during I usually spend doing paper work, lesson planning, important Facebook procrastination, writing articles, or just going to play with the kids anyway.

So for those of you that care here is a timeline of my day (during a week when I work mornings.)

6:30 AM: Wake up tired, snooze the alarm a few times, hate the whole world, burn off my first 3 layers of skin in a hot shower

7:30 AM: Ride my bike for about 15 minutes (through a crowded maze of lunatics) to get to school, then hang out and eat breakfast

8:30 AM: Go to the classroom and hang out with the kids while they play and get situated

9:00 AM: Begin my English lesson. This usually involves getting all the kids to sit around in a circle and doing some introductory sentence practice (“Hello, my name is Roxy and I’m from Australia”) and then singing a song or playing a game and then some flash cards to help them learn new vocabulary words. Occasionally, I have them do English work books.

10:00 AM: The kids have a short snack and then go outside to exercise and play.

11:00 AM: Kids have about 20 minutes of free time, eat lunch then nap. I’m there assisting and organizing.

12:00 PM: My lunch starts and I have until about 2:30

2:30 PM: The kids morning schedule basically repeats but with a Chinese lesson, outside, inside free time, then parents pick them up. I usually join them unless I have some work to do.

5:00 PM: Ride my bike back to the apartment, crash on couch exhausted

I know it doesn’t sound too rough, and it isn’t as bad as McCoys schedule, but it is still pretty tiring. Even though I only teach for an hour I spend all day with them and I constantly have to organize activities and games or break up arguments or fights. It goes really fast, but at the end you feel totally drained. After a few weeks though I bet I will be adjusted and it’ll be easier. Still, it’s nothing to complain about; it’s a pretty amazing job.

So there you have it. That’s my day.

Related posts:

1. My Kids’ Day (Or At Least How I Imagine Their Day Is)
2. My Day
3. Things My Chinese Assistant Emails Me

Next they are herded into the classroom where they are fed. It seems like they eat from the time they get in, around 8 until 8:25 when class actually starts.

My first class seems to have less time to eat because they are usually sitting in a circle of chairs waiting for teacher to come. My first class also has a couple of kids who cry for their parents in the morning so they are left in the back of the room with a blanket while everybody else is forced to watch me and my little flashcard act.

Then from what I can tell from the classrooms they do fun things for the next couple of hours, like play with toys, watch videos, play house etc.

Next, another meal comes. In my class before lunch, which is 90 minutes they have to sit through 45-60 minutes of me trying to teach them some sort of phrase, like I like to eat apples, or there are 6 sheep. Followed by a water break and then we play some games like London Bridge (thank you Anderson for that game).

The kids sit and eat attentively, and if it’s anything like Anderson’s school they eat without speaking, but I’m not sure they herd me into an office where I usually spend the next 3.5 hours trying to learn Chinese either from the teachers or Rosetta Stone.

After lunch seems to be a rather long nap period of probably 2 hours from what I can tell. There are little beds for each child in each of my classrooms that are stacked up against the window. I’m not really sure how much sleep they get but it’s usually quite during lunch so I assume most kids sleep for most of the time.

Next if they are unlucky enough to have English after lunch they get me coming in before they’ve finished their after nap snack (usually a piece of fruit). I hate that I’m interrupting meal times for them, but they expect me to come in and teach so I do it. Most of the time the kids will sit and finish their snack while I’m teaching, which I am completely fine with.

A little more English in their faces, and then I have no idea what the other classes do until 4 when it is once again feeding time. One class I actually saw got to go outside yesterday, which looked like a lot of fun to me, my students, and my teaching assistant, as we all stared out the window looking on enviously.

I think after dinner the kids are usually picked up around 5 and are taken home. My last class ends at 4 so after helping at least one of the teachers bring dinner into one of the classrooms I usually just head out to beat the rush hour traffic.

So the only thing that I know the kids get everyday is me speaking a foreign language to them, and 3 meals. Other than that there appears to be a lot of playtime and some calisthenics but I’m not really sure what else. I suppose it could be worse but I’m also sure that it could be much better.

I do have 2 and 3 year olds who would be served better by learning things that you are supposed to be learning at that age instead of just sitting in a classroom playing, but hey they don’t pay me to ask questions. That’s why we write this blog.

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This process can be initiated by teachers at the beginning of the term to establish rules that the whole classroom finds fair and are willing to follow. Students are more likely to keep to their end of the bargain when using No-Lose Conflict Resolution and participative rule setting because of a simple bit of common sense called The Principle of Participation.

Simply stated, the principle holds that people who are invited to participate in making decisions or setting up rules that affect them somehow are more willing to abide by them or keep to their part of an agreement. We all like feeling that our views are being represented.

Sounds great. But it isn’t easy to do. Yesterday’s class didn’t go well. I’ll explain some of the reasons I think I failed.

I Don’t Speak Chinese

This is a pretty obvious one but I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to communicate with children that don’t speak the same language.

There are some native English speakers and a few kids who are semi-fluent. But for most our interactions involve very basic, merely functional English communication. It is simple stuff like hello, how are you, go outside, go to the bathroom, who wants to play and whatever phrases we’re learning that day.

Oh yeah, there is also upside down. (This is a frequent request from the girls who want me to pick them up and carry them around upside down. It’s like some kind of drug; they get high on having blood rush to their brain. Anyway, I love the game too so I’m not complaining.)

The rest of the communication is nonverbal. This shouldn’t be underestimated. I know 100% that the kids can tell from my body language, the way I smile or laugh, how I pick them up, and everything else that I’m different from the Chinese assistants.

But when it comes to communicating an idea it gets much harder. I said to the whole class “I know this classroom has a lot of rules and I know that you guys don’t like some of them. I was hoping that we could spend ten or fifteen minutes and talk about the rules and see if we can come up with some that everybody agrees on.” The English speaking kids understood this sentence (partially at least, more on that later) but the Chinese kids had no clue. And how could they? I tried to simplify what I wanted but it isn’t easy to do. And it just confused them more. This led to the second problem.

The Chinese Translators

In my classroom there are a couple Chinese teachers who are there to help. One of them is my assistant and part of her job is to translate for me.

Usually, this isn’t a problem. She’s the nicest of the Chinese assistants and treats the kids very well. Unfortunately, this whole Principle of Participation thing wasn’t something she was even remotely familiar with. So when I said “I know you guys hate the no-talking-during-lunch rule” she translated it to “no talking during lunch.”

She wasn’t doing it maliciously or anything. When I told her I wanted to talk about the rules, she probably just assumed that it meant we were going to recite the rules. What else could it mean?

Either way, her translations essentially came out the exact opposite of what I wanted. She turned it from a participative rule setting session into a reminder about all the rules currently imposed. Fail.

This Idea Is More Foreign Than A Second Language

This is the issue that even had the English speakers confused.

Children in schools are not used to getting a say in the rules. Even if they have great parents that practice these techniques (and there is probably a 1-in-2-billion chance of that being the case) there are even fewer schools that do. Kids are used to being ordered, prodded, pushed, commanded, controlled, subjected, restrained, adjusted, confined, directed, punished, silenced, and finally questioned. They’re like terror suspects minus the water-boarding (or not).

I’m some foreigner, that they’ve only known for a week, sitting them down and essentially saying “we’re going to do things the exact opposite of every thing you’ve previously experienced.” They had no idea what I was getting at. It was kind of like when I first told them we weren’t going to do rewards and punishments back on day one and they all just looked at me like confused puppies. Only then it was cute and funny. This time it was sad.

So What Do I Do?

I think I’ve laid out the biggest three issues. I can’t speak Chinese, my translators don’t know what the fuck is going on, and my kids aren’t used to this sort of thing at all.

So how can I make this work? I don’t know actually. I’m going to keep trying. But short of learning Chinese myself or hiring my own excellent translator I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back in time and make their parents start them on this system. And I can’t change the way the entire school works.

This is why I’m writing this post. I want your ideas. I know there are some extremely intelligent people who visit this blog and I’m sure you are one of them. Help me.

Leave a comment or email me. Or, if you have no ideas, maybe you could pass this post on to a friend. Thank you!

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3. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?

Before I talk about some of things wrong with this system, let me first say that it is way better than a strict “do as the authority figure says or get punished” method. It actually tries to establish a consistent set of rules for what constitutes good behavior and leans much more on the rewards side as an incentive. Compared to a system that essentially treats kids like slaves to be yelled at and bullied into behaving, the rewards and incentives approach is a great leap forward (China pun, har har).

The rewards system is to strict authority what democracy is to dictatorship. Sure, democracy is better than dictatorship, but it’s still a piece of shit. Here are three things that are wrong with the rewards system:

1. It Only Teaches One Thing: Obedience

The reward system is supposed to incentivize good behavior but what it really does is teach children that being “good” means following the authority figures’ rules. Now it doesn’t really matter what the teacher defines as good behavior. It might be not talking during class or always raising your hand before asking a question. Sometimes it’s just a reward for the correct answer — which sends a terrible message to the kids that don’t know the correct answer: you’re not good.

This is especially bad when you have a big old heap of arbitrary classroom rules. For example, my Chinese assistants don’t want the kids to talk during their meals. They have a good reason for it: there is only limited time to eat and once the kids start talking they almost always ignore their food. Then lunch will end and won’t be finished and they’ll be hungry the rest of the day. But if you combine this with the rewards system you end rewarding the kids that sit quietly during their meal and punishing (with frowny faces or loss of playtime) the kids that chat while eating.

I don’t know about you guys, but punishing a kid for talking while he’s eating seems like a pretty asshole thing to do. And it certainly isn’t going to teach them anything about morality. The only lesson they will get is do what you’re told and you’ll be rewarded.

What if the rules are rational and fair? Well that certainly would be better, but I’ve just never seen it. Sure there are classroom rules about hitting and fighting — I would consider those “rational” — but there are plenty more that are about things like sitting quietly, listening to the assistants, sharing toys, not speaking out of turn, lining up before going outside, washing hands before food, etc. Again, rewarding a kid for lining up before going outside just teaches them to obey authority, nothing more.

Even if you could establish a set of rational rules, I think the message would be the same. The authority you were learning to obey would be less random and make more sense, but you’d still be learning to obey. Consistent and reasonable authority is absolutely better than random and arbitrary authority, for sure, but the lesson is unchanged.

2. It Punishes The Wrong Person

Wait, what? I’ll explain. If I’m teaching a lesson and my students aren’t listening, if they are talking amongst themselves, or staring bored out the window how is that their fault? I’m the one who is being paid to teach them. It’s my job to make my lessons and engaging and interesting. If the kids are finding my lessons boring or uninteresting I’m pretty sure that it’s my fault, not theirs.

Instead of giving them frowny faces for not listening or stars for paying attention maybe I should just focus on being a better teacher. My students don’t owe me anything, and rewarding them for paying attention to my boring ass flashcard game is just a lazy excuse for being a shitty teacher.

It applies for almost every classroom rule that you might enforce using the rewards system. You can’t settle disputes between children without the threat of a frowny face? Fail. You can’t get the students to wash their hands before eating unless you give them stickers? Fail.

I’m not saying that it’s easy to do. It’s hard as hell. I know. I’m struggling to do it. But I refuse to switch to a system that punishes or rewards the students because of my shortcomings.

3. It Establishes Artificial Consequences

When it comes to kids you hear a lot of talk about having to teach them the “consequences” of their actions. This is always done by making up some bullshit fake consequence and then imposing it on them. This is often the excuse you hear for spanking kids. Besides it being just plain wrong to hit a kid, the excuse of “it teachers them consequences” is so retarded I hate even having to address it.

Guess what everybody? In the “real world” as “mature adults” you don’t get spanked for not behaving. Excluding the one violent relationship we are all forced to participate in with our benevolent political masters, nobody is allowed to use force against you when you “don’t behave.”

What are the types of consequences we do have to face? Well, there are the outright cause and effect ones. For example, if you don’t eat, you die. These are pretty straight forward and no child needs to be taught cause and effect through punishments and rewards. Kids learn cause and effect just by interacting with the world.

There are other types of consequences too, like how your actions affect others emotionally. These aren’t learned as easily as the physical cause and effect consequences, but you don’t need a rewards system to teach them. In fact a rewards system can’t teach these types of consequences. The only way you grow to understand the emotional effects of your actions is through empathy. You have empathy for yourself and understand how others effect you and then you have empathy for others and understand how you effect them. How do you encourage this in kids? That’s probably a topic for another post, but I think you start by showing them empathy.

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The Worst Parts

Pretty much any time I was dealing with adults. Like McCoy explained in his last couple posts, trying to get things done (in an honest and legitimate way) is like pulling teeth in China. I spent all of my “adult interaction” time trying to figure out if I was keeping my job, if McCoy was getting one, where we were going to live, and why no one would just deal plainly with us.

But that wasn’t so bad. The absolute worst part — and will continue to be the worst parts of all my days — was seeing the poor treatment of children. It’s mostly a lot of little things that show how little respect adults have for children. The worst incident happened during the students’ lunchtime.

I was in my classroom sitting with my students when a Chinese assistant stormed into the room with a student of a different class. She was pulling him along with one hand and had his plate of food in the other. The assistant forced him into a seat at a far table and slammed the food down in front of him. She yelled at him angrily. Then, she pulled him out of his seat and dragged him toward our table while pointing and yelling. It was in Chinese but I guessed it was something like “Look at how well behaved they are!” She put him back into his seat, hard, and then walked out of the room.

My kids were just staring at me, trying to read my reaction. I got up and walked over the boy who had just been yelled at and sat down in front of him. He was sitting silently, staring at his plate of food, and brooding. After a few seconds of me sitting there he looked up.

“My name is Anderson. What’s your name?”

“My name is Derek…” And he burst into tears.

Jesus Christ, I hate this. “What’s wrong?”

He mumbled some words in Chinese and English. It sounded like “I don’t like this food. I don’t want to eat it.”

Suddenly the Chinese assistant appeared back in the room and came stalking over to our table. She slowed down when she saw me sitting there and sat down without saying anything. I asked her what the problem was. Her response was in Chinese, angry, and directed at Derek.

“He doesn’t like the food?” I asked.

The assistant nodded but gave Derek a look like You’re such a bad kid for not wanting to eat this.

“Can’t he just eat something else?”

She looked at me. Angrily at first, but then her face sort of… calmed. She picked up the plate of food and led Derek out of the room, presumably to find him something else to eat.

This was a small incident, especially in the grand scheme of how children are treated around the world. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a perfect example of adults not treating kids like they’re human beings.

I talked to the other teachers about it later and they agreed that it was terrible, but also warned me that I would see a lot of more it. “This is just how things are here. You can try to report the assistant, but since she didn’t hit the kid no one would do anything. Hitting isn’t even a big deal in China, let alone yelling. And if you do try to get the assistants in trouble it will just hurt you more. They are the headmaster’s eyes and ears and if you get on their bad side you won’t be here long.” Great. I’m going to see this happening over and over and every time I will have to walk the thin line of trying to help and protect the kids without pissing off the assistants. Because truly going after the aggressive assistants would mean losing any chance of helping the kids.

But this is the shit you have to deal with when you’re trying to do decent things in a world full of terrible things. What other choice is there besides giving up and accepting that the world will always be full of terrible things? That’s something I would be more inclined to accept if it wasn’t for what’s next…

The Best Parts

Easy, the kids. Spending the day playing with 5 and 6 year olds. How could that not be the best part? And the hundreds of moments of them learning and playing and laughing and just enjoying themselves that I got to witness and be part of.

I’m going to do a post describing my kids, but for now trust me that they are totally awesome. There are so many conversations and interactions that I want to explain, but I’ll just give you my favorite.

I was beginning my English lesson that was all about introductions. Every student is supposed to say something like “Hello everybody, my name is [whatever]. I’m five years old and I’m from [wherever].” So the Chinese assistants wheeled over a big whiteboard for me and I started writing out the introductory phrase.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” called Roxy. “But the last teacher used to write down all of our names and if we behaved we would get a star next to our name. And we got three stars then we’d get a sticker.”

Obviously, I was not going to do the whole rewards and punishments thing. “Hmm, well, what if we just forget about that whole star and sticker thing and you guys just behave on your own?”

I watched seven heads tilt like confused puppies. “Um, okay, I guess…”

So that was definitely my favorite moment. I just laughed and we moved on. It worked and the kids all behaved. It probably won’t always work. But the kids can’t ever really misbehave anyway. They want to do certain things and I want to do certain things. It’s not “misbehaving” just because I don’t want them to do it. The challenge is finding ways to work together so we can both get what we want. It’s definitely much harder than just “I’m the authority figure so do what I say.” But so what? The price for treating someone like they are a real human being and not a slave to be ordered around is never too high.

Anyway, this is a pretty long post so I should wrap it up. There are more sad moments that I could recount, but many more happy ones. I think I’ll save both for my next 360 days.

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