Teaching through fear

Wow Aaron, I am shocked to hear you are leaving after only a few months. What’s the reason for the work permits not being extended? Good news about maybe heading to Ghana in the near future and good luck with all the travels, sounds great!

Here in Ch!na things have been getting quite interesting in the schools. I have jumped on board the Ch!nese discipline bandwagon and have received instant results (not that I am that pleased with my approach) and I have been having great discussions with the kids about homework and the pressure of school.

After today’s episode in the primary school, I thought it would be best to write another blog entry seeing as though it has been a number of weeks since my last. Just this afternoon I was at my wits end with a number of students who refused to pay any attention to me so I took them through a huge speal about how their parent’s pay a fortune for them to attend here, they are wasting their classmates and my time and the disrespect shown towards my authority in the classroom, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Warnings had been given that I won’t tolerate the behavior and that two strikes means “you’re out” of the classroom. It reached that point this afternoon and I threw three kids out after seeking assistance from a fellow colleague where we almost had to drag one child out. Their actual classroom teacher who was in my colleagues classroom appeared and then had a chat to them outside. The students re-entered and apologized and we got on with the class. Time will tell if the message has gotten through. Various episodes like this have been going on the past few weeks in my middle school as well where I have thrown kids out of class. It seems the only way to get through to the students and send a message to the others about the seriousness of mucking around and the consequences that result in the behavior is through fear. Time will tell…
This leads me to my next point where I can start with an incredible observation I made today. It has taken me almost 8 weeks to notice this but there is a 13 year old student in one class who is going grey and when I mean grey I don’t mean a few grey hairs, I mean she actually has more white/grey hair than black! I wondered for a moment if it was a fashion thing but Chinese schools are conservative and realised coloured hair was not allowed. I sought clarification with her English teacher and surely enough she is going grey at 13!! Her teacher claimed that this was due to her mother not looking after her and not washing her hair. I asked if maybe it was due to pressure and stress and the teacher didn’t really respond. I have also noticed lots of kids with large portions of grey hair on their heads, even as young as 8 years old and knowing that of course grey and black do contrast, but this is such a phenomenon and confronting! Maybe all this is due to the pressure placed upon the children to succeed in a hugely competitive country such as this.
On homework; I have had many discussions with the students about homework and they have all commented on the large amounts they have to complete. As an example, the Victorian Government’s curriculum outlines state that year 3 and 4 students are expected to complete(if I remember correctly) at least 60 to 90 minutes homework a week whereas students here of the same age are expected to complete 60 to 90 minutes per night! Sunday is their free day. The contrast is staggering so sometimes I feel they almost have an excuse when they misbehave in my class when maybe they struggle to understand the fast talking laowei (foreign) teacher! You gotta give it to these kids, they work harder than what most of us did in school.

Till next time…