The Giant We....a bit from the recent past

I pulled this out of the dust. It used to be part of the blog on FrogFaith which has since been destroyed, and seeing as I talk about China being a "we" country, I thought I'd put it up too. And so it goes...

China is a “we” country. A center country; a place where they are all one, and the rest of the world is “others”, outsiders. What is good for the country is good for the individual.

You can see this in the young and old. If you ask an America child what they did today at school, they might say something akin to:

“I learned how to make a paper airplane. I took a nap, and then I played ball with my friends”

In China, though, they are more likely to say:

“We learned how to make a paper airplane. We took a nap, and then we played ball.”

Notice the use of “we”. The self is not valued here. In fact, if you act like you are better than others, you are looked down upon, and are meant to feel ashamed. This goes for both looking more competent and less competent: Either one separates you from the pack. Either one puts you above the rest because you are noticed; you are individual and no longer part of the “we”.

At the primary school I teach, Cui Jin, when a child is bad, you make them stand up where everyone can see them. The rest of the class laughs at the child for being so noticeable, for being set apart from the rest. The worst place to put the child is the front of the class. So the punishments are in a tier (the last few have been created with a little of my help, though they chose the placing); If they are bad one time, they stand up in their seat; still part of the group, but standing up among them. If they are bad again, they are moved to the back of the room to face the wall (standing in the corner was my influence), and each consecutive time they are bad, they are moved to another corner, the whole class noticing them being paid attention to, moved around the class, and not within it. The final punishment is to stand in front of the class, their back to the class. This is the punishment that gets the most laughter from the others, and the rest of the class usually finds it too distracting for it to last too long. That has little dampening on the punishment, however, as with the many times I have done this to my students, most of the children did not last long themselves before they started crying. I think they were ashamed. Everyone was looking at them; looking out from the group and pointing him out as individual. Even the bullies cry.

When I first started teaching at the primary school I was overwhelmed. They did not like to discipline the students, so at first they were wild, loud and impossible to teach. You see, Cui Jin is a private school, and they believe if they do not bend to the students and let them act out, the child will complain to their parents and they will take them to another school, so Cui Jin will loose money. I don’t have this problem. I’m there to teach, and if I’m going to teach them, they’re going to have to listen. Foreigners are valued here, though we are still ridiculed for being outsiders while they value us. They want to perpetuate the western influence. They believe it is their way to greatness, and so they need to have as much genuine western influence as possible. Therefore, my request was taken into consideration. I’m being too nice. I was frustrated, and I had little patience. I told them something needed to be done and what they were doing wasn’t working, and I wasn’t very nice about it. I told them the students were brats and that they wouldn’t learn anything.

In my first week, while I was teaching a third grade class, a fight broke out between two boys. Before I could get to the boys, the Chinese teacher (my translator) had rushed to them both and had them standing. After a few minutes, they were told to sit back down, and the teacher was actually surprised to see them fighting again a few minutes later. She made them stand again. A few minutes later, they were punching each other while standing, facing the front of the class but still not looking at each other. “What do you expect? There’s nothing to stop them. They get no punishment if they do it again.” She didn’t understand. It was then that I suggested putting them in the corner. In my first two weeks, I was still timid enough to ask before doing so. The teacher’s mouth dropped, and she stood there gapping at me shocked. I decided she must not have understood me. She looked like I had asked if I could beat them. I asked again another way, and then another. She slowly shook her head, her mouth still open, and her eyes wide. “No. You can’t do that!” The boys fought one more time before the 35 minute class was over before I finally got her to comply with having them sit away from each other.

The next time this happened in another of my classes, with another teacher present, I didn’t ask. I simply grabbed their wrists and walked them to opposite corners in the back of the class. It took a while for them to understand that they were to stare at the corner and not talk. They shook their heads, tried to pull away and one of the two began crying in under 30 seconds. The teacher just watched. She said nothing and pretended not to understand English when I asked her to translate for me. I’ve been their long enough to know she speaks English just fine. A few teachers tried to stop me as I was doing this in other classes, saying they’d handle it, but I went ahead. “No, they need to learn, they need to listen. They need discipline.” I’m very tall and can be very intimidating, so they didn’t argue: they just gapped. After one of these classes, the teacher actually coddled the student, petting him and took him to the nurse’s office as thought he had been beaten.

They stopped screaming, they stopped fighting with each other, and they started listening. Many of the students simply rejoiced at their fellow students ‘un-we-ness’, but many others looked horror struck and would turn abruptly to the front, their arms crossed on their desks, and their mouths tightly shut.

There was an exception to the teacher’s reaction. Ms. Mo, a rather thick Chinese woman, was sitting in the back of a particularly unruly class. We had both tried numerous times to get the children to be quite, yelling in English and Chinese for them to be quiet. “An jing!” Ms. Mo wagged her finger, called out “1, 2, 3!”, and stalked around the room to no effect. Finally, I grabbed one of the worst students, who was acting like the class’s mascot and put him in a corner in the front of the room. Ms. Mo’s eyes went wide, but not in fear, it was awe and interest. The class burst into a sigh and a mass of “oohs”. Then there was the bit of laughter. I turned to them, called out “An Jing!” and pointed at them. “The next person to talk gets the same treatment.” Ms. Mo translated. The class fell silent, with only a few scared whispers.

Ms. Mo soon became what I call my little general. I usually don’t have to do the disciplining as long as she’s not busy correcting papers in the back of the class. The moment a child acts out, she starts the motions; stand up, back of class, other corner, and finally the front of the class. If there are students who lead on the class, I simply pick up their desk, them included and move them to front and center. They never utter a word after this, and Ms. Mo always smiles, often quietly nodding at me in approval. In the beginnings of my unruly classes she has the students put their heads down on the tables until they settle (another of my influences), or goes around from loud student to loud student, lightly slapping some hands and making others stand, immediately making examples of the bad students.

My general spread the word, and soon I had half of my translators doing the same, though I knew she was still at the lead, spear heading them on to cooperate. Never before had the students had consequences, and none of them had run to their parents. It was a classroom again, and their taboo was an acceptable casualty. A few of the translators still squirm and wince at the treatment, but they no longer try to stop it, but are also otherwise unhelpful with translating anything else to the class. I guess their unhelpfulness is their own protest. I’ve checked, and none of these women have children. Ms. Mo does have a child. Perhaps when they have their own, they won’t be so timid.

As a side note, this was lunch at Cui Jin . The Lotus root was always good, but I think they recylced the rice...it was always a bit crunchy.I should also note that I haven't edited these posts since I wrote them and I don't think exactly like I did before, but I think I should leave them as they were. You can see how I think now and what has changed by reading my newer blogs. Oh, and I haven't worked at Cui Jin since about January I think.