Thursday, October 14, 2010

are taiwanese emotional wussies? (can't please taiwanese part 2)

i recently got called aside by my bushiban boss for a sit down. it seems the students are very happy to stay with me. no complaints. but the boss feels that i should not correct students' english when they say something wrong, the reason being that taiwanese might feel called out and loss of face for being told they were wrong in front of others.
boss's suggestion was that i remember all the mistakes, then write them later on the board, not calling attention to who made the mistake.
i am really tired of taiwanese people's "emotional pussy-ism". it makes everything dealing with them that much harder.
first of all, we are in a class to learn. i have yet to have a student complain that i corrected them; in fact on the questionare, they said they were happy that "teacher always takes time to correct us". but the idea still exists among the establishment that correcting mistakes is bad.
in english teaching, you sometimes run into "entitlement students", ie those who some lazy foriegn teacher has let dominate the class forever and who think their english is so superb. if you call THAT person out, your job is at risk.
to be honest, i sometimes wish i didn't have to depend on this market for my income. pleasing them is a major pain. and i'm not one to walk on eggshells or avoid any toes.
another thing i hate is the "english only" rule, which is really stupid. i keep my class at a 90/10 ratio- 90% english immersion with some chinese explanation. the reason for this is that explaining it in english doesn't always work. i've heard many students from "english only" classes come to me with totally WRONG renderings of phrases. i really want my students to learn.
i care, but i'm not really paid to care, am i? just give them what they want, the way they want it, even if it's detrimental to them in the long run.
funny thing is, we are foreign teachers. the whole point is to be immersed in a foriegn teacher's class/culture. but what many taiwanese want is western culture the taiwanese way, ie a taiwanese version of western education. and that's the real oxymoron of this whole thing.
and anyway,why should we as foriegn teachers be required to do things the taiwanese way if the whole point is to immerse our students in a foriegn teacher environment? isn't that ill preparing them for if/when the do go overseas? isn't all this emotional pussy coddling doing them a disservice?
one cannot separate language from culture. if my role is as a foriegn teacher, then i refuse to teach the taiwanese way.
simple as that.

9 comments:

  1. "emotional pussy-ism" is in no way limited to Taiwan.

    ReplyDelete
  2. no, but it's a trend enshrined in the recent culture here, hence my commenting on it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah but think about the whole everyone's-a-winner-nobody-gets-left-behind-don't-show-your-report-card-to-anyone-but-your-parents-because-we-want-people-with-lower-grades-to-get-their-feelings-hurt culture. Where is that from?

    ReplyDelete
  4. it came from shitass emotional pussy white people of course, which is why i'm WARNING TAIWAN about it.
    you guys have one big problem: you keep adopting the the views of these liberal, white losers who come to taiwan, instead of the views of traditional americans.
    but you take this white pussyism and you add it to the chinese value for face face face all the time, and you have a really toxic pot of pussies.
    thanks for coming by.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Totally agree, here, about what you said in the comments section: a lot of Taiwanese have started imitating the liberalism and wussy-methods of the North American school system. This is what Ayn Rand called the progressive school system, which was influenced by the educational theories of John Dewey.

    ReplyDelete
  6. wow! ayn rand said wussie! i really admire her!
    thanks for stoppping by

    ReplyDelete
  7. lol, Mr. Lin, indeed, but Rand never actually used the word wussie, but she used many even more potent and equally forceful words!

    ReplyDelete