First day teaching ESL

[icarus]

So today I met my new student. She's from China and speaks intermediate level English.

She comes across, of course, like a little child, or someone without much education. I know better from my own experience of trying to speak German and Tibetan, but our perceptions of each other are so based upon language - how we use it, our vocabulary, what we choose to say - that I was still surprised that she was college-educated.

Her manner was matter-of-fact about it. You could tell it was expected, not a special or proud achievement.

I recall that China used to have a real deep separation between the sexes. Women weren't educated at all, and there was a lot female infanticide. I know who changed this: Mao Tse-Tung, the same man responsible for the Cultural Revolution and the destruction of Tibet. I wonder how many revolutions are so double (and triple and quadruple) edged. The definition of evolution is just 'change over time,' but some changes we can accept and some we can't. The very same policy of equal education took my friend Kyid-pe from his nomadic family, shipped him to a Chinese boarding school where he wasn't allowed to speak Tibetan, where he was was told what his name was now... and given a Chinese name. The kids were cruel because in a school of a couple hundred there were only four Tibetans who weren't allowed to associate with each other because they were to be Chinese now. The Great Leap Forward.

When he went home, years later, he couldn't find his family.

To the school administrators, they were educating a barbarian, doing him a favour. Without their intervention he would have raised horses and yak and never learned to read and write. This was a goal we would laud. But he wasn't given an equal education. That would have been taking it too far, because he wasn't really Chinese. Even if he had a Chinese name.

I wonder if there's also a sense of educating women, but only so far. My college-educated student, her husband's a Chinese Physicist, a Ph.D. There's still female infanticide.

I suspect that the bind Kyid-pe was caught in has less to do with the Cultural Revolution, and more to do with Chinese culture as a whole - that view of outsiders as barbarians - and how difficult that is to change. I suddenly feel a little empathy for Mao, despite all the suffering his unilateral policies caused.

Comments

[toujoursimpur.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, and very true, because at our family reunion last year my little brother was the dog's bollocks throughout the entire affair and I was just "Oh, look how you've grown! Have a cookie." Furthermore, my grandmother is the most submissive person I know.

I don't know about crediitng Mao with the bridging of the gap between sexes ... I'm interested as to why you say that. I wouldn't have called Mao's policies entirely unilateral - instead of putting everyone on the same level, it had a bit of a seesaw effect. For instance, my father was the head of his class until the Cultural Revolution, and then selections for the Red Guard started and he didn't get in til the very end because he was class president and not a peasant. Mao was primarily for the proletariat - not so much for evening things out as for having the working class prevail. I think this has had the detrimental effect of causing suspicion and a fierce competition between people in China - they don't often trust strangers, aren't friendly to anyone but people they know.

That's what I've gleaned through exposure, anyway, may or may not be accurate.

[simmysim.livejournal.com]

i'd just like to say, i had absolutely no interest in almost anything you said until i read this post on it. you're writing is like . . . hypnotizing and magical. o.o; i mean, i enjoyed myself while reading it, and i can get bored reading something that i'm fascinated with.

you have teh m4d l33t skilz.

[ursula]

Well, my Ph.D. program has 2 Chinese women in this year's class to one American woman . . .

[icegemini.livejournal.com]

Female infanticide definitely still exists. A girl I graduated high school with was Chinese. Her family fled China to Australia. I'm not entirely familiar with story, as I didn't know her particularly well, but as I understand it, it was for that exact reason.

I love reading what you write, you have interesting and valid viewpoints that are fascinating! ^.^

Female Infanticide

[laurellias.livejournal.com]

I am not sure that Mao alleviated female infanticide. Not only does female infanticide still exist, but it didn't become popular until the one-child policy. Before, both male and female children were usually brought up and cared for except in times of dire poverty such as famine. In that respect, the Communist government may be responsible for the high rates of female infanticide in China in the past thirty years.

[byandby.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting topic....In 2001, I participated in a study abroad program in China.

I think that humans, as a whole, can adapt to anything. However, this takes time. In China, I think that the problem lies with the rapid change. As with any culture, what we are now is a product of what we were. When you introduce rapid change, a shock will occur. Chinese culture suffered a major shock when its world was turned upside down in 1949 when Mao gained control. Everything that was known and considered to be right or wrong suddenly shifted. The world was thrown into chaos. There had been a separation of the sexes and suddenly everyone was equal. People were going to resist. Heck, there is still resistance (aka female infanticide - boys are still preferred).

The policy of equal education is also not unique to China - European-Americans took Native American children and put them into schools to teach the children "properly". The same thing happened in Australia as well.

Outsiders as barbarians - Sadly, it happens everywhere on every continent.

My apologies, but it was such an interesting post.

[taricorim.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite certain of that... males still outnumber females in Chinese post-secondary education (whereas, by contrast, in Canada females outnumber males). There are still vast differences between the sexes. Also, Mao didn't so much make education equal as render it obsolete.

Infanticide is rarely practised in cities. Most people go with gender-selective abortion, instead.