Preaching to Incmates

“The inmates run the asylum,” my supervisor says.
We are at a hole in the wall that serves as a bar, discussing the likelihood that I’ll be fired if I don’t stop acting like a Western teacher. It’s around 7 PM, dark and still so cold that a winter jacket is essential even inside every establishment. Another Westerner who used to teach at the university where my job is threatened is there. His very presence unnerves me. There is no such thing as privacy, let alone propriety in a Communist country– even among the Westerners.
“They don’t want to do homework. They don’t want to use the computer. They don’t know how to debate without thinking you have some political agenda. And if they don’t like you they will do their damndest to get you fired,” Supervisor says. A bottle of red wine before him, he pours himself a glass and offers me some, whcih I gladly take to diminish my edginess. With a bulky sweater on his already bulky body he reminds me of Hemingway. All that’s missing if a fireplace– and an irate temper, I guess. I tell him so, practicing my business etiquette but not without sincerity. “Trust me on this one. You’re doign exactly what I did when I came to China. And what all Westerners who care abotu education do: yu’re trying to teach them to think.”
Is that what I’m doing? I fly through the mental files to recall that conscious thought. Teach them to think... teach them to think... nope can’t find – oh! There it is, filed under a conversation held with a friend over lunch at a favorite restaurant at the University of Chicago, teh day before I left for China. Yes indeed. “I’m gonna teach those Communist kids critical thinking.”
“But I’m not preachign politics. I told you before I will not talk politics,” I say. An objctive listening would hear “No, I’m not!” contradicted with the passion only a critical thinker (hence one who infuses politics into everything she thinks and does).
“Well, you may not be talking abotu Obama or Democrats versus Republicans, but you did have them do a debate on capitalism versus nationalism.”
“That I did. There were debate sujects in the book I was given for class and I... well, I let one evolve. The original debate we did in class was abotu money: is making money more important than nationalism. That worked fine.”
I’m confused. On teh 24-hour drive from Beijing to Huludao, Neil discussed in detail some topics he’d discussed in class and the hoemwork he’s assigned his students. Two thousnad-word essays on the atrocities committed by Chairman Mao, true histories of Taiwan and Hong Kong, freedom on speech and of the press.... And here I was about to be fired to assigning 200-word compositions to debate the topic of nationalism vs. capitalism. Thank gracious I opted that day against implementing a Marxist dictionary entry on art and aesthetics to my Chinese major students!
“Listen, you’re a very intellectual and politically charged American who is used to debating these topics and others like them in university classes since your freshman year. You can have these discussions in America with everyone, especially the creative crowd you hang around with. You’re very libereal and very educated. But you have to dumb it down,” Supervisor says, somethign between a smile and smirk abotu his face.
He makes enough eye contact to let me know he’s talking to me. He does not make enough to cause me to think we’re having a personal heart to heart. This still has to be professional, though his diction wavers between professional and personal. He refills my glass when it’s empty.
“They don’t care abotu these things. They’re dumb. They’re realy dumb. They’re like fifth graders. You have to handle them with kid gloves.”
Kid gloves? I have to handle the 22-year-olds who want to fire me with kid gloves? They call teh shots at the univertsity and I’m supposed to kowtow to them? This is beyond culture shock; this goes against my constitution: I do not kowtow to anyone, but I will handle an editor or publisher with kid gloves. That’s what I understand. That’s what I know, To handle a superior with diplomacy and tact, curtailing my politics when the boss calls for somethign small. It’s my way of holding out til I earn the big stuff. It’s one of those situations where you do it their way for a while until they learn they can trust you and rely on you and then you get the good stuff.
“You just haven’t earned their trust yet,” says the other Westerner, a Canadian who’s been in China illegally for a couple of years.
I’m confused again. Why would they laugh so much in my classes and why would some of my classes almost unanimously turn in their homework if they so disliked me? Why do they show me one face then talk to teh director of the universtiy out of the other side of it? Why would they come to study English privately with me in the teachers lounge at lunch and bring me treats in class? Such duplicity is evidently more obviated in America than in China. Such duplicity I cannot fathom. Duplicity I cannot suffer.
“Look. I’m just telling you what not to do. I’ve learned this after beign fired from two jobs. I’ve been here four years. I’m married to a Chinese woman. I’ve learned a thing or two abotu how to do these things,” Supervisor says. “Just give it some time. For right now, though you will not give hoemwork. You will not have them blgo anything. You will not have any more debates. You will follow the book, unless you can see it’s gonna lead to mroe political upheaval.”
Supervisor tells me to talk to my 22-year-olds abotu fashion, about leading stress-free lives, about health and exercise, abotu wedding customs, about baeball and pop stars. To a person who’s spent the majority of her career hanging out with PhDs, architects and engineers, this sounds absolutly laughable. But I think abotu it more deeply as Supervisor continues to tell how he really cared about shaping these minds to lead China into a new age as I did. He tells me about how he can now somewhat more freely discuss heated topics with students he’s had repeatedly, students who have granted him their trust and who want to go to graduate school and become the next great writer.
“One in a hundred students you have will be like this. Don’t worry abotu the others. If they wnt to work in a facotry or drive a cab after graduation that is not your fault. If they want to remain brainwashed by Communist propoganda and never learn critical thinking, you can’t hep them. If they don’t see the opportunities available to them, that’s not yoru concern. In class discussions, you will lose about a third of your students quickly. Keep talking. Soon enough you’ll lose another third. Keep talking. After a while half of the rest will tune out. Keep talking. You’re still gonna have an impact on those who turn out to be the one in a hundred. When they do something with their lives in 10 or 20 years part of it will be because of something you taught them. But for right now, get your baseball lingo going, and talk to them abotu the Amrican movies you like. Talk tot them abotu yoga and a vegetarian diet. Talk to them about weddings– I know you don’t beleive in marriage but love and marriage is all they can think about. Tell them you don’t want to get married but inform them of American wedding customs. They find it fascinating.”
“My politics have turned from beign disenfranchised by American convention to gritting my teeth over a conversation abotu weddings?”
Supervisor tells me I don’t have to espouse these things. I just can’t act pissed off about them or politicize it to the students.
Kid gloves. Let the inmates run the asylum. All that matters is that I have a job. IN the end, it’s less taxing. I can stop running myself to empty, spending 20 hours a week on homework only to find more to grade. I can focus instead on the other reasons I’m in China: travel, writing, and exploring a culture (in nonpolitical ways). Somehow it makes my job... and my life here... a lot easier. By learnign diplomacy, I would not have guessed that I’d learn to simplify my life.
That was a good lesson. May I have the wherewithal to be able to teach my students so well.