Monday, May 16, 2011

Bon mot for the week

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."


Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)

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2 comments:

JES said...

I sometimes wonder about my former students. (I taught for only three years in the mid-'70s, and have stayed in intermittent touch with only one of them.)

Of course in that time they've moved on to become ripe adults themselves. It's probably fairly creepy that I recall them fondly as smart, fresh-faced 16-year-olds. A couple months ago I Googled one -- a favorite, and spontaneous utterer of one of my favorite lines from a student ever -- and discovered that she'd gone on to a glorious career in psychology.

Note that nowhere in any of this wondering is anything about what effects, lingering or otherwise, I might have had on them. I know I confused many of them, and perhaps it's better if I don't go too far down that path.

Was this particular BMFTW triggered by something particular in your own week, or just a nice choice?

May 17, 2011 9:25 PM
Froog said...

Any motive for this selection arising from my current experience is more like wistfulness/frustration.

I used to feel regularly excited and inspired (and inspiring?) when I was teaching in high school back in the UK, but that very rarely seems to happen here in China.

Partly, it's a language problem: two-way communication is inevitably at least a bit inhibited, and much of my teaching has to be more focused on the nuts-and-bolts of the language rather than the underlying content I'm trying to convey. Partly, it's a cultural problem: there does tend to be a wariness, a reserve, a distance about the Chinese - especially in interacting with foreigners (above and beyond the language issue: most of my foreign friends complain of something similar, even when they are able to converse in fairly fluent Chinese).

And partly, I'm afraid, it's just a talent problem. The great majority of Chinese students we encounter here are spoiled rich kids doing prep courses for overseas university entrance - neither very bright nor very well motivated. The number of exceptional - or even 'interesting' - students I've encountered here seems much lower as a percentage than it was back in the UK. (But perhaps I'm just becoming old and jaded??)

There have been a few, though - especially from my first university job here. One, from my sophomore writing class 7 years ago, has become quite a close friend. She tells me that she'd never been a particularly outstanding student in English, and I was the first teacher - Chinese or foreign - who'd commented thoroughly on her work and tried to encourage her, and she felt this was a transformational experience in her study of English and in her life. A couple of years on, she was becoming disheartened about the difficulty of finding a post-graduation job, but I urged her to stay on in Beijing over the summer and keep plugging away - and she soon found a job teaching English in a middle school (she hated it; but at least it kept her off the streets, and gave her the breathing space to explore other options). A little later, she started dating and eventually married one of my drinking buddies (a rather unstable Polish American guy; I could see that wasn't likely to end well, but I didn't like to foist my opinions on her - we all have to make our own mistakes, I feel, especially in the romance department). They soon divorced, but she doesn't even hold that against me. In fact, her gratitude for the help and inspiration I've supposedly given her can seem a bit excessive, and I'm not all that comfortable with it: she says she thinks of me as an 'uncle' or a 'big brother' now (very Chinese!).

And this is just one girl that I happened to stay in touch with because she was living nearby me in central Beijing. I wonder how many of her classmates, or others I've taught over the years, might harbour similar feelings of adulation that they never told me about? Are there a bunch of Chinese babies named after me, I wonder?

Amongst the epitaphs I could live with (haha!):
Froog - he was a curmudgeonly old bastard, but a good teacher.

May 18, 2011 1:19 AM

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