Worldtour in China

Teacher Torture in Beijing

I don't usually post twice in one day but I just had to today. I frequently search out other blogs and see what is out there on the teaching front. This post is from the front lines of the battle. If you are in the West you know that there are problems in Schools. It probably depends on your age how you relate to this, but surely all of us knew trouble makers or perhaps you were one of them. The behavior that you will see on this video is probably a teachers worst nightmare. What you have is an elderly Chinese teacher showing considerable restraint in a near hopeless situation. I'm not saying that all schools are like this but certainly this kind of problem exists in other parts of China and the world. One university I taught at which admitted anyone who had the money had similar problems but just to a lesser degree.

I don't have these kind of problems at my school but I do see a lack of discipline. I see parents who just let their kids run wild, climb on my furniture, put their dirty shoes on my walls. Chalk it up to the one child system, cultural differences or whatever. They are good kids most of the time but contrary to what we often believe in the west there are lots of young punks who just don't have any respect for their elders. We as teachers or would be teacher hear that teachers are respected in the East. I think this is generally true, but there are some really bad cases too, just like in the west. The difference the punks don't have access to firearms so there aren't as many headlines, like the recent massacre at Virginia Tech. Here are two links that will show it to you as it happened. It doesn't say much for the future of China, but it did draw serious outrage and an interesting reprisal. You can see it here at The Shanghaist and see some comments here at Global Voices online.

posted by worldtour @ 3:41 PM