The Strugglers
May 31st, 2006 by MarkOne thing I’ve noticed about the more successful bŭxíbān owners I’ve worked with is a certainty that kids need their schools or else they’ll be ruined for life. I can understand how the idea that people who don’t learn English will never be anything more than garbage truck drivers would motivate a school owner to put more effort both into improving the education they offer and into marketing, but enough is enough. Learning English well does not guarantee financial success or happiness, nor is it the only way. The two Taiwanese people I’ve met who had the best English skills of all those I’ve met were both over-worked and paid less than what an engineering major would would make one year out of college in Taiwan. This situation isn’t constrained to Taiwan, either. Just look at Chén Tiān Qiáo (陳天橋), the founder of a computer gaming company called Shanda (盛大). He’s a 32 year-old self made billionaire, and he didn’t make it through his English skills. Driving garbage trucks, indeed.
I’ve thought about this issue for years, but what really brings it to a head is a boy who’s recently dropped down into my newest class. He’s been at the school for over a year and a half, but he just keeps failing. His former classmates are reading 45 page stories about Pocahontas and Aladdin. He’s practicing sentences like, “Can you swim?” and, “Yes, he is. He’s a boy.” I never imagined a kid could go for so long without making any real progress, and I feel his pain every time I have to grade one of his quizzes. He doesn’t really put any effort into his homework, and, as far as I can tell, he doesn’t want to be at my school.
Today, as my boss was going on about how it was irresponsible of this kid’s parents to let his older brother leave after failing a similar number of times and saying that he could just keep doubling the kid’s homework and flunking him down until he was a 19 year-old in a class of 3rd and 4th graders, I just felt sick. The idea that you have to break kids down until you “fix” them just doesn’t fit with my worldview. I don’t think letting the older brother quit or switch schools was case of bad parenting at all. Not every kid is going to respond the same way to the same school system. What works very well for most kids, doesn’t work at all for others. It wasn’t worth getting into a half hour debate consisting of little more than uhm-hums on my side, though, so I didn’t really disagree very vocally. Still, I hope the poor kid’s parents do let him quit. An unpleasant and unproductive year and a half can’t be redeemed by forcing him to continue along the same path for another two. The way I see it, he’s just getting used to failure, and few things are harder to watch a kid do.
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May 31st, 2006 at 7:22 pm
You’re right; one of my biggest gripes about Taiwan (and China too) is the one-size-fits-all pedagogy. Or, at least that’s my impression of it. And it isn’t much better in the west.
By the way, if you’re just seeking to lose excess fat you won’t have to lose muscle, too. Just keep some weights in with the cardio and a sensibly high-protein diet. The more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn just by being alive…
/Brad
June 1st, 2006 at 2:28 am
Hi, Mark!
Your opinion of questionable usefulness of English skills definitely makes sense although the same can be attributed to usefulness of university degree and education in general. Bill Gates is example. But don’t stats say that the only way to middle class is to get an education?
Happiness, I would say, is something that depends on person itself than on wealth or education. Although recognition has something to do with happiness and recognition definitely depends on wealth (and education).
I think your point is compelling to those immigrants who after years living in North America can’t express themselves beyond basic working topics: “The problem was reproduced, investigated and fixed”:-)
June 1st, 2006 at 4:29 am
Vitaly, I completely agree that the value of degrees is vastly over-rated. Education is what really matters, not schooling. In my personal experience, formal schooling and education only have a shaky connection at best. My degree in Japanese language and literature means very little. I know other westerners, like Darin, who don’t have any degree at all and have far better Japanese skills than I do. Conversely, I know quite a few people with computer science or information systems degrees who know far less about computers than I do.
I don’t really think that a degree is the only way to be “middle class”, or at least not in America. Right now, only 26% of American adults have a college degree, and huge number of “middle class”, and even a few “upper class” people, don’t have degrees.
One other thing to point out, is that my students aren’t living in North America. They’re all Chinese kids living in Guishan. If they were living in North America, then picking up some basic English skills really would be crucial. The point I was making about Chén Tiān Qiáo wasn’t so much about the usefulness of education as it was about the fact that not everybody has to be a foreign language expert. Other skills, such as engineering, can also serve a person very well.
June 1st, 2006 at 10:25 pm
I agree totally with you here. I really think that Taiwan would be better served by making English classes in school optional, and not a part of the “liankao”. That way effort could be focused on those who want to study, and those who have no interest, inclination or ability can simply do something else.
June 1st, 2006 at 11:27 pm
I wonder if it is part of the nature of being in an analyst type role to ask questions of the value of what you are doing, and the nature of being a manager / director to believe in it, or at least talk like you do.