It would be fair to say that in the 3 months that I worked with these young people, they came to see that they could trust me. I wasn’t planning to up and leave after only a few days, and perhaps as someone old enough to be their mum, I was able to relate to them in such a way that they felt they could talk to me. Unable to do much to improve their homestay conditions, we teachers would invite them home for barbecues etc, on occasional weekends, which they jumped at. When my contract ended and I left the school, I was genuinely sad to say goodbye to them.
Two major details stand out from this period of teaching. The first was the very clear lack of such a thing as “conscience” when it came to what we regard as cheating. Copying from other students’ work, or using online exam papers and essays etc was described by the Chinese students as “being smarter than other students” if this achieved better grades. Asking them how they felt inside, i.e. appealing to the notion of guilt or knowledge that this was wrong, just did not compute. All that mattered to them was personal success, by whatever means. Interestingly though, if they were on the receiving end of perceived unfairness, the outrage was palpable!
The other thing that we discovered was that any piece of official paperwork or documentation from China could never be trusted to be accurate or even true. Student reports from Chinese schools so often did not match the level of ability we saw every day. Other teachers who had lived and taught in China described their classes being video recorded by the heads of the school, as well as being instructed to give higher grades than student work reflected. Low grades would reflect both on them as teachers and the school itself, so teachers who refused to comply soon found themselves without a job.
I started to do a lot of reading about China and its history. I wondered how a country and culture that was so old and steeped in tradition could regard such practices as acceptable. Had it always been this way? What about aspirations such as honour, ethics and morality?
I’m sure there are other scholars of Chinese history who will have much greater knowledge than I do but I came to the conclusion that with so many upheavals in its past, (in particular the horrors of the Cultural Revolution), many older traditions, values, images, belief systems and items of former reverence were vilified, torn down and destroyed.
Perhaps, unlike our 2000-year-old, fundamentally Christian value system that is basically adhered to in our societal and governmental laws, China no longer has a long-standing set of values that have been handed down over many generations. Whatever has been officially decreed and foisted upon the populace at any set time, is now the accepted norm, and citizens defy it at their peril! Should all of this be a warning bell to the West?
The parents of these young people would have been young during the deprivations of the Cultural Revolution, and were determined that their own, usually single child, was not going to endure the same things. The “little Emperor” syndrome was very noticeable here, where a young (usually male) child had been waited on hand and foot by a completely self-sacrificing mother, even to the extent of bringing food to the son so he could continue playing endless video/computer games. Here, our expectations of behaviour, attendance and work completion would often be met with quite arrogant resistance, and only the knowledge that we could invoke the powers of the Immigration department for poor attendance had any influence on some of them.
As an introduction to the world of English Language Schools, I did learn a lot, especially about the PRC! I became and still remain very sceptical about any information or documentation that emanates from official Chinese sources, and am never surprised when doubts about truth or accuracy of such information later prove to be well-founded.
And as for the owner of the school? Eventually, he was able to use his business connections to become part of a city council group dedicated to building closer relationships with China.
Enough said!
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