To would-be writing teachers in China

News flash hot off the Xinhua wire: “harmonious society” is out, “scientific view of development” is in.

What does this mean to you, dear soon-to-be teacher? It means you will see this as the core of every single paper submitted in your class for the next five years.

Now, I don’t want to bash on my former students. Some of them read this page, and many of them are quite bright kids. However, it took a lot of beating to get them to show it.

There is a major problem with teaching English writing in China — the foundation isn’t completely absent. Not the basic grammar and punctuation skills, which are often questionable, but something more essential: original thought.

I’ve been told — point blank and by multiple people — that “expressing your own original idea” is not the point of writing assignments in most classes. Even writing ones. Instead, any question is linked around through a series of political slogans with an end point of the current catch phrase of the Communist Party of China.

I can understand that in the political classes students are asked to take. In many ways, it’s no different from high school in the US, where teachers have a narrow view of what is an “appropriate” response to each topic, and any deviation from that is penalized heavily.

However, the tables turn in university, and parroting exactly what the teacher told you to think will land you with stunningly low marks.

Here, I was given the impression that the high school system continues into perpetuity. There is never a point before graduate school where students are sent out and told to explore and develop their own ideas.

My friend Jimmy who went through graduate school here told me the first four weeks of school were nothing but a series of “unlearning” lectures. The students were taught to stop echoing back everything and, instead, told they had to come up with something original and voice their own ideas. That the first semester of graduate school is used to teach students what they should have known the last ten years remains bewildering to me.

So when you walk into a writing class on day one with an incredibly simple assignment, it’s no surprise that 95 percent of the students respond in mirror.

Do you think text messages (SMS, MSN and similar) and cell phones have made communication more or less personal? Support your opinion with specific reasons and examples.

This question somehow got almost three entire classes to respond using the following points — expanded to paragraphs of course.

I think text messages and cell phones make communication more personal.

Cell phones are very affordable and messages are cheap so there is [insert totally irrelevant point about development] in the countryside now.

Text messages are convenient for when you want to ask someone out or break up with them but are too afraid to talk to him.

It’s more convenient to call my parents on a mobile phone during Spring Festival than to write a letter to them.

And that is why text messages and cell phones are a good thing. They are a valuable tool in our modern world and aid the goal of building a harmonious society. Society is more harmonious because of them. I think as long as we have text messages and cell phones, the world will be more colorful and harmonious, and eventually we can enjoy a harmonious society.

Ouch. I wish I could say I was exaggerating with the last part.

When writing assignments don’t follow this format, they follow the alternate: plagiarize most of an article and write one paragraph at the end stating the politically correct view. That format was popular with lazier students.

As you can imagine, it’s an uphill battle getting students to abandon this format and write what they actually think. After a year, I was left with the impression that few, if any teachers, had asked these students one question essential to education: “What do you think?” It seemed most everything focused on “What are you supposed to think?”

In all fairness, it’s doable. The kids are smart, they have the potential, it’s just nobody is forcing them to use if before you start your job.

So, to whoever the would-be teacher reading this is, don’t give up. It will take a hell of a lot of work on your part and a lot of faith that students are holding up their end, but if you do your job right, by the end of the semester you should be receiving papers which don’t mention any “scientific view of development.”

Good luck.