When the shite hits the fan, who do you blame?

I am really a self-fulfilling prophet of late … Talking myself into awful tummy trouble as described in my last blog which had to do with beliefs, then I started to rummage around for material to write about another favourite, blame-shifting. The same day, yesterday, one of my current schools, a primary school, hit me, their only foreigner, with a corker. The school term finishes end of June and yesterday (Tuesday, June 9) I was informed that this Friday (June 12, Saturday is the thirteenth, close call) I must finish and hand in all test results.

“Lod-ah,” said the English team leader, Emma, calling me by name (Most Chinese cant do r’s very well and like to add a flair to syllables with an emphatic ah unfurling at the end-ah. “This-a Friday you must-a finish and hand in all test results, okay la?” in a tone of voice that made me think I had won some award. This was betrayed by the sheepish smile. It was not more than two weeks ago that Emma and I had discussed tests would be in the middle of June. Emma also knew how I had sukkeled and hakked to get official class lists for all twenty classes from the various teachers, for whom responsibility is a slippery bar of soap that inevitably shot out of their hands into the endless hands of admin:

Excuse #1: “The man who does the printing in the printing office is sick this week.” From which one infers that all the printing needs for a school of one thousand kids and one hundred staff comes to a grinding halt because of one, chain-smoking man who takes two-hour siestas at lunch time. This is the time, usually, when I am free to scuttle downstairs to his office to get my printing done … and he is out on his self-imposed two-hour break fishing or scouring the stores for cheap tobacco or whatever it is chain-smoking photocopy machine gurus do.

Excuse #2: “But some of the children do not have English names.” And my great-grandfather polished cutlery for the British Royal Navy. Relevance? Your point being … ?

The announcement on the tests and my last day is routine buck-passing brought to a new standard and if the semi-lits think this is a whinge, as is their anal-squeezing proclivity (there, always wanted to use the p-word, excruciatingly non-simple and a perversion of good writing style, isn’t it?), bzzzt, wrong answer and so catachrestic of you. These experiences are bloody hilarious.

Firstly, the understanding was that tests would be in about the middle of June (no exact dates given to me though I had asked for them). Secondly, though I had asked repeatedly, no proper class lists were given to me for a long time and the ones I got were scrappy. For Grade seven, classes one to ten, I got ten narrow strips of paper twice the width of my thumb, with Chinese name and student number and enough space left over for me to squeeze in a mark, no room for different test results, class performance and the final test result, so I could then work out an average and give each ragamuffin a fair and square score and dutifully show the school a decent result for each child.

Readers of my blogs will know I have learned to second-guess the Chinese. I had created my own class lists and had already started writing down performance and test scores. But, because the communication in this school has been better than normal, I expected them to keep their promises about the tests and had not finished testing them and now have no way to do so by Friday almost the thirteenth (800 kids and some of them I only see every second week).

Emma informed me of this fresh challenge, have all results ready by Friday, between classes, so as I nodded and walked away from her I had to think of how I would test — as of the very next class — as many students as possible. I decided to get them to write me a letter, telling me what they liked about my teaching and what they didn’t like, and any ideas for improvement. Here is one, unedited letter from a twelve-year-old. Dammit, these kids are endearing. (The literates on this blog might say, “he is just sucking up to you for a better mark”, point taken, but this is the feedback I continually get from fellow teachers and parents time and time again about my goofy “Mr Bean-style” teaching which Chinese kids love.)

Dear Da Shu [My Chinese name, meaning Big Tree]:

We learn together for a long time. We have a lot of happy times. We play a lot of games. And we get a lot from you.

Now you must leave us. Today is last day you teach us. I’m very sad. We all like you. Do you like us? Please teach us every year. If you do that we will happy.

In your class, English is not very difficult. I like your lesson. I really want you teacher us again.

You are friendly. Why do you always have many interesting idea? [After teaching young kids personal development skills, not just English, for nearly twenty years, I have collected or invented heaps of activities.]

We all like you very much! You can’t forget us! We all miss you!

Pan Hao Yue

As that is a child in a much weaker class, Hao Yue (first name comes after surname) will probably get an A minus. It is actually very good English for that age group given the fact the child has been designated to a “standard grade” class instead of a “higher grade”. He probably belongs in a higher grade class but, sadly, he has been overlooked. That means, due to someone else’s irresponsibility, he will be labelled as a poor English learner and that will probably hinder his attempts to blossom throughout his school career. With my developed teacher’s instincts, his impassioned response reflects a feeling of betrayal, of neglect by teachers in his attempts to learn “In your class, English is not very difficult”. I know what he means; the teachers take rote learning to an extreme. They have to stand in front of their teacher with the book held against their stomachs, text facing the teacher while they recite off by heart a one hundred-word comprehension from the book. Comprehension? Misnomer. They just have to recite it and don’t necessarily learn the meaning of all the words and, more importantly, how to use the words in oral performance. (Literates will cringe at this non-creative, joyless exercise; my semi-lits will croon at the uniqueness of the pedagogical strategy, probably extremely similar to their educational upbringing.)

I like to think I am taking responsibility in the situation as best I can, being a subscriber to the notion, “It does not matter who screwed up, it only matters who fixes the screw-up” (a necessary part of your survival kit in China). I hope President Zuma and his team will have this attitude. Coughs discreetly and pats his back.

In closing. I also feel it is my responsibility to point out inappropriate English names for students or inappropriate attire. One twenty-year-old student liked the name SLN and explained, “I always see this [slogan] on excited (sic) movies”. She wouldn’t change it, even after some delicate explanations. Another student, Rose, loves to wear this sweater of a stick man breaking wind and reducing his two stick companions to tears of agony.

Now these students (on the surface) are very prudish and yet their choice of garments — this is one example of many — betray a love for the wicked. Rose did not know what the word fart means but had to understand the visual, and I explained the word to her in Chinese, fam pe. She was only slightly embarrassed and proudly wore the sweater again. The second picture visually says a lot about the young Chinese — Rose is too shy to have her face in the photo, but insistent on wearing the sweater even after I — oh responsible me — explained the pseudo-Gothic “Farfromfarten” to her: note how she proudly stretches out the T-shirt graphic for clearer view. One can only guess at the ultimate meaning of the coinage: get as far away from a fart as possible?

Yes, yes, of course, dear literates, the stick figures remind me of my semi-lits reading my blogs and then exercising their idea of freedom of speech, which I would never deprive them of. I do have the power to delete any comments on my side, by the way, but don’t.