I teach at a minor private university here, and I often feel ashamed of what I do. To say cheating is rampant would be the understatement of all time. Grading standards are all over the place, but tend toward the overly lenient end of the spectrum. (I mean, it’s not as if we could flunk an entire class, is it?) Sometimes I feel that I am pretending to teach, and they are pretending to learn. It seems that all the externals (buildings, classes, degrees) are in place, but not the internal reality. I don’t know whether to blame “the system”, the students, or me.
Granted, many of the students back at my old university were less than studious, but at least there was SOME intellectual activity going on.
A colleague teaches at another minor private university, and has the same concerns. In fact, he observed that the professors routinely plagiarized their papers, which his college publishes as a journal.
I suppose things must be better at Tai Da, Shr Da, Zheng Da, places like that (they could hardly be worse). Does anybody else want to share their observations?
Well, I’ve observed that the higher a person’s education the stupider he tends to be, at least in Taiwan.
I met a guy one time with a degree in environmental science who thought that the concept of global warming was an elaborate scam perbetrated on the third world as a way of discouraging them from developing their economies and competing in international markets.
And I knew a woman with a degree in Chinese literature who thought that the Chinese subtitle that came with Hollywood movies was the “real” version. According to her all of the scripts are written in Chinese and then translated into English. Both of these people were succesful, wealthy, jet setter types.
One local professor I had was great when he stuck to the subject matter, but would mention something about prostitutes at least once in class. Once he announced that he’s always visited Thailand with his family, but hopes to visit solo to try a “real Thai massage.” Oh yes, and there’s the time he said that Jews own all American media, an idea many professors seem to share.
I recall Tomas had a run-in with a real ass of a professor in an earlier thread.
The mere fact you question the validity of your teaching says to me that you are trying to make a difference,which is half the battle. I have found from my own teaching experience, that the difference is never the difference you make when you set out. Education is a high priority in Asia, yet to actively know what you learned isn’t because it seems that they still have to contend with the fact that they still haven’t learned how to think outside the box. Looking good on paper is Asia’s face…
On a train from Beijing to Xian, I overheard a ‘laoshi’ discussing America vs China then China vs Taiwan with his starry eyed ‘student’. I am certain that if I knew better Chinese, that conversation would have been a riot.
Education seems to me doesn’t guarantee a broadened perspective, just a fatter waist and bank account…
What I figured out about half way through my first semester teaching at Soo Chow Law School was that university here in Taiwan is simply a four year vacation for the kiddies. And when I say vacation I mean that in the absolute sense of the word. One year was enough. I am sometimes asked to teach for different law schools here in Taiwan and my stock answer is “Thank you, I appreciate you thinking of me, but I have no desire to act as a pre-school monitor for children, which is what university amounts to in Taiwan”.
Usually the professor who has asked me, looks kind of sheepish and then laughs. They know what I have said is true.
I will stick to teaching adults. And on that note, let me continue the Soo Chow Law School story. I taught both in the day and in the night-time “extension” division. The extension division was all working adults, many of them about my age. I really enjoyed that, as they had serious adult business/law/government backgrounds, came to class prepared, asked tough questions (it was an intellectual challenge for me!) and were, to put it simply, educatated adults who wanted to be there and had considerable experience in the real world.
It’s the same in the West. Just look at all the protest crap that comes spewing out of universities.
John Robinson once announced a contest in which he offered bragging rights (a nice paper certificate) for anyone who could answer some riddles. He got literally thousands of responses, and surprisingly most of them had the right answers – except for answers from college students or professors (he identified these by coming on school letterhead or from a college address (like “George Schmuck, Universitas Bostoniensis CLA, Warren Towers Rm 1708, Boston, MA, 02215”). The answers from self-identified college-affiliated folks were about two-thirds wrong.
Actually, it was done to extend DuPont’s patents on refrigerants. The “ozone hole” nonsense came up, magically, right when DuPont’s patents on Freon were about to run out. Now, of course, they have another 20 years (well, ten now) of patent life on the new stuff (which doesn’t work as well, uses more energy, etc.).
Bob, that thing about the subtitles is truly thought-provoking. Along that order of misapprehension, I heard of somebody (probably an urban legend) who thought the world was really all in black-and-white until the 1940’s, because that’s what all those old movies show.
Sometimes I think that Chinese students are developmentally behind their U.S. counterparts–like, acting about four years younger than their true age. Not only does this show up in their personalities, but also in institutional organization–universities here are a lot like high schools in the U.S., for instance. Students don’t really get to choose their classes, and have way to many of them by our standards. (2 hours a week of a language class? In my experience, that’s just about enough to keep from forgetting what you learned before.) If we don’t call roll, or otherwise encourage them to come to class, they mostly don’t.
I wonder what goes on in the science department? They can’t be this way in physics or chemistry, can they?
Their relative difficulty with creative work is surely a cultural difference. We’re more likely to cheat by “b.s.-ing” (= composing nonsense that sounds meaningful, for your non-English speakers out there), while here they’re more likely to just print something from the internet. (I once got handed an essay on “Doraemon,” by a student who didn’t seem to notice that the author of the essay refers to himself as a middle-aged Japanese.)
Anyway Jesus I guess the real question is “What can you do to actually get them interested in something involving English?” If you can succeeed in this you can perhaps help them with their English a bit and provide a more interesting environment for everyone concerned, especially yourself. I’d sugget television programs and movies on DVD for this. It’s not as simple as it sounds but Wow what a change you can create in some students attitude toward English. Suddenly it becomes something real and dramatic instead of just more stuff to study from a book.
I don’t know about the urban legend, but that’s a direct recap of one of the Calvin and Hobbes comics where the Dad enjoys filling Calvin’s head with misinformation (although it was photos, not movies).
(No, I didn’t type this out, I cut and pasted from the net )
C: Dad, how come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
D: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs ARE in color. It’s just the
WORLD was black and white then.
C: Really?
D: Yep. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was
pretty grainy color for a while, too.
C: That’s really weird.
D: Well, truth is stranger than fiction.
C: But then why are old PAINTINGS in color?! If the world was black and
white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
D: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
C: But… but how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their
paints have been shades of gray back then?
D: Of course, but they turned color like everything else in the '30s.
C: So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
D: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
[quote=“Screaming Jesus”]I teach at a minor private university here, and I often feel ashamed of what I do.
Interesting that you and I were having the exact same feelings at almost exactly the same time. I went home after school yesterday and couldn’t stop thinking that my job is pointless, students aren’t learning, and they don’t seem to want to learn. I do everything I can to make class comfortable, enjoyable and useful, but students don’t take it seriously. I don’t even assign homework anymore because students will a) not do it; b) copy it from their classmates; c) turn in something they obviously didn’t write.
In each class, there are some students who stand-out, who make an effort even if their English isn’t that great, but they are in the minority.
I have found that most of the copying, the lack of participation, etc. are based on fear and shyness. But, these are adults we’re dealing with. At what point do they get over it? Is it just a cultural thing?
This is my experience at a mid-level university - I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere.
I’m curious about teaching English in universities in other countries. I’ve only taught in Taiwan. Are students similar in other Asian countries? European countries? South American countries?
I’ve taught at several universities, both public (national) and private, and I feel the same way. The English majors I taught at a national university were actually quite hard-working, but non-majors were a different story. Most of the students I taught at private universities seemed incredibly indifferent and immature.
I feel like I’ve been able to survive by not taking the whole teaching thing TOO seriously, and by teaching things that I find interesting (in hopes that students might be interested as well). And the vacations are nice…
Perhaps things are a bit different for students from science and engineering majors. All of you so far only have been discussing kids studying humanities.
I taught medical, dental, nursing and public health majors at a (supposedly!) prestigious medical school in Taipei. Same thing. English was at best an afterthought, both with the students and the administration. A few isolated exceptions, of course, but generally speaking that was it. And the med students had to write teh famous “pathology report” in English during the fourth year – an idea that apparently hadn’t gotten down to the first year. (There was ONLY English offered in the first year.) And of course, first-year college students take the view that “I worked so hard in high school to get here, the first year is a vacation.”
Would it not be a similar in most humanities classes worldwide?
I’ve worked with Taiwanese science graduate students and find them very diligent and hardworking. Some of them were also very smart.
The other thing you have to consider is most of the students are taking English as a non-core subject. Their workload may be very heavy in other areas. For them to study English to a high level would take an inordinate amount of time. If I wanted to study Chinese to a high level and also had a major to do I wouldn’t have any life would I?
The first year of medical school is a dry rehash of the biology, chemistry, etc. they’ve already had in high school, so the “workload” argument doesn’t really stand up for them. They were all complaining about how boring all the classes were and how they took it in turns to skip, relying on “common notes” pooled and photocopied before exams, for which they usually had an excellent idea of the questions in advance!
Their English workload (especially for the ones who took my research writing class) was higher, because I took it as my Duty to find homework they could NOT copy from one another – i.e. totally unique for each student. That used to take up a lot of my time!
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