What do people want, a buxiban teacher to make up for their lacks of understanding of the world?
Now if the teacher in question was making false statements or forcing his viewpoint on people that would be quite different.
And again, lots of people have done parodies of hitler over the years. It seems these days it is only okay to do the ‘evil’ parody and not the ‘comical idiot’ parody.
Charlie Chaplin did it with style -1940.
Initially the film was banned in the UK due to its appeasement policy, later when war broke out it was promoted for propaganda purposes.
Supposedly he claims he wouldn’t have done it if he knew about the concentration camps, but what would the difference have been, I don’t get it?
The dictators did evil things (with the support of their populations don’t forget), but they were also ripe targets for comedy due to their exaggerated and ridiculous mannerisms and behaviours.
It depends if you think a language teacher must also impart other qualities and lessons to their students or not. While I understand that ridicule helps to break down power and authority there are still enough people in the world who find what happened in WW2 to be extremely visceral. We still live in the aftershock of that war, and will continue to do so for decades to come. And really that guy should know better than to use the image of Hitler in that way, He could have simply been an uptight German character if he wanted to push some sort of pointless cultural stereotype into their little heads. What connection was there with Hitler in getting them to produce sentences like, “What is your name?” “Where do you come from?” Humour is a grand thing to inject, but really, pick your audience and facebook privacy settings more carefully.
I know, in the grand scheme of things a guy put on a moustache and got some kids to speak English while laughing, no big deal, but energy makes a wave and a wave will destroy your house. We should also try to be a little more sensitive to the pain of others. Even the title of this thread is offensive and will upset members of this community. We should all try a little harder when we speak and think and act.
You know I agree we should be sensitive to concerns of others. I didn’t notice the title and I agree it should be changed , it’s kind of offensive to Jewish people.
I just want people to see the bigger picture of the education system and singling out the ant in the anthill for too much attention is going over the top.
These kids can have a pretty tough and long day so I like to see them laughing, I think it’s good the teacher did that, but he could choose another personality to goof around with.
Agreed, there is no fight here, just a discussion. In instances like this Hitler skit we can choose to talk about a sense of proportion or a sense of decency. We should probably be considerate of both. One something does not a something or the other make. Clouds and storms? I forget. Swallows and summers?
I also guess teachers get caught up in the process of being famous in their own classroom. I probably made too many a-bian, da-bien jokes when really I shouldn’t have been talking about shit and politics but grammar and vocab, but the kids loved it and we do pander and allow our egos to run unchecked for the sake of being liked or of being entertaining. He could have done things a little differently, but the internet has found him out and he is probably gonna think twice before he does that again.
I probably won’t score many points on this one, but I’ll go ahead and say it: Everyone is way too sensitive nowadays about a lot of things. Taking a piece of HH’s post, Stalin was just as much of a psychopath as Hitler, but the Western world is conditioned to have a much greater emotional response to anything related to Hitler. See, I even feel uncomfortable to say it 
And by saying it I in no way trivialize the atrocities that Hitler was responsible for.
Making a caricature of Jesus isn’t bad because it’s a matter of free speech, and if Christians are offended they need to lighten up. But a caricature of Muhammad will lead to riots and murders, so that is clearly a no-no and religiously insensitive. Same thing can be seen in the United States. Making racial jokes is ok if it targets Asians, East Indians, and other groups, but some groups are off limits and you are a racist if you cross that line.
All these sensitivities are conditioned into us by mainstream society and media. I guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Personally, I try not to offend people in general, even groups that are currently fair game. However, that should be a matter of personal manners and conduct, not public mandate. I guess I just don’t like what’s behind the selective emotive responses we’ve been trained for. The reality is people are going to get their feelings hurt, especially when freedom of speech exist. And that’s a good thing. The real world is brutal and we should all learn to temper our reactions to things that strike us at our core. Mommy won’t always be there to give us a hug. Lots of people have points of view I find repugnant, and sometimes I even get offended. But the only thing more offensive to me than censorship is what I perceive as an increasing social impetus towards self-censorship.
Than being said, I found the Hitler skit to be crass and without good taste :discodance:
As maybe the only Jew on these forums, I feel obliged to speak up some more. I want to make it clear that I’m not personally offended by the skit, as uninspired as it is, and I wouldn’t have too much of an opinion if it happened in any other circumstances. What I think headhoncho, whose well thought-out opinions I almost always defer to, missed is that these kids are going to grow up thinking Hitler is Hitlarious (see what I did there) instead of learning about the awful things he did. I would be arguing the same if that teacher had mimicked Stalin or Pol Pot or Osama bin Ladin. Jokes like “I’ll send to you to a camp!” are not cool if the kids don’t understand what that really means. As I said before, they probably won’t and they may end up liking Hitler for it. The 7-Eleven Hitler toys is just a prime example of this phenomenon. Would it be acceptable if European supermarkets started selling Pol Pot toys?
Person A does something, person B says it is offensive, person C tells person B to lighten up. And so it goes.
Let me add my own example of how the dynamic goes by being person B to the moderators Person A… Dear mod, says I, thanks for changing the title, but actually the word is brouhaha, and that word is also wrong to use because it carries the objective meaning that the person talking about the subject is negatively or pointlessly over excited. Therefore you have switched something crass to something biased.
And now someone can take the mantle of person C and tell me to lighten up over it because it is just a word. 
Where do we ever get, huh? Nowhere. Still, it passes some time. 
People should just try harder. You can give kids fun, engagement, and all the rest of it without behaving like he did. It’s easy.
You don’t have to ‘teach’ people how to behave, but many parents send the kids to these places not to learn English but to get used to interacting with ‘foreigners’. Why not model a little of behaviour that would be expected of a young world traveller? I could teach kids to burp the theme tune to Star Wars (well, I could model it for them; it’s takes a fairly unique skillset, tbh) but I assume they are going to be academics, business people, artists, leaders, and not moving in the circles that would find burps and Hitler jokes that amusing.
Education can be liberating, but not if you make assumptions about their abilities to engage without clowning. Hitler upsets a lot of Europeans. And probably other people I don’t know about. That’s something kids need to know,surely? I’m not saying language teachers should teach modern European history, but you shouldn’t model behaviour that wouldn’t fly in an international setting.
And ‘stirs brewhaha’? Aside from the spelling … huh?
“Overexcited” is one word. You are offending my delicate sensibilities. 
I am pretty sure that not one student in the classroom had an idea who Hitler was or what he did, unless this act was preceeded by a lesson in German/European history. For them it’s just a teacher talking funny, being a clown. I think it’s great to make students laugh, they will learn much better that way, but their is no need whatsoever to involve Hitler, cause they don’t get it anyway. He could have put on a Sponge Bob mask and talk the same way to get the same laughs.
Maybe he’s doing Bing
The people I teach basically only respond if I do something to make myself look like an idiot.
This is probably the only way to deal with these people.
My students don’t bring their book, they play on their phone the whole time, they don’t even know how to reply to any greeting that isn’t directly “HOW ARE YOU? I AM FINE!”.
If I talk about something, they start reading other things and ignore me. If I ask them questions they ignore me, or use the silence while I wait for an answer to ask me their own unrelated question.
If I act like an idiot though, or do something funny in front of the class, they suddenly get really excited and interested.
I rarely do anything like that, and think acting like a clown is for someone who feels like they’re a clown, but in Taiwan, that’s about all they respond to, because I think they don’t actually KNOW HOW to be a student. They study all day long, but somehow don’t know the first thing about taking a class.
The only other way to reliably get them to wake up is for me to make a mistake. They love to point out spelling mistakes (which is rare for me, but happens), or argue with you if the Chinese translation of something is different than what you say.
People here just plain don’t respect anyone who isn’t Taiwanese. If this gets those little idiots to DO SOMETHING, then I’m all for it.
No offense, but it sounds like something’s very wrong in that classroom and I don’t think it’s the students. You’d get bored, too, in a class where you only understand half of what’s going on. Until buxiban teachers are allowed to teach in Chinese, this problem isn’t going anywhere. And there are countless ways to act like an idiot without bringing Hitler into it.
this guy works for gloria english school.
he is tolerated by teachers there, but not necessarily well-liked…
Maybe I am missing something here, but who introduced the “gas” pun here ? The China post or the teacher ? As a Jew, I honestly do not find mimicking Hitler offensive, he was after all quite a comic character. However there is no intrinsic comedy value in the gas chambers. None at all. It’s sickening to read it.
there was another teacher who posted the video of the other teacher mimicking hitler. it was HE that gave the “gas” title to the video.
the china post article is not online. it was only in print.
Sad to see this, in this day and age.
These kids claim they know what everything means, including the SS black sun, and they just admire Hitler and want to emulate him.