The Classroom Part 2. Technology

It is possible that our higher educational system has become a bit dependent on technology. I, of course, do not really think so because that would mean admitting that I personally am overdependent on technology and that just is not going to happen. However, I am getting one hell of a crash course on what a professional life with minimal technology is like. In the United States pretty much the first thing that happens when you enroll in a University is that you get an email address. We use that email address for corresponding with the school, with professors, and for pretty much everything really. We use system likes Blackboard and TWEN to manage assignments and online classes. Here they are not using email systems like that. In fact, when I required my students to write down their email addresses for me so I could contact them about 1/3 of them did not have an email address of any kind. The remaining students did not know their email addresses by memory. This means the only reliable way I have of contacting my students is by phone, which I do not consider a choice at all. It is odd, the Chinese classroom is a combination both of a disregard for available teaching technology and an utter dependence on technology for some other aspects of teaching. The primary teaching method used in the University is the power point. Oh excuse me, I mean the ppt. If you say power point they will look at you like you sprouted a third head off your nose. When I say dependence, that is EXACTLY what I mean. A complete and utter dependence on ppt files. Teachers are required by the administration to use ppt files in their lecture and I have discovered that students have a real issue digesting material lectured to them in any form that does not involved a power point. This is my greatest challenge and the biggest point of contestation I have here. I loathe powerpoints. I loathe them with every fiber of my educational being. I consider them to be the laziest, most boring, and most useless method of conveying educational material that the evil demon gods of ivory tower ever conjured up. I think anything that can be told with a powerpoint could be told better in a different method. BUT, I have little recourse in the matter. I do not even have access to a printer and photocopier so I could use handouts. So, I do the best that I can and grumble and grouse every chance that I get about how terrible this is for the Chinese university system. (I truly do believe it is absolutely killing the ability of the Chinese University student to do any critical thinking.) Oh, and another thing, what makes having to use all those power point files so frustrating is the fact that the freaking computers processing power would be stretched playing a rousing game of pong. Firstly, a problem exists because, well, you know, the computers are in Chinese. This is a bit of a hurdle if you do not read it. Fortunately for me I have spent so many hours in front of a computer that not being able to read the OS does not really hamper me from doing whatever I want to do. Being able to navigate the Chinese computer may actually be the only thing I have done thus far that has impressed my students, but I digress. The problem is truly that this computers have just worked to hard and to long to still put off their job easily. So, everyday is an adventure. Everyday you get something new here and anytime a problem comes up you get to try new and exciting ways to express a complete technological issue with grunting and hand gestures because its a certainty the tech guy will not speak English, and unless he has some beer with him that I can ask to drink my Chinese will be pretty useless. Thus, such is life. Tis never boring.

The Classroom Part 1

The college classroom in China is very different than college in the.....well...anywhere. The culture difference in the classroom is a huge problem, but this post focuses on just the difficulties and differences without even taking personalities into consideration. University in China, I think, is helping me understand a bit of what going to college sixty years ago must have been like. Obviously, truly that is a bit of an exaggeration, but, not by much. The buildings themselves are more akin to what we would expect to find in a particularly poor funded inner city school. They are dirty, nothing is in good shape, and everything is in one stage or another of "broken." What we would consider broken beyond use in the United States is still good for another year or two in a Chinese university. It is little stuff, dirty foot marks at the base of the wall, a broken chair in the corner that NEVER gets removed, desks and tables that are falling apart. Everything is always mismatched and paint is always flaking off of everything. Anything that is white turns a nice dingy shade of smog. However, this stuff you get used to. I don't even notice this anymore. Use, I miss the fact that my colleges in the United States provided a much more comfortable and clean environment, but I was really surprised how quickly I stopped noticing that. However, there are some other things that I am not so quick to forget. One, the buildings are not really classroom buildings like most Universities. They are open buildings, kind of designed a bit like a motel, with every door and window facing the elements, not a series of classrooms that open up into the building. There is no hallway, there is just a series of doors and stairs all of which is exposed to the hot or cold or rain. This takes some getting used to. Every time the classroom door opens it opens into the freezing cold wind in winter time. Which is not a good thing because the door does not shut snugly and the windows let in so much air they may as well not even be shut. This brings up another problem. The classrooms are not climate controlled. There is no cool air to keep us from sweating when it is 100 with 100% humidity. There is also no heat to keep us warm when it gets cold. The climate here is exactly like Arkansas, so, you know that means we get all the nice temperature extremes. The building design is really good in the hot but bad in the winter. When it is hot outside the open building design allows for a nice breeze to circulate and lets the heat escape so it doesn't get to hot. In winter however, it kinda sucks. Since it allows for a nice breeze to circulate and lets the heat escape so it doesn't get to hot. See, great for summer, bad for winter. Fortunately I am generally not impressed with cold weather. Alright, next post will address the really bad stuff, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Until Next Time, J

Chinese culture and academics

One of the biggest problems I have faced in teaching the Chinese thus far is learning the differences between the English college classroom and the Chinese college classrooms. There are distinct differences both in the etiquette of the classroom and in the peculiarities Chinese students have because of their culture and the way their language is structured. Firstly, Chinese students are just different than those in the United States. They are both more respectful and less respectful at the same time. Cell phones going off, students dozing and students talking in class are the norm in class. Secondly, and I do not mean this as an insult it is just truth, the Chinese students literally have no concept of academic honesty. Their academic culture has no clue what the concept of plagiarism represents. The reason I say that I do not mean this is an insult is because it is not a willful attempt to cheat, although there is plenty of that in China as well. The students just do not understand. It is not a matter of they know the rules and are looking for the easy way out. They truthfully just do not have a relating similar point in Chinese culture. They truly just do not understand the concept of plagiarism, even though I have explained it at least four times. Thirdly, the Chinese language makes writing in English complicated for them. It does not contain anything remotely similar to articles so they have a real issue with using a, an, and the. "The" in particular gives them fits and any piece of writing by them is sure to use "the" when they should not as well as not using it when they should. It is kind of the signature of a Chinese native speaker learning English. They struggle with this perhaps more than anything else. Also, culturally, there style of rhetoric and writing in Chinese is completely different than the way we write in English. Where our academic writing rewards brevity and should contain no unnecessary words, theirs is the exact opposite. They use unneeded words like they are Charles Dickens and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a baby and it became a politician. It is a bit hard to describe but culturally, they truthfully seem to think that using a lot of unneeded somewhat confusing language with lots of repetition makes their English language more formal. They also tend to repeat their points several times. In a word (that is sort of an in joke for those that have dealt with Chinese writers) Chinese writing is redundant. It is a real problem for them to think about writing in the way that native English speakers do but otherwise the writing seems immature at best and the rambling ideas of a crazy person at worst. Getting them to conform to new rules is probably the biggest challenge that I have.

First Impressions

My first impressions of China are probably a little skewed and surreal. Being on an airplane for 20 hours tends to have that effect on people. We started out in Little Rock then had a layover in Dallas before an even longer layover in Los Angeles. One thing I can say about LAX is that they have really good Udon noodles. After that we spent 14 hours on a plane followed by another layover in Guangzhou. This layover was a bit on the excruciating side. It was around five in the morning when we arrived and the air conditioning had yet to be turned on. It was Arkansas rice field humid in there. We had a three hour layover in these conditions, while already being exhausted. By the time we got on our flight and arrived in Changsha we were literally a bit on the delirious side. So much so that I barely remember when our contact here at the University took us to lunch after she picked us up at the airport. The two hour drive back is a blur. I was so tired I could barely stay awake but at the same time this was my first time in Asia, so I did not want to miss any viewing of the Chinese country side. I expected that the country side between Changsha and Hengyang would be similar to the landscape in rural Arkansas. It is humid swampy rice growing country so I just assumed it would be similar to home. This is both true and false. The flora is similar looking to Arkansas, however, it is like the flat part of Arkansas, with its rice fields and crops, was combined with the hilly part of Arkansas. That is exactly what the country side of China looks like here. This is because that unlike Arkansas, where we make already flat land even flatter so we can plant rice, they use terrace farming techniques. Also, where as we only plant crops when we can plant it in large fields they plant rice wherever they can fit it. If its a fifty acre field fine, however, you are just as likely to see various small patches of an acre or less each. The terracing technique is beautiful. I was amazed at how pretty the rice fields were staggered on hills the way they do it. Perhaps it is because I came from a family of rice farmers, but I have always felt there was a beauty to a green field of rice. The terracing techniques they use truly are beautiful. I am interested as to what it would like at harvest, but so far I have not been able to make it back out to the country. The buildings here are what you would expect if you have watched much Hong Kong cinema. Large and dilapidated, they look like the mass tenements you always see in China on television or film. The streets are crowded and there are rows of store fronts with street venders intermixed. I was surprised and the number of cars though, and the number of people honking their horns. The Chinese use their horns like crazy. They use it to warn people they are coming and as there is always someone in or on the street they are pretty much on their horn the entire time. It makes for a very noisy, and slightly obnoxious experience when moving about the city.