A Word on Education

I've now had two full days of classes that potentially teach me how to be a teacher. This gets more complicated when I have to specifically learn all of the cultural faux paux of teaching in South East Asia. For example, you can never yell at your students because you will lose Face ( a concept I am still grappling with), but you can physically hit your students, make them wear dunce hats, or other mean and/or clever punishments you can think of.
    For the sake of keeping your attention I'll list off a few more cultural differences.

• The symbol Americans use to motion come here with your palm up and bringing your fingers towards you translates here to "Come Here Dog"...so that's not okay.
• Thumbs up translates to Shove it or Up yours!

Today we studied class management, grammar, and how to introduce new dialogue. Each day we have to perform some integral part of teaching that we learned in class the previous day. I know I'm starting to bore you and I don't have any pictures for this entry so I'm just going to come out and say it. The reason I would never see myself teaching in America, particularly younger kids to high school is because American students on the majority are ungrateful shits. We take education for granted because  K-12 is pretty much a given. Even I sat in the grammar section of my class today thinking about how much I don't care about grammar. And you know why I don't care about grammar? Because I forget that being able to speak English, particularly as a native speaker, is a HUGE privilege in this world. I can also speak and write in English, pretty well if I say so myself. Those are three massive privileges that I NEVER have to think about because I take them for granted. Most Americans are not faced with choices as to whether to stay in school or to drop out so they can help support their family. Why would I or any teacher for that matter, want to teach a bunch of students who don't want to be in their classroom and don't want to learn? That said, I don't have the same feelings in regards to teaching in Asia, because students here have a much different value of education. The story I heard today that backs that statement made national news this year. ( Of course when I wanted to find the link to post for you I couldn't find it). This news story is one of cheating, one of the biggest problems in schools in Cambodia. Teachers frequently receive bribes for giving better grades on tests and in some rural places entire towns will pitch in to give to the teacher. The story that made news went something along these lines.
              A boy and his father were caught cheating. The father was outside throwing rocks into the window of the second story with answers taped to their underside. The boy would catch the rock, copy down the answers, throw the rock back down and his father would then throw up a new rock with more answers.
    This probably sounds insane to you but it just goes to show how important education is in these countries. The livelihoods of entire families depend on their child being able to obtain an education. The potential breadmaker of that whole family may be a twelve year old and if he fails school that potential is gone. Obviously, there is cheating all over the American education system, but rarely where family or community members are assisting in cheating or bribery. Here, the problem has gotten so bad that many cities close down entire streets where schools are located so now one may come in from outside.
   That said, take a minute to think about how much energy drinks are consumed of college campuses. Asian Redbull comes with a pharmaceutical warning on the can.