Pornstar Names for Students

This morning I convinced one of my Chinese students to drop his conservative English name of Davidl Apologies to my colleague Dave Davies, but there’s nothing wrong with his old name; he just has more marketing potential with his new name. This is a Business English class after all!

David is now Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy has two classmates named Swallow and Fannie. That was a pre-existing condition, not my doing. But I do have two other gals considering the monikers Microphone and Doublemint.

Looking forward to the role-playing scenarios later this semester!

Blackmail, Chinese University Style

So I get a text message from a clerk flunky early this week, saying they have enough teachers at my university so they won’t be hiring me again this fall. Reminds me of the breaking-up-by-text-phenomenae explored in the film Up in the Air (with George Clooney). Lame, lame, lame. Considering they only have three foreign teachers here, and one of my colleagues has announced he is leaving, I started smelling something rotten after this text message.

Moon’em I thought, and sent out a few letters of interest that night. My prospects are bright away from this place. Only thing is I love it here, and hoped to guide my 2nd-year students through their 3rd-year literature curricula.

Tonight I heard from a 3rd-year student, that the administration is actually asking students to comment on whether I should be retained. So if I could kindly refrain from assigning homework, hint hint, maybe I could stay here.

Now that’s just bollocks. Blackmailing a teacher to not give homework, so that he can return next year only to teach another class where he ought not to ever prescribe homework ever again. No wonder China has never won a Nobel Prize; they are discouraging students from actually learning anything in their universities.

I’m supportive of student-centered learning, but student-directed slacking is for pussy teachers. So, while I will miss guiding my hard-working younger students next year, I will not let the hardly-working older students blackmail me.

Homework is necessary for cognition. The classroom is where guidance and exposure to information take place, but the real intellectual heavy lifting is with reading, re-reading, writing, and thinking that come with homework tasks.

How real is too real?

Geez did I make a mistake today. I thought I’d teach my sophomore students about the differences in risk-taking between Chinese and US American youth. A perfect chance to show them MTV’s Jackass Lost Tape, or so I thought. There was a scene where they were making omelettes by masticating the ingredients first, then upchucking into a mixing bowl before frying to a golden brown. Another scene showed two dudes and one chick competing to see who could drink a gallon-jug of milk the fastest. At least ten girls dashed back-and-forth to the W.C. in just one hour. Half of the audience kept their faces down during the puke-free rad skateboarding scenes.

Three conclusions were derived from this failed classroom lesson: 1) U.S. Americans have nothing to fear from the ChiComs. If they can’t handle blood and puke on television, do you think they can handle armed conflict with us foreign devils?; 2) China is not ready for MTV; and 3) English teaching is sometimes itself a high-risk activity!

Death of the Salesmen

From Saul Alinsky’s Rules for radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals (1971):
“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don’t encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let’s not let it happen by default.”

The Summer ’09 health care debate in the USA has the blue collar and hard hats prevailing over the liberal elites. Had the Democratic senators studied Saul Alinsky as their leader B. Hussein Obama has, they would accept that their defeat is because they failed to communicate with the middle class. The party-of-the-jackass’s tendency to talk down to, rather than seek buy-in from, the middle class ensures the movement to the right that pollsters are noticing in the States. This same rightward shift was predicted from the quote above.

In the world of salesmanship, prospects are buttered up. Their fears are validated, not necessarily agreed to, and empathy is shown. Then the salesman demonstrates how his goods or services match the needs of the potential customer. Saul Alinsky thought like a salesman. Congress didn’t. That’s why the ignorant middle class is moving to the right.

Health care reform is being killed by the condescension of liberalism, not by the ignorance of the mainstream. It is a sublime case of bad salesmanship.

When will those on the left stop letting liberals run the show?

The Cultural Perversity Agenda

From M.R. Hammer’s The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI): An Approach for Assessing and Building Intercultural Competence, in M.A. Moodian (Ed.), Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Understanding and Utilizing Cultural Diversity to Build Successful Organizations (in press) :
“Individuals at the Acceptance level are typically curious and interested in cultural differences and committed to the cultural diversity agenda.“

An infamous charlatan on the intercultural scene, who uncannily bears a resemblance to Dr. Monroe on The Simpsons, makes much talk about aligning the global workforce to the “cultural diversity agenda”. The presence of a definite article directly implies that we should all understand what this agenda is, and indirectly implies that we should accept it as a good thing. He’s even got 2×2 matrices to hammer these implications in, no pun intended.

Now, before we take the sage’s regimen of psychometric tests and debriefing sessions, and weaken our resolve until we no longer question, let’s take time to ask:

What exactly is this cultural diversity agenda, anyway?

D.I.E., D.I.E, D.I.E!!!

From M.R. Hammer’s Solving Problems and Resolving Conflicts Across the Cultural Divide: The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) Inventory Workshop (2007):
“Reframing is initiated through conscious application of the D.I.E. . . .move parties down the D.I.E. ladder from evaluation to description.”

One of the intercultural conflict resolution methodologies passed down to communication coaches at one of the world’s largest software companies is memorized by a spooky acronym, D.I.E.:

1. Describe
2. Interpret
3. Evaluate

We’ll look at the particulars later, but think for a moment about what might happen if we coach our students to D.I.E. Is it culturally appropriate to remind our students of death?

Now, read the quote above and think about the framer of this acronym; his recommendation is actually to evaluate, then interpret, then describe the actions of those who you are in conflict with. In other words, the actual sequence is E.I.D., yet the catchy acronym D.I.E. is used to market this particular intercultural conflict resolution strategy.

Personally, I think we’d be a lot better off if our opponents would DIE; it would save us thousands of dollars in fees to intercultural charlatans like Dr. Hammer.

Wuxi: Screw Tibet, Where’s My YouTube?

Right now in Red China we can see firsthand the outcome of socialistic policies. All you Americans take note. According to the news we get, the Tibetans are the shitdisturbers, and the Communist Party is the public’s protector, and YouTube is inharmonious.

Why the Reds gotta slaughter all those Tibetans? Are they gonna move on Taiwan next? Just give me back my YouTube and I won’t say nothin’.

March 17, 2008

English is Everywhere: A Response to a Journalist (er, Prostitute)

My published response to “English Will Fragment Into ‘Global Dialects'”, by Laura Clout,The Telegraph, March 7, 2008:

English has never been standardized, even though a quasi-attempt has been made with Received Pronunciation. However, RP is simply an aural standard practice by an elite segment of the population and doesn’t apply to grammar or spelling.

Clout’s article makes a jump-cut of sorts, from British English to it’s implications for American English as a global standard:

“In future, users of global Standard English might replace the British English: ‘I think it’s going to rain’, with the Indian English: ‘I am thinking it’s going to rain’, Prof Crystal argues.

This could spell the end of the dominance of American English as the prevailing language of international affairs.”

How does she or Dr. Crystal make this projection? This is irresponsible journalism.

As a TESOL educator with extensive travel experience, I can attest that most curricula in EFL classrooms is published in the UK, and foreign administrators still ignorantly associate the word “English” with “England”.

American English, while more traditional, is frowned upon. Eyebrows raise when I teach articulation of final r’s, aspiration in wh- words, and retention of the flat a sound in words like “can’t”.

American English was brought to the states a few hundred years ago. Our distinct dialect is a reflection of the old language. British English has modernized. Both have simplified over the years, note the changes above and the Great Vowel Shift in the United States. Both are valid and understandable, yet neither are the global standard.

It’s important to recognize the existence of differing World Englishes, however the examples provided are not exactly that. True, the Indian proclivity for present continuous tense with state verbs is a marked dialect of English. Singlish, Taglish, Chinglish,Spanglish, and so forth are not varieties of English, but evidence of linguistic code-switching and code-mixing among diverse cultures. I’m sure Dr. Crystal knows this, but the interviewer didn’t ask for clarification. That’s the irresponsible part.

Laura Clout has written about an interesting topic, but has failed to do her homework. The diversity of English dialects is old news, and the notion of a “Standard English” is an imperial myth.

English is everywhere, and noone owns it. That should be the main point.

My yankee two cents.

Wuxi: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dog

It’s hard to think dialectically about China Triangle living, as even the cons can
be turned into pros. This is one thing you’ll learn if you move to China, that
every crisis provides an opportunity. Here are some of my wife and I’s
observations on what will happen to you if you emigrate to China:

Traffic: Hair-raising for pedestrians. You will develop a unique ability to walk
across traffic with the sleep still in your eyes. After a few taxi/bus rides
you will be numb to drivers’ shortcuts through opposing traffic and other
seemingly jackass moves. I already have dreams about being chased by the Reno
police back home for driving my sedan Chinese-style on Virginia Street.

Scooters: Most are electric which, while better for the air-we-breathe, are
silent projectiles that might bump you unawares. Some of them are “E-bikes”
which have a pedal assist. When the operator is not pedaling the pedals rotate
around the sides of the bike so be careful they don’t brush against you. It’s
kinda like being in the arena during Robot Wars.

Food: Requires bravery, an iron stomach, and an ability to recognize Chinese
characters. Outside of the touristy areas you no longer have pictures on the
menus so this is critical if, for example, you want pork 猪肉 instead of dog 狗肉 , as the left-hand radicals are similar.

Stares: The elderly remember the pre-Tianmen days when foreigners were all
suspect. So they will usually stare at you in public. Everyone else stares for
reasons of curiousity, I suppose. For example, your shopping cart will be
stared at constantly. It’s best just to smile, even if you want to slap them
around like I do when the perves stare at my wife. 你看谁？–, I ask …. who you looking at? Privacy is a little different here.

Garbage: You will find many public spaces are filthy, but private spaces are
spotless. So while you may take off your shoes to enter someone’s home, you can
spit and cough and vomit on the streets without repercussions. Go figure.

Antiquity: The Chinese have historically liked erasing history to modernize, and
this is sometimes depressing. However, you will find some relic
buildings,temples, and etc. tucked away in niches throughout the cities.
Usually, just when we are exasperated with the traffic and the smog and the
crowds of people we find something antiquated to relieve our stress. For
instance, behind a billboard you might find a Ming dynasty bachelor’s garden
with ponds and bridges and a teahouse. Or behind an industrial district you
will find an 88-meter Buddha on top of a hill looking over Lake Tai.

Cost of Living: We are amazed at how far we can stretch our salary. We earn more than an average white-collar worker in Beijing (5000RMB in 2007,
per the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and much more than the average
entry salaries of my graduating students. The only hard part, according to my lovely wife, is tempering our western tastes to reap the benefits of our comparatively
princely pay. We should be able to save some money while teaching here, but
are tempted by clothing, electronics, antiques, and other bargains along
the way.

Clothes for Big Men: It is very hard to find clothes or shoes for big or tall men here. Once here, you can always find a tailor to customize your clothes, if you want, however.

March 6, 2008

Wuxi: Instant Coffee Rant (Why the Reds can’t crush U.S., Part 3)

Okay, it’s 9′ oclock in the fucking morning and fireworks are going off like it’s the rape of Nanjing with the Japs invading all over again. What gives here? Why they don’t blow their whole arsenal at midnight? Why couldn’t they put those firecrackers and M-80s to use two weeks ago to clear the road of all the snow they been whinin’ about? Why can’t my powdered coffee mix blend with hot water like instant coffee in the rest of the world? Why is Red China so bass-ackward?

New Year’s day in China. A bit like camping at Burning Man, only no hippies or naked people on bicycles. I’ll take the freaks back home, thank you.

February 6, 2008