Rule of Law

As Americans, we don't think much about the rule of law. Although our system may sometimes malfunction, the uniformity of our legal system is something we're able to take for granted. In other countries, this isn't always the case.

My longtime friend, Carl Mather, is currently imprisonned in Nanjing.  An Australian national, Carl is an artist and English teacher.  He is married to a Chinese woman, and they have one daughter, pictured above. He and his wife own an export business and some rental properties.  Carl and I worked together on a project at the Oxford Language Academy of Nanjing during the summer of 2006 and helped me learn to navigate China. Joe and I have stayed with the Mathers during subsequent trips to Nanjing.

Some time ago, thugs broke into the Mather home wielding baseball bats demanding that Carl sign over the family assets.  Carl defended himself, his daughter and mother-in-law with a kitchen knife, slashing one on the hand.  The intruders withdrew.  But their connections to the local government were better than Carl's, and the Nanjing authorities charged Carl with assault.

The case dragged on in the Nanjing courts for over a year. About a month ago, Carl was sentenced to a year in prison.  Carl is now interred at the notorious Nanjing Detention Center.  No one but his lawyers may see him; he has developed health problems, and they report that he isn't doing well.

Few people reading this will know Carl, so I hesitate to ask you to bombard the Australian Embassy with emails, though if you do want to reach them, the address is infoausaid@ausaid.gov.au  The mere act of reading this will be extremely helpful to Carl and others like him.  China is in a state of flux, and its officials are sensitive about the degree of corruption in local government and even more sensitive to its exposure in an international venue.

You may contact me for more information at rrgann@gmail.com
Happy holidays to all, and let's hope for a world where no one is imprisonned unjustly.

Passing the Torch

For five of the past six summers, I've taught in China.  This year, I've been invited to help run an English camp in the Czech Republic under the guidance of my friend and former pastor, Michelle McKinnon-Young who is working in Prague.

China still needs English teachers, of course. Brian Bowman who's been working as a graduate assistant in my department is going to Weihai, China this fall.  He'll be teaching in the department where I worked in during the Fall of 2006.

We wish Brian good luck, safe travels, and exciting adventures.

Singing English

Opening ceremonies for the university English festival took place on our final evening in Weihai. The festival offers opportunities to be creative with English; otherwise, it’s apt to be treated as a dry academic subject.  I was asked to make some opening remarks, but Joe was the one who brought down the house with his rendition of “Home on the Range.” While quintessentially American, it is not nationalistic, nor religious. 

Another high point was a hula dance by a student group in black shorts and silver tinsel. I believe their enthusiastic performance was supposed to represent the culture of New Zealand and Australia. 

A Curious Skill

Our last full day in Weihai, my Chinese “granddaughter” participated in a performance to commemorate the 90^th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.  Whether they like the Party or not, parents enjoy seeing their kids perform, and a couple of hundred kids were involved. Their proud parents and grandparents took photos.

I took photos as well, but I had another project that morning, for I’d just been told I’d be speaking at the opening ceremony of the university English festival, and a formal speech was expected.  I usually carry a notebook, and I started jotting things down.  A twelve year old Chinese girl whose group performed was sitting beside me. She was fascinated by the way I wrote English in cursive and asked me how it worked.  English is taught in the schools here, but the kids always keyboard or print.

Soon, a bunch of kids had surrounded me, and I’d written the cursive alphabet several times.   People
of my generation can usually write a pretty clear cursive.  It’s how we were trained.  I find it faster
than printing, though the keyboard is faster still.  It’s a dying art, though, similar to writing Chinese

with ink pot and brush. The college students I teach prefer printing unless they're using their laptops or  monkeying around with their cell phones.

 

Is This What They Call a Vacation?

From time to time, my friends suggest that Joe and I try an actual vacation instead of visiting a military dictatorship every chance we get.  Our trips to China allow us time for walks on the beach, visits to places of interest and conversations with friends, but there’s always work to be done and the continual struggle with an unfamiliar language and culture.

Here in Hong Kong, we know no one, and we aren’t working.  For two and a half days, we’ve been tourists.  We went on a tour of the city where we visited a Buddhist temple took a cog railroad up Victoria Peak, took a brief ride on sampan, shopped for souvenirs at an open air market, hopped on a ferry, viewed a light show and traditional Chinese dances. 

We ended the evening with dinner at a sports bar restaurant dedicated to the Manchester United Football Club. Joe tells me the men’s room features a trough style urinal with an embedded flat screen TV.

All of our needs were seen to by Anna, our tour guide and the driver she worked with. No need to struggle making ourselves understood in Chinese. She even hailed us a taxi when the evening was over. No anxiety; no struggle; no adventure.

Today, I spent shopping and swimming laps in the open air pool at the sumptuous Gold Coast Hotel I booked via hotwire.com.  Soon we’ll go off to dinner, and afterwards we’ll likely take a walk on the beach.

Do I enjoy this?  Yes, in a way. But it’s much more rewarding to be with the friends we have made here, to work with the students, and make progress in using Chinese.  

What, pray tell, is a special administrative region?

We are spending the final days of our trip in Hong Kong, which occupies a series of islands in South China.  The Chinese government calls it a “special administrative region.” To me it seems like a different country, cleaner and more modern than other places in China. It is a beautiful region, and its citizens seem much less afraid of the government. 

Hong Kong was ruled by the British for 156 years and was returned to the Chinese government 15 years ago. Perhaps because it is prosperous, Hong Kong was allowed to retain its democratic form of government and to keep its own currency. 

Its citizens hold special passports and criticize the government more freely than do the Mainland Chinese.  Information control is not as extreme here as on the mainland, though it is not absent.  

Merit pay for Teachers: A Chinese Student’s perspective

This essay was written by 地藏王菩萨, one of the students in the English Cultural Studies Class I taught here in Weihai.  As America considers how to evaluate and reward its teacher, we would do well to pay attention to this student’s perspective, which grows out of a culture that expects more of its students and offers its teachers much more respect than do we.

A school often gives its students the deepest impression in their life because not only did it broaden students’ sights by education, but teachers’ influences on students as well. Nowadays some individuals hold the idea that teachers should be paid according to how much their students learn. Frankly speaking, I consider this kind of behavior not a well informed decision.

Salaries that people earn are decided by people’s performances. Teachers are no exception. How much money teachers can get should equal how much efforts teachers make. In this case, by evaluating the amount of knowledge that students get to decide salaries of teachers sounds reasonable; however, there are some problems if this plan is carried out.

First and foremost, it is not fair for teachers if they are only judged by students. Everyone’s energy is not infinite, which means after a period of time of studying, students are likely to be lethargic and tiredness so that they do not want to study anymore even if they know the importance of studying. In this case, although teachers have tried their best to teach students knowledge as much as they can, some students cannot learn more. Thus, students might get lower marks. Marks is an crucial part deciding how much students learn and how much money teachers can get. It’s obviously not teachers’ responsibilities that students cannot get high marks because teachers have already devoted themselves to their career.

Also, how much students learn cannot be truly evaluated. Is the school’s performance the only way to decide a student’s knowledge? We cannot simply give children a test to discover how much they have learned in a class. Tests rarely measure one’s social skills, one’s ability to communicate, or one’s ability to integrate successfully into the world. Thus, it is not a wise idea to think that teachers should be paid according to the amount of knowledge students learn.

To sum up, because of unfairness of teachers and not being able to measure how much students learn, the fact that teachers’ salaries are depend on the amount of knowledge students learn is not advisable.

 Below: The students I taught this summer in Weihai