foreign ignorance or good sense

Posted on January 19, 2013 Updated on January 19, 2013

When introducing the unit “My Family” to my youngest students at school, I was confronted by a rather embarrassing predicament with which I shamefully confess to a touch of cultural ignorance. For some reason, it didn’t occur to me until the thought materialised into words and I heard myself express them out loud, but opening up the floor to whether any of the Chinese boys in my class had any brothers or sisters, was a moment which caused me instant and what felt like perpetuating panic.

I dread to think what I must have looked like at the time. The regret and embarrassment that must have been plastered all over my face  was a result of realising that I had neglected to check the facts about the status of China’s one child policy before I traumatised a bunch of 6 year olds about not being allowed to have a brother or sister to play with like in the movies. The almost impossible task of which may have involved me trying to explain how some untouchable politicians had decided that it was their duty to attempt a movement of national population control by implementing laws which not only limited families, but denied them the universal right to fruitfully procreate. This may sound slightly dramatic to you, but I remember being about the same age as these boys and being pretty peeved at my parents for not having given me a younger or indeed older (not really understanding the science behind it at the time) sibling. I remember frequently wanting to take my brother back to where he’d come from when he eventually arrived, and the little bugger knew full well he was hogging all the attention and getting me in to trouble for things that I swore he had provoked me to do while he sat there, innocently dribbling on his pedestal (high chair).

As a last resort, at the time, I figured that if all of the kids had shown signs of devastation or trauma, I  would have tried to convince them that having a brother or sister really isn’t what it’s cracked up to be and giving them a more simplified version of the sob story I just gave you about having to share my parents; probably failing miserably to console them in anyway. For all I knew, the one child policy could still have been very much intact and I had absolutely no idea how these boys may respond if that was the case. I desperately tried to maintain an enthusiastic and encouraging smile, I prayed for the confused look on their little faces which usually indicated that they didn’t understand the question and which would also mean that my error of judgement and ignorance could go cleanly undetected.

As luck would have it, little Jimmy was the first one to chirp up with a response that settled me – he seems to have regained a bit more of his confidence following his devastating embarrassment of wetting himself a few weeks ago. Taking me completely by surprise, he informed me, and the rest of the class, that he had in fact multiple siblings. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief and assumed that I had severely over reacted in my state of panic and the law had probably been either relaxed or abandoned altogether, and the lesson continued pretty much as I had originally planned.

Big anti-climax to the story? Well, it wasn’t until the following week when introducing ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’ and ‘cousin’ that it became apparent that there had been a huge cultural misunderstanding and I came away from the class feeling somewhat perplexed. Brothers and sisters they understood; but ‘cousin’ had completely confused them. Baffled, I decided to broach the subject with my boss who merely chuckled at my confusion and explained that people in China often refer to their cousins as their siblings and that the one child policy is still official law, successfully seeming to discourage couples from having more than one child. However, technically the law only fully prevents the poorer population of the country from having larger families because the government decided to allow couples more than one child if they were prepared to pay the financial penalty; an extortionate penalty at that. But even still, couples must apply for permission to extend their family past the traditional first and only child in urban areas and this has been the case since 1979.

It is easy for an outsider to identify certain behaviour in this country as unfortunate social repercussions of the one child policy. When parents bring their children into our school for oral placement testing, many are unforgiving when their child is placed in a low level class for their age. Some of them consider this decision a personal insult which undermines the education that they have help provide for their child up until this point. It is generally agreed among the foreign teachers at my school that it is counter productive to place the child into a class which is too advanced for their ability. The child minimally, sometimes not at all, comprehends what is going on in the lesson and tends to lose interest and give up easily, usually jeopardising their overall potential improvement. Trying to explain this to a proud and protective parent who has only one child to be concerned with, can be somewhat challenging when they are convinced that your assessment is inaccurate and they try to claim that it undermines the child’s education; something that they seem to take as a personal insult.

It is no surprise that it is important to people in this country to succeed and stand out from the crowd – a rather sizeable crowd. This may arise as a result of residing in a country that is so over populated that it can make one feel dangerously insignificant. When parents invest so much time, money and emotional energy into their children’s education, the restriction of the one child policy can only intensify the pressure of the desired outcome. So whether the one child policy adds to an already competitively academic culture, or whether this particular aspect of Chinese culture was cultivated by the law, in my opinion, it is no coincidence that the Chinese suicide rate is ranked as one of the highest in the world. The amount of pressure that the system places upon individuals at such a young age to do exceptionally well in school is disconcerting and I often find myself feeling intensely sorry for my students when they tell me about their busy weekly schedules of extra tuition and homework duties. Their nonchalant and unemotional facial expressions tell me that it is a way of life that is not pleasant but unavoidable and therefore accepted. When I was at university, a Chinese student leapt to her death from one of the tallest buildings on our campus. I cannot even begin to imagine what pressure she may have been under that could have driven her to do such a thing to herself and to her family.

In China, the English have a reputation for generally being quite indolent, and, in comparison to the Chinese, this is not surprising. However, I am left unconvinced that either culture have successfully arrived at a faultless approach to guiding their people through education as of yet.