Concerto for Cows

When that second Toffee flare-up occurred some time ago, leading again to class cancellation, Jim Wu chased up to my room like a puppy to tell me that teachers are not allowed to cancel classes.

How annoying. What presumption! If he'd do his job as administrator/staffer, we could perhaps get the girl removed from the room and achieve the minimum level of discipline necessary to teaching.

I gave Meng a call to let him know that the "situation" had occurred again, a repeat of the previous month. But this led to my being irked anew, as Meng opined that the situation reflected my lack of teaching experience.

All this arose while Niagara Falls was still in progress -- my ongoing episode of food sickness -- and I'd been wondering why this damn school couldn't arrange safe food for me on campus.

My normally abundant store of good-naturedness was nearing a debit balance. I suggested to Meng that he come to the campus to meet with me.

I had a question I wanted an answer to when we met later that day: "Do you think you're a better teacher than me?"

He contemplated this, and finally said he didn't know.

Then perhaps he shouldn't act like he knew more than me about how to teach.

"What do you know about the situation in the classroom with Toffee?" I wanted to know next.

He said Toffee had told him I was treating her unfavorably in class since the resolution of the incident the month before, not permitting her to talk and so on.

More annoyance. This was false. Why was he getting his information from an unreliable student rather than consulting me?

What about late-night noise? I had reported to him, two weeks earlier, that 74% of freshmen wanted rules to control the noise. The school's response had been ineffectual, and we were already beyond the semester's midpoint. This was an issue of academic quality and student welfare. Why wasn't the school concerned?

And why hadn't the school been aware of the problem before I, an outsider to "Chinese culture," went beyond my teaching function to bring it to their attention?

Meng was contrite. He understood there were management problems at this campus. He was busy at the main campus and had little time to spend here himself. He told me Dean Yang would be over the next day to resolve the latest issue with Toffee.

In fact, it was on the next day that the late-night meeting I previously described took place with both Deans Meng and Yang, as well as Mr. Li and Jim.

But that was an occasion for further annoyance, as a new misconception about me came to light -- that I had a punctuality problem. Where was this false information coming from? Who were these people talking to, and why didn't they consult me more?

Meng was always conciliatory, but I never seemed to be able to substantially alter his thinking.

But after all, Western culture has similar communication problems. People don't listen unless you're reinforcing prior misconceptions or otherwise telling them something they like to hear.

(I later made a quixotic bid -- such efforts are doomed to certain failure here -- to shed light on my "punctuality problem" and pinpoint how the idea had arisen. There seemed to be malicious intent. Who had made this false allegation? I wanted to be there to talk to them together with Dean Meng. Meng put me off by saying he would get the names of the students from Jim and arrange a meeting. But when I failed to forget about it, subsequently bringing it up again, he explained it had turned out to be a misunderstanding -- the students had been referring to some other grievance.)

You may recall Dean Meng's teaching tips to me in that same meeting with Dean Yang and the others, based on conversations he'd had with the students about my classes. While allowing that the students viewed me as a good teacher from whom they learned a lot, he said there was room for improvement. I was making it too difficult for the students. When I asked questions, I should dangle the right answer before them and praise them more when they got something right. If it was only partially right I should congratulate them as though it were fully right, while rephrasing the answer to make the ideal response plain to everyone.

This advice, which echoed comments he'd previously offered, again reflected obliviousness to the truth. I had just described the real problem in this very meeting: The students were not working. They lacked mental energy. Not only were they not doing their homework before class, I could hardly hold their attention during class. It wasn't only a matter of not being able to produce answers -- they could not even repeat a question I'd posed.

Readers, remember that these students tell Meng I'm their best teacher. So don't conclude my classes are just exceptionally boring. The problem is that these students have never been taught to flex their mental muscles.

This was the same meeting in which it emerged that, in my conflict with Toffee the month before, Dean Yang had placated both her and me by essentially assuring each of us, separately, that the other party was culpable.

While I gave the deans what they wanted in that meeting -- agreeing to proceed with my teaching the next morning with Toffee (and Li) in the classroom -- I still felt disgruntled, and I phoned Meng the next day.

Did he understand the error that had been brought to light last night? The month before, Toffee and I had each been told what we wanted to hear. Because that was easier. But it wasn't the truth, and it didn't solve the problem.

Yes, he answered, that had registered to everyone at the meeting.

Well, I said, I wanted to tell him about the mistake he was making for the same reason in judging my teaching. People were telling him what he wanted to hear about the pre-university students. In fact, I said, "the only reason my questions in class are too difficult is that the students don't want to work, to listen, or to learn -- and they don't want to think. All the teachers know this. Jim knows it. Why don't you know it?"

It was really getting to be no fun to have conversations with me. But he'd brought it on himself in our discussions prior to my trip to China by misrepresenting the kind of students I'd be teaching. His correspondence had included, for example, the highly optimistic adjective "motivated."

But he continued to feel the problem lay with my teaching style. It was like I was a very good musician, he said, but was playing music to people who have never heard music before. Later, striving to put the point more emphatically, he said I was like a great musician playing to animals. Yes, he really said that.

I cannot be sure exactly how to interpret this, but I suspect it has to do with my demand that students think rather than recite knowledge by rote. Which leads to the rhetorical question: is it right for a university dean to support students who resist teaching that seeks to lift them beyond an animal state? And what kind of opposition, I wonder, do teachers in my position encounter in typical post-secondary institutions in the West?

Regardless of exactly what Meng meant, I'd concluded that even the students' mental lethargy and indolence pointed to culpability on the school's part. The problems of classroom discipline and late-night noise were incidental to the school's fundamental failure: they were not upholding academic standards. Most students did not work and did not think -- but did not face the consequence of not passing.

When I was 19, in my first year at the University of Toronto, I was obliged to drop 4 of my 5 courses because I'd fallen too far behind. Applying oneself academically is not always a natural inclination for young people. I later re-enrolled and did the work, having learned the lesson.

ICB, I'm afraid, fails the students by being unwilling to teach the lesson of failure.

But as I reflect, I wonder which is the anomaly in the wide world of post-secondary education today. A program where you can pass without engaging your brain as long as you are reasonably compliant, are not too socially deviant, and are prepared to regurgitate what you're told? Or challenging courses that demand an objective level of accomplishment, like those I enrolled in 20 years ago?

Isn't the average university degree, even in the West, not much more than a certification that one is willing to submit to authority in carrying out arbitrary clerical tasks that one does not really understand?

How about graduate programs? Isn't it fairly commonplace for doctoral students in many fields, wrapped up as they are in academic esoterica, to have almost no fundamental understanding of what they're doing (if indeed what they're doing is not gibberish to begin with)?

Maybe programs like ICB's are not the anomaly. Maybe it's good quality math and computer science courses like those I was lucky enough to get years ago at U. of T. that represent the anomaly in the academy. Maybe, because of those courses, I've got distorted expectations about the level of subject comprehension students should achieve.

This is all a bit melancholy -- but probably more consistent with worldly observation. Genuine comprehension of concepts is rare among people anywhere; and one is not struck, either, by any widespread manifestation of rational thinking -- the underpinning of comprehension.

Luckily, Meng is resilient, as well as generally pleasant, and our relations are good. The other day he even recounted for me how he'd held me up as an example to Jim Wu (Meng too has figured out that Jim never seems to get anything done): "Look at Uriel -- I like Uriel. He's direct, clear. Even when I do something wrong, he tells me."

One should not judge Meng harshly, and I don't. I can't imagine what it takes in this country to reach a position of reasonably good standing. But I'd guess that with a surfeit of the quality he was praising in me, he wouldn't have gotten far.