Letter to My Pre-University Students

"There is very little independent thinking in China. They are programmed, like a computer, and they have no desire to think for themselves and arrive at their own thoughts."

"Very few students are willing to think freely -- they want to think the way they have always been told how to think. Most Chinese students are not accustomed to being challenged in their education."

"Thinking and creativity are foreign concepts to the Chinese students."

"The students are very lazy. Few of them have any intellectual curiosity. They won't work unless you really push them. They do care a lot about grades. They will cheat rather than study. They will expect you to give them grades good grades even if they do not work. They have never been taught what it is to be students."

Dear Students,

The above quotations come from different Westerners who have taught in China. Do not think I did a lengthy search to find them. Such comments are not at all unusual. You can find them for yourself by searching on "teach English in China" at yahoo.com and following links to teachers' webpages with accounts of their personal teaching experiences.

You would also be wrong to think I am showing you these quotations to insult or hurt you. I am doing you a favor. I am giving you the truth.

After three months with you here, I have reached the same conclusions about you. I have tried to teach you about many important ideas and issues of the world and the West, but I have seen no evidence that even one of you has much interest in any of the subjects we've addressed. You are lazy; you are not curious; you do not want to learn or think; you are not interested.

Is it because I'm a boring teacher? I don't think so. Dean Meng tells me many of you have told him I'm your best teacher.

My conclusions do not apply to the students who cannot communicate in English at all. Those students could not learn in my classes even if they wanted to. Billy, Candy, Hamlet, Jodie, Kane, Ken, Penny, Portrait, Richer, Ruby, Sun Yan, Wang Hong, and Zhao Han are such students (there may be a few others as well). These students should never have been in my class at all. ICB has cheated these students, and me, by placing them in my class, because ICB knew before I left Toronto what kind of course I was going to be teaching. Such students should be learning English from teachers who can speak Chinese.

But the rest of you had a choice when you were sitting in my class: (A) Listen and learn, or (B) don't listen, don't learn, just relax. Most of you, most of the time, chose (B).

Now, you've made me a bit angry once or twice, and I've made you a bit angry too. That's not a big problem. (At least on those occasions you were interested.) I think most of you are basically good-natured and decent. But I also think most of you are on the wrong path in life.

It's easy for young people to choose the wrong path. Many young people in the world, however, are lucky enough to be pushed onto the right path by their parents or their schools. It seems to me you are not getting this help. This means you are at greater risk of staying on the wrong path and having less satisfying and less interesting lives.

Consider what it means when you don't like using your mind -- when all you enjoy in life is having fun, playing games and eating food. When you don't know the meaning of intellectual pleasure, it means your goals are not much different from the goals of an animal. Our intellect is what distinguishes us from animals.

Also, life with only animal pleasures can be terribly boring. Now you are students; later you will be working. You probably do not expect to be working on a farm or in a factory. Everyone knows that modern workers in the 21st century are knowledge workers. If your studies and your work bring you no mental pleasure, you are effectively losing a large proportion of your life.

I know it is difficult to learn to make a strong mental effort. I had difficulty learning this at your age too. That's why I had to quit university during my first year. I knew I would fail if I did not quit, because I had not done the work and I could no longer understand what was going on in the classroom. (I caught up later.)

Unfortunately, this is where ICB has failed you. The mismanagement of this school has taught you it's OK not to do your homework; it's OK not to listen in class; it's OK to disobey and disrespect your teachers. You will not fail.

I think, for many of you, your families have also failed to teach you important lessons. Education and self-improvement, as important life goals, are values that are normally learned from one's family. Have you learned it from yours?

Many Chinese have spoken to me of China's one-child policy and the resulting pampered generation. Children expect to have six adults doting on them. I can see it myself in Beijing restaurants, where uncontrolled children run around, allowed by their elders to do whatever they want.

I have also been quite struck in Beijing subways by something I've never seen anywhere else: adults of all ages standing so that young children can have a seat. I've even seen a parent repeatedly put a child back into her seat when the child wanted to stand up.

This is a colossally wrong way to raise children. The thinking seems to be: we love you so much we do not want you to suffer any effort or exertion.

Of course, teaching a child to avoid effort is completely misguided. It does not help a child, it hurts him! Without physical effort, you can never develop muscles and be strong. It's exactly the same with mental effort. This is the kind of upbringing that would produce the lazy students I and other Western teachers have observed; students who do not even have the mental strength to pay attention to anything difficult for more than a few minutes. Without effort, there can be no meaningful accomplishment, and there can be no pride.

Criticism is normally voiced far from the hearing of the person concerned. That's the rule in the West, and it's still more true in Chinese culture, where you avoid confrontation as much as possible. I would guess a few of you have spent some time telling people bad stories about me that never reached my ears.

Of course, you should be at least a bit skeptical when you hear such stories. They can be false -- as Dean Meng discovered when he mentioned to me a few weeks ago that I should try to get to my classes on time, instead of so often arriving late and keeping the students waiting.

A mark of integrity for genuine criticism is to present it to the person(s) being criticized and offer the opportunity for response. In the newspaper industry, extending the "right of response" to subjects of critical news or opinion articles is considered an ethical obligation. This also benefits the critic who wishes to be better informed, since it helps confirm or refute the criticisms.

I have found many things wrong at ICB. I have criticized Dean Meng, Dean Yang, and Mr. Li. They have generally indicated they agree with me about the problems I've raised. I hope this "article" will generate more class discussion than our previous readings, and that for once I will hear you express some ideas.

I will be leaving China soon after this course concludes, but of course I would be happy to hear from you in future. You can contact me via my lifetime website, www.urielw.com.

Sincerely,

Uriel Wittenberg