Strife

Life amongst the English teachers has smelled of a harmonious utopia, and I was getting sick of the bullshit. Tonight held its first touch of conflict. And it felt so good.

Monday was the day that we were handed our curriculum. Monday was the day that we found out that we had curriculum. For some, this was a weight off of their shoulders, but others felt shackled by the questionable vocabulary and farcical situations. Do grad students really want to learn how to navigate their way around a phone booth in English? When I first read through it, my first instinct involved lighter fluid and a match. It was so comprehensive and detailed (inanely restrictive) that I think a monkey could do a very good job teaching not very good English [sic]. I was chagrinned when Mr. Wang informed us that this book was the sole resource for the English competency exam.

Fast forward to today, when Grins and I were riding a turtle bus back towards our house. She was telling me how useless she thought the curriculum was. I agreed. She then told me how she would give a courtesy nod to the curriculum, but then teach something more interesting that would spark the students’ interest. I should have agreed. The nice thing would have been to agree. But I was sick of walking on eggshells.

Instead, I questioned if she was departing from the curriculum for her sake, or because she didn’t want to get bored. I asked her what she thought her students needed, and told her that I thought what they needed was to pass the test. I said that, being grad students, they already had four years of education where they had the opportunity to learn English if they had so desired. I said that, as a matter of integrity, we had an obligation to the students to prepare them for what they needed to succeed, even if that was not the most interesting or efficient way of teaching English. I said that, though it is a formality, and though there is a good chance that the grade people get on the competency exam will make little real difference (who is going to give a brilliant chemist a hard time because his English isn’t perfect?), that we couldn’t act on the assumption of the University waiving its own standards of competency. I said that to do so would be to gamble with other people’s future, and that would not be fair.

I wanted to say that it would be ludicrous to claim any real passion for “teaching English,” because if we wanted to lay any claim to the sanctity of the language, that we would have studied ESL in school. But I had already said enough.

The conversation spurted and spluttered after that like the flames from an empty gas canister. Eventually it was just easier to let it fade away into the darkness. I wondered if I should have held my tongue, but I was tired of homogeny. There can be no harmony when everyone is playing the same note. No one has expressed any frustrations about anyone else in the group, and many minor offenses had already been allowed to fly under the radar. It was more complicated with Grins and I, though. As the only two Christians in an outspokenly anti-Christian group, there was an unspoken expectation of camaraderie, the thought that “we need to hold the line for Jesus.” We were two very different people, but since we both love Jesus, we should always agree, right?

I now had a greater appreciation for the plight of teaching in America. What do we do when the standards by which our students succeed or fail run counter to their education? At the same time, what good does it do the student to be properly educated if they cannot advance? When do our lesson plans and aspirations become less about the needs of the students and more about our desire to be an ‘interesting teacher?’ On one hand, I agree with Grins, and I think we could teach this better were we given a looser leash. On the other, I think we need to play the hand that we are dealt with the players that we have been given. Namely, that we will be teaching a group of nominally interested graduate students who have a heavy and specialized course load, but who need to pass a general ed competency course based solely on the curriculum provided. I will be thrilled to be proven wrong, but that’s what it sounds like from people who know better than I.

Home was still fifteen minutes away, and there were a few attempts at small talk, but conversation was strained. By voicing disagreement, I had broken a taboo, and neither of us were sure how to get around it. I want to think that I provoked some thoughtful introspection, but I wonder if I might have just established myself as a soapboxing asshole. We walked the last five minutes without speaking, the wind whistling through the trees, mocking our silence.