Teach English in Mengyuan Zhen - Weinan Shi

Teaching English to persons whose first language is not English is a hefty undertaking. Theories and approaches abound and as with any endeavor, certain elements of the profession are formulated and then passed on as gold standards never to be questioned. For the purposes of this essay, these would entail “cultural sensitivity” and items that fall under the rubric of “etiquette”. Several of these rules appear in the final unit: keep things apolitical and be conservative in your manner. Also, as it pertains to Thailand: it is acceptable to pair male and females together but not to use photos of the Royal Family on a matching game. These rules of course make a lot of sense . . . after all, as an EFL teacher, I am a guest in someone else’s country and as their guest I should follow their rules. Ruffling feathers, after all, is a luxury only revolutionaries with fast exit plans should appropriate as their modus operandi, yes? The problem arises, however, when these rules are in direct conflict with who I am as a human being: i.e. they go against the grain of my very nature. What does authenticity really mean if the teacher is being inauthentic? As a teacher of language, is it always my job to appease the cultural underpinnings of the host culture? And is this somewhat blind and quasi robotic stance not in conflict with my larger role as a “teacher” who lives in a modern world and is a student of that thing we like to call “Democracy” and “Egalitarianism”? Of course, “modern” is not all it is cracked up to be: some indigenous peoples are more enlightened vis-a-vis the preservation of the environment, for example, than some first order capitalists . . . and we all know about cultural ego-centrism and its offshoots, say, the notion that Americans are exceptional human beings!! But let’s stick to the topic at hand as best we can for now. How do I reconcile my very being, the grain of my soul with rules I am told to adhere to when teaching abroad? We don’t need to stick to the example of Thai royalty above. I could imagine a scenario where I am granted a job teaching in a culture where being gay is not only frowned upon but worthy of the death penalty. Should I travel to this place and pretend that I am OK with this because I desperately need an income? Should I turn a blind eye to this heinous, sick practice because I am a guest in a country and solely there to make sure my clients learn English -- an English that has eradicated the words ‘homosexual’ or ‘lesbian’ or ‘woman who drives a car very fast’ from its lexicon? Does this not then demolish my own standing whose only goal in life has now become to pass on a mummified form of the English language while forgetting my calling as a “teacher” all together? So, what is a teacher then? I don’t really know. Gandhi was a teacher of the foremost kind—one on my idols in fact along with Martin Luther King, Jr. And yet look, the caste system still survives in India to this very day and to a great degree (but wearing dungarees) in my own country, America, and yet because I am ‘open-minded’ and ‘tolerant’ (two traits a good teacher should always have) I must overlook small hypocrisies; these trifles? Yes? After all, human experience is mired in hypocrisy: take the founding fathers of my country who I most certainly proudly invoke above (I am a child of democratic tradition, comment) who all had slaves!! I suspect that my role as an English language teacher can be found precisely in those twisted knots or kinks that have yet to work themselves literally free. “Teacher” [from Oxford on line dictionary: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/teach]: Impart knowledge to or instruct (someone) as to how to do something. In my case: ‘she taught me how to use English in a certain, preordained context.’ And that context would be, given the course instructions, an apolitical, a whitewashed context that goes out of its way to make sure it does not offend the host country/culture and thus, in essence, steers clear of the difficult questions plaguing our world today, still [i.e. the role of royalty, colonial vestiges, caste systems, homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny]. And robbed of my critical capacity, I am no longer a teacher in its truest sense, but an indoctrinator, a promulgator of the status quo (Do not look at the royalty, directly – bow down! Do not touch the outcasts! Girls and boys are to be separate and if together, then boys will go first!! Etc. etc. etc.) for the ruling elites of the country I happen to be teaching English in. So, what is my culturally sensitive role beyond a token? Thank god that I am not a proselytizer come, out of the goodness of my heart, to educate the heathens in the name of God. “The king and I”? Not that either. So what am I? I am not sure yet, although I had an inkling above with those knots and kinks. All I know at this point is that my role is far larger than spilling a few quant grammar points in a supposedly neutral context (there is no neutrality, there is only appeasement or pondering). The question then becomes, do I want to be manipulated by these rules set down for me in stone so as not to step on any toes? Or do I want to learn how to navigate a complicated, multi-facetted world through the teaching of the English language in a context that furthers all of humanity, no matter how difficult that is (and difficult it is, have no doubt, lest we inadvertently create a purely western world)? I humbly and yet autonomously posit the latter. Thank you for your attention.