I went to Taipei today to conduct interviews for Taiwan students who are applying for Fulbright grants to support them in study in the US. There were eight of us on the interview committee. We started at 8:30, interviewed 25 people, and wrapped up at 5:00 this afternoon.
I had to get up at 6:00 to take the bus to Taipei, then I had to take the bus back to Taipei after we were done. Got home about 7:00 this evening.
It was a great honor to be invited to participate in the interview process. Many of the people that we interviewed were outstanding young scholars. We joked that one person in particular will could win a Nobel Prize some day.
Still, I’m pooped.
Oh, and tomorrow I’m going to Kaohsiung to conduct a workshop for the ETAs down there.
I received some very interesting questions/comments from a friend, and I thought that more than one person would be interested in the answers, so I’m posting my responses here:
Q: Aboriginal artwork resembles Native American artwork. What’s with that?
A: You’re absolutely right about Taiwanese Aboriginal artwork bearing an uncanny resemblance to Native American style. Many people have commented on that over the years. The Aboriginal people were a stone-age civilization until the Chinese invaded in the 1600s, so it isn’t surprising that their culture was similar to that of the Native Americans. There are many unfortunate parallels between the two groups in how they were treated by the majority population over the years, by the way. 🙁
Q:About the marble in the soda pop bottles: if you push the marble down into the bottle, don’t people accidentally swallow the marbles?
A: Don’t worry about the swallowing the marbles in the soda pop. There is a large plastic cover over the bottleneck to prevent the marble from escaping.
Here’s a (pretty bad) video showing how it works:
Q: How’s Ian adjusting to school?
A: Ian is actually having some more problems finding his niche in school than Evan. He is in and out of school a lot, taking Chinese lessons at a local University, Fo Guang 佛光, running on the track team, and taking some classes via the Michigan Virtual High School. He is also used to having the teachers available to students before and after classes. He likes to ask questions and get follow-up information. Unfortunately, the teachers in his high school seem to leave school right after their classes, so Ian can’t find them.
Ian has also discovered a fatal flaw in the Taiwanese educational culture: students rarely ask questions in class. This should come as no surprise to American educators who have have Taiwanese students (or from other Asian countries) in their classes. The culture here has teachers as sages on the stage, and students as humble and passive receivers of knowledge and wisdom. Of course this isn’t the American way of learning, which Ian is accustomed to. He said that he only dares to ask one or two questions per class, because after that, he starts getting weird looks from the other kids in the class.
Although this isn’t the best experience for Ian, it’s still a valuable experience, and we don’t think that the year here will warp his brain (too much, anyway).
We got out of the city this weekend. Evan was feeling a little stir crazy, and wanted to see some nature. So on Sunday, we rented scooters, and got out of the city. First we went to see the ocean.
The ocean is only about 3 or 4 miles from our apartment. That’s a fishing boat in the background. The beach was a little dirty, so I won’t show pictures of it here. The boys had a nice walk along the shoreline.
Because Taiwan is closer to the equator, the sun is really punishingly hot here. The local choice of headgear does a good job of keeping the sun out.
Then we got back on the scooters and went to the mountains.
Taiwan’s mountains and geology have created some beautiful waterfalls.
Taiwan’s tropical climate has produced some really scary spiders.
But the beauty of the waterfalls makes it worth the spiders:
Many teachers and principals in the local schools have said that they want ETAs because they’re “energetic” 活潑. I really didn’t like hearing them say that, because although some Americans are energetic, not all of us are, of course. I was afraid that the schools were setting themselves up for disappointment. The ETAs had no idea what was expected of them, because Americans typically don’t know what the stereotypical American is in the eyes of the Taiwanese. The locals had this expectation of the ETAs, but the ETAs didn’t know what the expectation was.
The stereotypes that the Taiwanese hold about Americans is a challenge for me and the ETAs to overcome. There is a negative stereotype and infuriating prejudice that the Asian American ETAs have to endure here: that the color of their skin means that they are somehow not really Americans, and not really native speakers. I received phone calls from schools asking that they have a “real” American ETA placed in their school. They wanted a white person, and weren’t at all ashamed of coming right out and saying so. I had to choke back the response that I wanted to give them, namely that in the US, that is an illegal request, and that phone call puts the school in an actionable position. Taiwan has no such law, so it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against people to an extent that is blatantly wrong to us Americans.
Another prejudice that is less insulting, but that is just as unfair and problematic, is the belief that real Americans behave just as the Americans on TV and in the movies do. Hollywood has shaped the image that the rest of the world has of Americans. Think of how people behave on soap operas, prime time dramas, and action films. That’s the America that Taiwanese people see, so that’s how they think we all behave in real life.
Not that America receives an accurate view of Asia at the hands of Hollywood. Every time I see a movie that supposedly portrays China and the Chinese, I want to cringe.
We had a problem in one of the schools that stemmed from this misunderstanding. In the middle of a class, without warning, the local English teacher suddenly turned to here ETA, and asked her to lead the class in an activity. The ETA was stunned, because she hadn’t planned an activity, and had no idea that the LET would ask this of her. She wasn’t prepared to think up an activity on the spot. In the eyes of the LET, this was a reasonable request. After all, Americans in the movies are creative, spontaneous people who have lots of ideas and can pull them out of their minds at the drop of a hat. While there may be such people in the world, it sure isn’t fair to expect that all Americans can do that. It was an awkward situation for everyone. The LET felt a bit indignant that the ETA couldn’t do what she expected Americans can do. The ETA was indignant that an unreasonable demand was placed on her.
I had to admonish the local teachers not to expect the unreasonable from the ETAs, and I think that it sunk in, but I still have a lot of educating to do. I’m going to earn my paycheck this year.
The boys’ first cell phone bills came today. Evan’s was $160, and Ian’s was $314. Before you freak out, remember to convert those numbers to US dollars. That works out to $4.90 for Evan, and $9.62 for Ian. CHEAP!
I made a day trip to Taipei today to read applications from Taiwanese graduate students who have applied for a Fulbright grant to pursue a PhD in America. Several of us Fulbrighters gave up our afternoon to read the application materials in the foundation’s office in Taipei. The foundation staff divided us into categories that roughly matched our academic areas. My pile of applications was for fields such as literature, music, anthropology, and education (and one linguistics applicant – hooray!). Even only a portion of the applications still left me with about 20 to read. I’m not exaggerating when I write that the pile of application materials was about 12 inches tall. A lot of it was transcripts and transmittal forms, but there was still a substantial amount of material that needed to be read.
After a few hours of reading Taiwanese English, my brain was pretty mushy. We managed to rank the applicants and recommend a list of people to the foundation. The next step is to invite the applicants who passed this initial screening for a face-to-face interview. I imagine that will be very stressful for the poor grad students, but it will give them a taste of what a dissertation defense is like. Who knows, maybe it will toughen them up.
Yesterday Evan came home from school and rushed into the apartment. Before Stacy could ask what was going on, Evan threw open the door to the balcony and stepped out, waving like crazy down to the street. Stacy peered out, and saw seven or eight of Evan’s classmates waving back to Evan. They had walked him home, and were saying goodbye to him.
We knew that he would make friends here, that it was just a matter of time. Still, that scene was heart-warming.
Sunday afternoon, Stacy’s brothers’ wife’s uncle invited us to lunch at his restaurant in the town of JiaoXi ç¤æºª, just north of Yilan. The restaurant serves a dish that is a specialty of Macao; drinking soup mixed with the marrow of a large bone . Sounds weird; tastes good.
Then we went to a special “coffee museum.” Apparently, the founder of Mr Brown coffee is from Yilan, and there is a special coffee shop dedicated to Mr Brown coffee. Since Mr Brown and I have a long friendship going back many years, I had to get a picture in front of his house:
The distant cousins had a bit of a communication gap at first, then they broke the ice playing a game. First they put a GOB of sugar into Mom’s tea, then then they did rock-paper-scissors to determine who would have to drink it. This is called “fun.”
BTW, in the first picture there, cousin Gene 楊昕 is wearing a mask because he has a cold, and he didn’t want to infect us. There is a huge scare about H1N1 in Taiwan now; I’ll post more about that soon.
You want to talk about health care reform? Taiwan has a national health insurance program. It isn’t perfect, but it works. Here’s what my health card looks like:
As members of the local economy, Fulbrighters are required to join the health insurance program, which means that for the year that we are here in Taiwan, we get to enjoy the same health benefits that the Taiwanese do. We just pay a small co-pay for doctor’s visits, prescription medicine, Chinese medicine in addition to Western medicine, everything from soup to nuts. Oh, and it covers dental, too.
The system has been up and running for several years, now. This is an expensive government program, but the people here recognize it for the valuable service that it provides.
The card contains a computer chip that tracks individuals’ medical records and treatment history. You swipe your card in the doctor’s office, and the clinic is instantly tied into the nationwide network. The office visit is automatically paid for, and your records get updated in the central database, and
Every two weeks, the ETAs assemble at the Teacher Training Center (where my office is located) for a three-hour workshop. Today was the first such workshop. The ETAs spent the time working with their LETs (Local English Teachers), planning lessons and activities. We talked about several issues that have arisen, the most important being the “No Chinese” rule that we imposed on the ETAs.
Many (perhaps most) of the ETAs had studied Chinese before coming to Taiwan, and many of them came to Taiwan with the intention of continuing studying Chinese while here. Of course they all recognize that while teaching,they are not to practice their Chinese. However, our policy has taken a further step. Not only are the ETAs not to speak Chinese, but they are not to reveal to the children that they can speak Chinese. If the children speak to them in Chinese, the ETAs are to tell the children that they do not understand.
The purpose of this policy is to encourage the children to try to use their emerging English to communicate with the ETA. The motivation to communicate is very high. The children are very curious about the ETAs, and want to ask them countless questions. So why do we put this barrier between the children and the ETAs? Why not just let the ETAs speak to the children in Chinese?
This was the topic of intense discussion during today’s workshop. Some ETAs have expressed the feeling that since the LET can speak to the children in Chinese, that the LET is developing a closer relationship with the children than the ETA can. I expressed my sympathy to the ETAs. It seems almost cruel to prohibit communication. But there is a method to this madness. It has to do with the “teachable moment.” When children are motivated, and need to learn something new in order to accomplish a goal, that is an opportunity to teach. I encouraged the ETA to work with the LET to help the children learn to communicate with the ETA. The LET can serve as the language teacher, teaching the children how to say what they want to express in English. The children can then say what they want to say to the ETA, who will respond. Some LETs who have tried this in the past backed me up on this approach. So we’ll try it, and see how far we get with it.
Some ETAs also shared some strategies that they stumbled upon. One ETA likes to walk around the school grounds during the breaks. Students follow him around, and he maintains a running monologue as he walks, telling the children the English words for things that he sees on campus: “that’s a rock, that’s a tree, that’s Confucius” (a statue of The Sage is an obligatory fixture in every school in Taiwan). Another ETA, whose Chinese is actually pretty good, is “learning” Chinese from the children. They’re teaching him words in Chinese, and he’s teaching them the words in English.
Eventually, the children will discover that the ETAs can speak Chinese. But I hope to delay that, and in the meantime, foster in the children the habit of trying to use English to communicate with the ETAs.
