JISHOU, HUNAN — I confess. It’s time to come clean. I am a pusher. For the last 25 years, I have been encouraging young people –even my own children! The shame! — to pursue higher education.

According to The Watchtower magazine, published by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, higher education is a really bad thing, like drugs, alcohol, wild parties, social networking sites, and maybe even rock & roll.

Been there, done that. So I’m apparently damned to hell. Crap. Who knew?

By way of Pharyngula, I saw this image scanned from The Watchtower. It’s all there. I am soooo screwed.

October 16th, 2009 | Tags: education, higher education, religion, snark, Watchtower | Category: Commentary, Teaching, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — I haven’t written much lately, because I’ve been a little busy. Classes have started, and I only have half my schedule in place still. The freshmen start classes next month.

In addition to my university classes, I have also become a private tutor to three students (ages 8 to 25), a teacher of two small groups of primary students, and a guest “lecturer” for a friend’s middle-school weekend enrichment school. Since the uni is sending two students to the provincial English-speaking contest, I will also coach their pronunciation and intonation skills for the next four weeks or so.

Here’s my schedule right now:



All the classes labeled 2009 (China uses year of entry, not graduation, to denote classes) will not meet until after the National Holiday ends Oct. 8. This weekend, 4,000 freshmen arrived, and will have 10 days of orientation and military training until the holiday begins Oct. 1. I can’t comment on those classes yet, but I anticipate being very busy reading and marking 70 freshman compositions and 70 sophomore compositions each week or so.

September 21st, 2009 | Tags: China, schedule, Teaching | Category: China, Teaching, Teaching English | Leave a comment

I am now a writer for the Teachers’ Lounge at The Daily Kos. My first Teachers’ Lounge diary went up yesterday, and was even rescued overnight! In DKos-atopia, that’s a singular honor. So, go read it.

September 13th, 2009 | Tags: China, daily kos, education, ESL, teachers lounge, Teaching | Category: China, General stuff, Teaching, Teaching English | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Recently, I wrote a reaction to the Christian rightwing hijacking of the Texas Board of Education, and the anti-public education views of one of its members. A visitor named Joey swung by this week, and left this comment:

You will note that Joey has nothing directly to say about the Texas BOE, but definitely agrees that public education is a Bad Thing.

I don’t, though I am a critic of public education. My reply was this:

September 11th, 2009 | Tags: civics, compulsory, education, Jefferson, public education, Schools, TBOE, Texas Board of Education, Washington | Category: Commentary, Schools, Teaching | Comments (22)

JISHOU, HUNAN — It was only a matter of time before swine flu would penetrate into the Chinese heartland. Within a week of classes starting at the university, a student was diagnosed with H1N1.

Then another a day later. According to some (unverified) reports, perhaps eight more students may be infected as well.

Jishou University has four campuses. The first student diagnosed with H1N1 lives at the old campus, near downtown. The second lives here at the new campus. Their roommates are being monitored as we speak.
I haven’t heard any bad news from the other two campuses, medical and foreign languages.

Our students have had the fear of God (or something like it, since China is officially atheist) put into them at meetings earlier this week. Wash your hands. Cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze or cough. Throw your tissues away immediately. Don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth. If you feel ill or feverish, go directly to the school clinic, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

My foreign affairs officer, Cyril Hu, called me to his office this morning to give me an oral thermometer (A mercury one! The USA has all but abolished those.) and two sheets of instructions (in Chinese!?) about what precautions to take against the swine flu.

Meanwhile, rumors and fears are bubbling through the student community. One girl texted me to say there were “several” people down with the flu. Another student on QQ told me she had heard the uni would ban any travel during the upcoming eight-day National Holiday break. Both rumors proved to be false.

September 9th, 2009 | Tags: China, H1N1, jishou, swine flu | Category: China, Commentary, Teaching | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — I am now convinced that a certain segment of the US population is now certifiably insane.

I have blogged about parents squawking about teachers who used to be porn actresses, about teachers taking kids to art museum to see statues of nude people, about schools allowing creationism to be taught in science classes, about students talking about God and Jesus in commencement addresses. These concerns are understandable, even if I don’t always agree with the parents doing the complaining. Sex and religion are after all touchy subjects.

But to object to their children hearing the President of the United States talk about the importance of education? I just don’t get it. They must be crazy.

Hey, people! He’s the fucking President of the USA! He won by majority vote. He’s YOUR president. It’s not like he’s Charles Manson or that whacko who held a girl hostage for 18 years in his backyard.

Barack Obama, a guy who rose from a low-income, single-parent family to become the leader of the Free World, wants to talk to schoolchildren on Sept. 8 on the importance of staying in school and getting an education. It apparently worked for him just fine.

Some parents, the kind who hang on every word Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin utter, the kind who use WorldNetDaily as their primary source of information, believe, however, that Obama will “indoctrinate” their children into becoming socialists, Marxists, Muslims, or I don’t what else.

September 4th, 2009 | Tags: conspiracy, crazy people, education, rightwing, schools.obama | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Media, Schools, Teaching | Comments (1)