That Paradox Explained

I've realised that I never fully explained the paradox I referred to here.

It's the paradox of being liberated and depressed by the same idea.

And so, when LM told me that he had Grand Ideas concerning the motivation of students like The Addams Family, and hoped to learn if they could be dealt with by such learner-empowering tools as Virtual Learning Environments, only to get here and find that he would struggle to provide a book, never mind a VLE. Well, I thought, yes indeedy. I too liked the look of this project, the originality and innovation it involved.

And like LM I got here to find... same old baloney as every other job: get bums on seats and keep them there as long as they're paying, never mind that they cannot be taught, and that they put serious obstacles in the way of their classmates learning too. Never mind. Cram the bastards for an exam, help them get a bit of paper, and move them onto the next level and the next bit of paper.

It IS depressing. Also, liberating. I'm used to this hypocrisy and can survive it.

Young Gomez was whining the other day, not without some justification, that I was trying to show him the trick involved in passing a certain part of the C&G exam. "But I am here to learn English, so I can teach in English."

Which would sound good if you didn't know him, and know that what he's really saying is, "this exam cramming is quite hard work, and I will be found out at the end of it if I don't do some serious studying. I want to go back to nice fluffy tefly things, all those games, where I can bullshit my way through."

The Punctuality Dilemma

Being on time is culture specific. We feel that in professional life, and to a lesser extent socially, you arrive ready at the appointed time, or have a jolly good reason for not doing so. That is not the norm beyond the Anglo-Saxon world.

My concern is, that in trying to change a cultural norm (a relaxed attitude to time), we (and therefore I) are/am producing an atmosphere of resentment and eventually anger which cannot be conducive to learning. But this now strikes at the heart of the whole set up here.

The idea is to have an English-medium FE college, where British norms of academic behaviour apply. One of those is being on time. If I nod at lateness, then I am perhaps in breach of my contract. On the other hand, I need to ensure that these students learn sufficient to get them through their exams, and up to a level of English to enable them to teach in our language.

So there’s a paradox here. Psychologically, students need to feel relaxed and positive to enable them to language-learn. Professionally, they need to adhere to the alien concept of doing everything by the bell. My dilemma is that I cannot foster the former and simultaneously enforce the latter.