Will Chinese Students One Day Appreciate Thoreau?
01 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts Tags: Bartleby.com, consumerism, education, environment, life-long learning, Literature, Project Gutenberg, Thoreau
With the fast pace of growth in China and its emphasis on modernism, I wonder if my students will one day come to appreciate Thoreau’s ideals, especially his love of nature and his concern for the environment.
Understanding Thoreau
01 Oct 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts Tags: adventure, alchemy, close reading, critical thinking, education, journey, liberal arts, Literature, nature, self-reliance, Thoreau
In this literature class I help Chinese university students decipher passages in Thoreau’s essay, “Reading,” pointing out that it may take multiple visits to his works — a journey over a span of years — to gain more understanding. I also answer a student’s question into why Thoreau thought reading the classics, preferably in the original Greek and Roman, was so important.
Teaching Thoreau in the Heartland of China
21 Sep 2009 1 Comment
in Teaching Tags: American Pie, dreams, Literature, Thoreau
I was teaching Thoreau in a time when the Chinese were migrating from the countryside into the cities. It was a new Industrial Age—but this one was taking place during the age of globalism, cell phones, and Hello Kitty. Experts estimated that a population greater than that of America’s total population would move into Chinese cities within the next 15-20 years. There I was at the vanguard of this exodus where some of my students had left their families behind in the rice paddies. These students were their family’s only hope.
But for those now living and working in the cities, there was the heady pleasure of shopping. The cities became a Promised Land, and consumerism quietly ousted atheism as the dominant faith. In the Promised Land you could work in a factory and escape the ceaseless toil of the rice paddies. Of course, it was your job in the factory to crank out more stuff for other people to buy. And of course, you had to tear down the last vestiges of traditional China, and bulldoze Mother Nature in the name of progress. Anything to modernize China. Anything to become a member of the middle class. Yet for some Chinese these issues of modernity were recognized as a problem—and without Thoreau having to tell them.
Thoreau: His Life and Times
20 Sep 2009 Leave a Comment
in Podcasts Tags: Civil Disobedience, nature, Thoreau, transcendentalism, Walden
In this literature class I explore Thoreau by delving into his perspective on life and his motivation for choosing a spartan lifestyle, despite having a Harvard education. I am surprised by the brilliance of one Chinese student’s penetrating question about Thoreau — one that I had never heard before. The whole class works on an answer!
Back to School: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom!
12 Sep 2009 2 Comments
in Teaching Tags: cell phones, humor, journey, Literature, Louis Lowry, Obama, poetry, syllabus, Teaching, The Alchemist, The Congo, The Giver, The Hobbit, Thoreau, Tolkien, Vachal Lindsay, Walt Whitman
They were a tough crowd. I introduced my first two literature classes to my concept of learning as a journey. At first their faces were impenetrable masks. Then I told them, “Even in America we know about Chair Mao’s famous Long March, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.” Their faces lit up with pride. That’s when I knew my students understood me. “So this is an honor for me to be here on the China’s 60th anniversary, and be your guide on another journey. And it is an honor to be part of your education in the beginning of the Chinese Century. Of course, this journey will not be as hard as the Long March, but it will challenge you nonetheless.”
It was the first day of a two-semester class on American and British literature for junior English majors attending Xiangnan University in the city of Chenzhou in southern Hunan province. In the summer months prior to my arrival, I had known that I would be teaching literature, and that I would have the freedom to create my own curriculum. I was told that there was a text book and that the students were acquainted with some English literature such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Earnest Hemingway. Furthermore, I was told that I should feel free to bring my own books from American because the government-issue textbook was, “Maybe not so good.”
