A woman is a kitchen

My students are very quiet. Cupping my hands to my ears, raising my eyebrows, and leaning forward until I am nearly falling off of my teacher-stage have a negligible effect. I wouldn't be surprised if they spent their entire first year of school writing the phrase 'inside voices' over and over and over again. Of course, as soon as we're on break they're perfectly capable of creating a din. Today, a downpour began in the middle of class, and all hope was lost; I almost wanted to end class early. But of course I did not. We made it through, mostly with me shouting over the rain. The one consolation was that whatever forces control the weather seem to respect the Vietnamese notion of teachers' high status: the rain stopped just long enough for me to my room, and returned with a vengeance as soon as I was under an awning. 

I have mixed feelings about students blatantly translating for each other. On one hand, it undermines the English-only environment. On the other hand, when it is clear that no amount of slowing down, repeating, and rephrasing on my part will get the student to understand, having a student translate means that the student I am trying to talk to will at least understand the question and have a chance of formulating a reply. But, it means that that same student can continue to get by without learning to understand spoken English.

I try to always remember how extremely limited my Vietnamese is, and that most people would say I have a gift for language-learning to begin with. So I try not to judge too harshly, or not to judge at all, really. But sometimes I despair about the English education here. When I teach my FCE class and think about the fact that one high school English teacher in the entire province was able to pass the test that, granted, is probably quite difficult, I don't understand how they can provide a useful English education to today's students. These teachers graduated from colleges like Ben Tre and many have been teaching for over 10 years. How? What have their students learned? When only six of almost 30 English faculty members will speak to me in English I wonder, how do the others teach? How much is an issue of confidence and how much is a true lack of ability? When I talk to my students, sometimes I am heartened, and sometimes I am disheartened. At the end of this year, many of them will graduate and go on to become teachers. Yet, many of them still struggle to produce grammatically correct sentences in any tense or mood other than the present. And whether or not they realize that they have problems with this is a whole other question. It's one thing to be able to make yourself understood, to use language merely for communication, but when you are going to become an English teacher, being able to 'get by' becomes insufficient. To paraphrase something that Trang said to me once, we as individual teachers have a huge impact on the English of the Vietnamese. The quality of our English affects that of our students, who will become English teachers, and will affect the English of their students, and so on. Especially with the mentality that the teacher is just below the king, any imperfections in our own English will get passed down through the generations unless or until some other equally respected source can catch and correct those errors.

Tonight I had a long talk with Trang that wandered its way into gender roles and gender equality. In the old days there was a proverb that said "a woman is a kitchen;" that was her place, her duty, and her value. But now couples share domestic duties. In Trang's case, it is actually her husband, who is retired, who does most of the housework and the cooking. In the old days, if you had one son that was enough to say you had children, but if you had ten daughters that counted as none. Trang was very surprised to hear that I went to a women's college because there is no such thing in Vietnam. She said gender-based educational segregation was an artifact from the olden days, where men and women weren't allowed to touch and one didn't meet one's spouse until the wedding day. But now things are different. While these attitudes have changed, that doesn't mean they're not lingering under the surface, and while Trang and other modern women find the old ways antiquated and restrictive, what to me seem like modern manifestations of those same attitudes go unchallenged.  Trang mentioned that Vietnam didn't have and didn't need special programs (like women's colleges) to increase women's participation in education or in the workforce. However, when I shared the fact that, at least in the US, women are underrepresented in fields like science and engineering, she countered with the fact that some jobs just weren't suitable for women. Women shouldn't be electrical engineers because climbing telephone poles is too difficult for women. Women are not encouraged to pursue engineering degrees because they will not be able to get jobs. The best they can hope for is a desk job (aka secretarial position) with an engineering company.

My crowning achievement: cooking dinner. And not just in the defrosting or instant noodling sense.

Just wish I'd had some parmesan cheese...

Mango for dessert and dinner was good.



If you want to see more of my trials and tribulations in the land of translation, keep reading.
The first sentence of a two-sentence paragraph went from this:

The process of project implementation "Handbook to protect Vam Ho Bird  Ground" is a very significant work, in order to attract attention of other departments and organizations at all levels and people to Vam Ho Bird; Awards involvement, the connection between local businesses and organizations within and outside the country, conservation of rare birds in the bird, to conserve natural resources and the biodiversity of the province, close closely with economic development - social, as well as limiting the impact of climate change.

To this:

The development of the  "Handbook to protect Vam Ho Bird  Ground" is a very significant work, that will serve to attract the attention of other people, departments, and organizations to the Vam Ho Bird Ground. We can establish connections between local businesses and local and foreign organizations to work together for conservation. Our conservation efforts are focused on the conservation of rare birds, natural resources, and the biodiversity of the province. We work to limit the environmental impact of economic development and the impact of climate change.

Does it mean what they meant to mean? I don't know, but at least it means something.