I Am Working, LIKE ACTUALLY WORKING!

This weekend brings much needed rest.  The first week of working at Basis in Shenzhen has been very rewarding but exhausting.  This is the first time in four years that I actually feel like I am working.  For the last four years of working in Philadelphia I would prepare for a year of teaching only to execute less than a third of what I had planned.  This came down to the fact that the school(s) where I worked had such low standards that students were barely expected to show up.  When they did show up I was asked to lower my expectations to accommodate for their absence.  

The culture of China stands in sharp contrast to the culture of the US.  There is a reason the US is falling behind in everything except prison population per capita.  We do not value education in the US.  I never had a student ASK for more challenging work until I moved here.  Students here compete to get into the top colleges so they can get good paying jobs.  This is because the population is so high that every low wage menial job can be easily filled. China is not without its own problems. However, because of the cultural perspective on academic performance, nobody leaves high school without a strong foundation of knowledge that far surpasses the average UK, US, or Canadian citizen. 

The American education is not only inadequate, it is a destructive part of a broken system designed to keep people stupid.  Our value system is skewed.  Until the US learns to value education, and value educated people, the likelihood of things getting better is abysmally low.  There is a reason 11 million Americans get their vaccine advice from a standup comedian turned podcaster.  There is a reason 6% of Americans do not believe the moon exists or that we landed there.  There is a reason the FDA has to warn Americans not to cook chicken in cold medicine.  The reason is simple; so many Americans are stupid because we allow and encourage that kind of stupidity to proliferate in the US.  No such stupidity is reinforced here.  A strong education system, combined with a cultural perspective that an education is something worth working toward, is what prevents people from espousing such idiotic belief systems. 

I have two photos for this post.  The first is my biography plaque that my school features in the lobby. The second is a statue that I photographed after grabbing some drinks with friends from work.

I will keep it brief and end it here.  It feels so good to actually be teaching again.  For the last four years I spent more time playing amateur social worker than teaching biology.  This is the hardest I have worked in four years and I am loving every minute.