why teaching in asia rules

It all comes down to this: Teachers' Day.

In Canada, kids might bring their teacher a gift at christmas-time. But that would only be primary kids, and the gift would have to be something innocuous and clearly not-expensive. Like a mug. Or a Tim Horton's coupon. Not that I'm knocking Tim Horton's coupons. Don't get me wrong, I like my ice caps and vanilla cappucinos as much as the next patriotic Canadian. But let's face it, coffee coupons rank pretty dang low on the gift-thrill-spectrum.

And the giftular levels are really indicative of so much more. I've come up with the following complex mathematical formula to explain the physics behind my theories:

tg x ($ + * + ~) -> // R

Or:

teachers' gifts x (money spent on gifts x thought put into purchase + fancy wrapping) is directly proportional to the amount of capital-R Respect received by teachers from their students

In Vietnam, Teachers' Day was epic. When I worked at the Open University, all the kids would come over to my house on Teachers' Day. They would bring massive flower bouquets wrapped with satin ribbons, they would bring me silk scarves, they would bring knick-knacks, handicrafts, dried fruits, fresh fruits, candy, and balloons. Then they'd all hang out in my living room in their class-group until the next gang showed up, and they'd all switch places, and the new students would bring EVEN MORE GIFTS. Oh, and cards like you wouldn't believe, all kindly hand-written and thoughtfully composed. The really incredible thing is that most of the students would have Mrs. Thaba pegged in as stop-number-14 in their evening. They would first go see all the teachers that they'd had since primary school, give them gifts, and then work their way up to transient foreigners like myself.

You can imagine what kind of fun and what kind of loot a really good long-time teacher would have on an average Teachers' Day, huh?

Here in Thailand, we seem to have two Teachers' Days, which makes Thailand number one for yet another reason (close on the heels of lovely inhabitants and kick ass food). In January there was a Teachers' Day when all the kids brought me flowers and a few brought in gifts.

Then, today was Respect For Teachers Day. Huzzah, huzzah.

In the afternoon we had a special assembly where all the kids had to sit down on mats in front of us teachers, who were sitting in chairs, and then they first prayed for auspicious studies and good teachers, bowing down after each call-and-refrain chant. Then they said a series of thank yous to us, also bowing down to the floor after each chant. Finally, representatives from each class presented their teachers with a special flower arrangement that the classes had prepared the day before. When we went back to our classrooms, the kids were allowed to give us flowers individually, and got down on their knees in front of me to do so. It was a great day. Not great because the kids were bowing down (though of course, that's kind of a sweet deal, too), but because there was a time-out from the usual classroom hustle to stop and say thanks to the teachers. Really, couldn't we use a little more formalized Respect in our daily lives?

(And some more Respectfully-offered loot?)

[Bangkok-9-June-2005]