Like “Stand and Deliver” (Except Not)

I meant to blog about this L.A. Times story on Zhao yan feng, a University Instructor from mainland China selected by the college board and the Chinese language council to teach Chinese to high school students. In South Central Los Angeles.

Have you ever watched a horror movie, where the best friend of the heroine is walking through a darkened parking lot by herself? And you scream “NO, DON’T GO THROUGH THE PARKING LOT” but you know she can’t hear you, because she’s going to get slaughtered anyway?

Yeah. That’s kind of how I feel about this.

Truth is, I didn’t go to school in South Central L.A. but I DID take a Chinese language class in high school, taught by a guy in a very similar situation. And we treated him like shit. Except to our teacher, most of us were Asian – taking the class because we thought it would be an easy “A.” It was, but we still ended up playing cards, gossiping and mouthing off in the back of the class anyway. I’m sure he thought we were the good kids gone bad, and god help us if he ever had a kid, because I’m sure he would have put him in a private Chinese school.

It almost feels like an afterthought that of COURSE the educational systems between the United States and China would be completely different, but I’ve seen and heard the stories before; eager teachers hoping to make a difference in society, yet slowly becoming disenfranchised and some of them dropping out in the middle of the year completely. The article tries to end on a bittersweet note, focusing on students that took him seriously, but I can’t help but feel like it’d be a worthless cause, only because I’ve lived it.