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May 10, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:05:06
1660 Chinarchy! An Update from Freedomain Radio Listener in China

A Freedomain Radio listener gives us the latest view on teaching children in the Middle Kingdom.

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Hello. Oh, hey, Will.
How's it going? Good.
How are you, Steph? Just great.
Just great. So how was the tale from the Far East or West?
How was the tale?
How is life in the Republic of China?
It's pretty crazy.
You know, I'm sorry. I didn't even notice. We have the same birthday.
Yeah, actually, I noticed that a long time ago and then I forgot to mention it to you.
But yeah, I'm not even going to tell you how old I was when you were born.
But anyway, My good ear.
Yeah, so how's it going over there?
It's fun. Was that Christina?
Tell her I said hi.
Yeah, we're all here. We're sitting around waiting for fantastical tales of magic and dragons and monkeys.
There's none of that, really.
There's fireworks. When we got here, it was the Spring Festival of the New Year, so every day, like morning through all night, there was fireworks going off.
It was ridiculous.
But it's cool.
I mean, I don't know.
Have you read any of the blog that I've been keeping?
Sadly, no. I haven't, though I've been meaning to, because I know you have a blog, but I haven't had a chance to get updated, so assume I have no news.
Okay, yeah, it's Chynarchy.
It's good. It's like a lot of the stuff that I ended up writing about on there, which I wasn't planning on writing so much about, was teaching, because I'm teaching like 17 five-year-olds.
And that's probably the craziest part of all the stuff that I've been doing here.
That is intense. Yeah.
I have much greater respect, I think, for, I don't know, teachers, I guess, good teachers, teachers that I remember from high school that are in elementary school that were not like assholes because it can be really, really stressful. Oh, especially that.
That's a pretty extreme group.
Yeah, the kids are awesome.
I'm friends with all of them.
And they're the only reason why it's so much fun to go to work every day.
Well, they're enormously lucky, I think, to have you as a teacher.
Yeah, I hope so.
I was actually going to email you a long time ago when I first got here because...
I have assistants and stuff, and they kept telling me that I was almost going to make it worse for them by not having strict classroom rules and not getting mad at them for talking during class.
Because that's not going to happen in their culture as a whole, right?
Right, and they have to go from kindergarten to primary school and they said the teachers there are like, you know, strict, totally authoritarian tyrants.
And so I didn't really know what to do about that.
It's a tough question and we've certainly thought about that here quite a bit.
Raising Izzy as a non-threatened free thinker is tough because she's not going to meet that nearly as much in society.
But what are the only other options?
To traumatize people for the sake of the fact that they might be traumatized later?
I just can't participate in that.
And there is always going to be discomfort when it comes to social change.
There has to be. It's inevitable.
And the only other choice is to reject social change and just continue to re-inflict harm on the young.
And no matter what happens, that just can't be the right path, if that makes any sense.
Right. No, it does.
And I think a lot of these kids will have some outs anyway, because the school I work at is...
Pretty well off. All the parents are pretty rich, and a lot of them are probably going to end up going to schools in America.
Not like they're that much better, but...
Well, they certainly would be better than the local ones, I think.
Yeah, yeah. Everything I hear about Chinese schools is that they're pretty...
I guess kids learn more as far as, like, you know, math or specific topics, but they're all...
It's like military, basically.
The schools are pretty... More military than, you know, US schools.
Well, yeah. And that's because the parenting is pretty military too, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
It's military and it's super, super overbearing.
And I think it's a, that's, I think it was the result of the one child policy.
Because every parent is like...
You haul your eggs in one basket thing? Right.
Yeah. So much pressure and so much like everything is riding on this kid.
The Eastern cultures seem to put a lot of focus on the social status of successful kids, and that puts a lot of pressure down on the kids, I think.
Yeah, that's what it's all...
They tell me about the stuff they do on the weekends, and it's like, oh, mom planned for me to like...
I had tennis instructions, swimming lessons, I had English lessons, and then I had this, and did you play at all on the weekends?
We have no word for that But yeah, I don't know I didn't really have anything specific I wanted to talk to you about.
I just wanted to, you know, I hadn't heard from you in a while.
Well, I mean, I'd just like to, if you could, I'll turn my microphone off.
I'm going to give Izzy some food.
If you could just tell us, I guess, your thoughts, your impressions, your experiences.
Have a nice juicy monologue.
I don't think you heard from him.
Hey, sorry about that.
No problem. Yeah, so if you could, I've got to get a bit easy some food.
If I could turn my microphone off and you could just give us all the nice juicy monologue on your thoughts and experiences, that would be really cool for me.
Yeah, sure. I was saying that I came with Brett Miller, who was one of my college roommates.
And he was always kind of like into libertarianism, into philosophy.
And then like a year after school, after, you know, getting really into it and going to the barbecue and all that stuff, I kind of like had the talk with him.
And he was like, you know, The one in a million instant.
He was like, okay, I'm down with all this stuff.
So, you know, the whole thing.
Therapy, self-knowledge, psychology.
Let's do it all.
And so he came with me.
We were talking about going.
He's half Chinese. We'd actually talked about going while we were still in school because we couldn't find jobs.
And so we were like, oh, you know, because Job for a year and all those guys.
But Brett and I just kept talking about how, you know, it would be fun before, like, trying to get real careers or real jobs or whatever it is that we're supposed to do.
And it would be fun to go travel and the teaching English thing was an option.
So we started working on it last summer, finding out about it, going to different agencies and all that stuff.
We finally got offered jobs in December to leave end of February.
And so that's what we did.
And we got here at the end of February and it was kind of like We have Chinese hospitals, which I've listened to your one video about it.
Chinese hospitals are actually pretty legit.
I mean, I don't know.
They know that you're a foreigner when you go in, so you get treated a little bit differently, but they're like cheap.
And you go into like one big room with all these little rooms off of it, and you get like every test you need done in like 15 minutes.
You just go room, room, room, room, room, room, room, and you're done.
You're like x-ray, blood tests, urine tests, blood pressure tests, done.
For like 50 bucks.
So that was cool.
And so we were rushed around.
And like the police station registers a foreigner and get working visas and all this stuff.
And then they kind of just stuck us at different schools.
And so he's at a different school.
It's like an hour away from our apartment.
And then we just started teaching and hanging out with the other teachers, some of which are really cool.
Some are weird.
Like, I don't know. Like, I can't really...
Some of the people that came here, I don't understand why they came here, but...
And they don't even like kids or teaching or...
It's weird. But there are a lot of cool people.
And so we hang out with them and travel.
I was at the Great Wall last weekend.
And it's all really awesome.
The Chinese people are kind of weird.
I'm sure you've heard about the saving face thing.
It's so annoying because nobody will ever be upfront with you about anything, especially our contracting agency, anybody you're involved with in business.
They're so like, I don't know, especially if they can't do something.
They never under-promise and over-deliver.
They're always telling you they can do everything, they'll take care of everything, everything will be fine.
And it's like a politician.
You're like, there's no way that you guys can actually do all these things.
And then when it finally doesn't work, they have all these excuses why and don't want to talk about it.
So you're constantly filtering bullshit whenever you're talking to anyone involved in Chinese businesses.
I don't know where to go from here.
You guys are still there, right?
We certainly are. How is it relative to your expectations?
How long are you going to be there? What's the long-term plan?
Have you made friends in the Chinese community?
How's your Mandarin coming along?
Go! Relative to my expectations, I thought it would be More third-world-ish, I guess.
And it isn't. I don't know, it isn't, but there's things about it that are really third-world-ish, and they cause all kinds of cognitive dissonance when you're walking around and there's huge, beautiful architecture skyscrapers, and then guys building on them with bamboo scaffolding who look homeless.
And you hear that like, you know, the people that are going to be working in this building make like, you know, average of like $100 a year and the guys building it make like 50 cents a day or something ridiculous, especially in Beijing because Beijing and Shanghai because they're like the biggest, most businessy city areas in China, if you don't count Hong Kong.
And so it's like, it's like a weird combination of First world and third world, but I thought it would be worse than it was.
I think Beijing is a really cool city.
Let's see, what did you ask next?
How long is I going to be here? My contract's only for a year.
I told myself I wouldn't consider what I was going to do next until at least six months.
I wouldn't renegotiate a contract or do anything until I'd been here for half a year and knew if I liked it.
And all that stuff, and I don't know.
I don't think I could keep doing it for a year.
I might be able to live here for more than a year, but teaching, I don't know.
I can kind of understand.
I mean, it sounds terrible, but I kind of understand the, like, old grizzled teachers that hate everything about teaching.
Because I just feel like I would be beaten down, not from the kids, from, like, The administration and from just...
I don't know.
I feel like I would be beaten down into like being disgruntled and old way too fast if I stayed as a teacher.
Well, I think that's... Sorry, can you talk a bit more about that?
What aspects do you think would grind you down?
Because I think it's a very interesting question.
Okay, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
I can talk about this forever.
It's pretty much the administration and the constant...
I mean, this is like when...
Whenever I journal about teaching, this is the thing I write about because it's this feeling of being set against the kids every time you have to do something.
And it's not their fault because they just want their kids.
But you have these administrators that are all over you about teaching them the most ridiculous things that just don't mean anything.
This month is multiculturalism month.
And if that wasn't bad enough, All they want us to teach them for multiculturalism is, like, the various flavors of nationalism.
It's like, teach them the Chinese flag, teach them the United States flag, teach them the Venezuelan flag, teach them the Australian flag, and teach them the Australian national bird and national flower.
And it's like, you know, as annoying as it would...
About the national philosophies, but that doesn't go very well, right?
That's like teaching someone from a monotheism about other religions.
It tends to break the hold, right?
It's like these totally watered down, you know, the national bird, like that has anything to do with culture or, you know, anything.
But I am doing some stuff like this week, I'm doing inventions in science from Japan, which they never approved, but I'm just going to do it because I just, I end up doing things like that all the time.
But that's actually like, that's something that I'll be into.
I'll have pictures of robots and ninjas and other stuff from Japan.
But it's, yeah, it's all that stuff is like, it's just, you just feel like you are forced to oppose the kids all the time.
Like, okay, I know you guys are going to hate this.
We have to sit down and we have to practice memorizing what countries these flags go with for, you know, 40 minutes.
And I make games out of it and I try, you know, all kinds of different stuff to do it.
But it's still like, you know, they don't want to sit there.
They don't want to learn about these flags and maybe for like five minutes and they'll be like, okay, yeah, what are we, you know, great.
We know this or we just don't care.
And then they, you know, talk to each other or start playing other games or something.
And then the assistants, I have like Chinese assistants in the room that speak Chinese and that help me translate.
Then they all get upset that, you know, oh, my class is out of control and the kids aren't learning and they're just afraid they're going to get in trouble because they have like some of the best jobs that they can get in Beijing for, you know, a semi-fluent job.
A Chinese person, a semi-fluent English Chinese person.
Beats swarming around on bamboo scaffolding, right?
Yeah, yeah. And they don't want to get fired, you know, because if one of the headmaster or one of the administrators comes in and sees the class is going crazy, they don't really yell at the English teachers.
We kind of get away with whatever we want.
They yell at the assistants. And then the assistants kind of just take it out by being bitchy and passive aggressive on the You know, to make it, you know, why aren't you disciplining them?
Why are you in control? You know, they have to be sitting down.
They have to be doing this. And then so you just stress the whole day because you kind of just want to be hanging out with the kids and, you know, not yelling at them or disciplining them or which I don't do any of that stuff.
And my assistants have finally kind of like gotten it that I'm not going to You know ever yell at a kid ever be mean to a kid ever do any of that stuff, but But that causes a lot of stress right because that's countercultural and it also probably brings up a lot of anxiety In in the minds of the assistants right because you're taking a different path what they experienced and they can't contradict you So yeah,
I can see how that could be stressful You should have seen that.
One day I sat one of my assistants down, Vivian, who's, she's, I wouldn't have done, some of the assistants also, God, this will get me going, but they do this stuff that is so, like, not okay, but, like, sleazy, slimy, the way that they, like, mess with kids.
Like, someone will be talking or doing something they don't want, and they, like, grab them really hard, like, to scare them, but then, like, turn it into a hug or turn it into a tickle.
I see it and I see that, obviously, grabbing and shaking the kid and they look angry, they're mad, scares the kid, but then they cover it up like, oh, you know, I'm just playing with him.
I'm just trying to get his attention.
But it's so like, I don't know.
A lot of these assistants are just not very nice.
And they do it in, you know, it's just like the way they'll say things to the kids or the way they'll...
And it's stuff that the headmaster would never think.
Like, if I went there and was like, oh, she was holding one of the kids' wrists really tight, really tightly.
You know, Kathy was holding one of the kids' wrists really tightly.
The headmaster would just be like, okay, go back to teaching, please.
Which sucks.
Yeah. But it would be kind of weird.
I mean, it would be kind of weird if the kids were treated really nicely and this was the society that developed.
So, I mean, I hate to say it, right?
But it would be completely strange if it weren't the case.
I'm not saying that makes it easier to watch, but it certainly is in accordance with the general theory.
No, I totally, yeah.
No, I know. I mean, it's shocking to see, but I can't ever say that I'm surprised.
So, there's stuff like...
Oh, yeah, I sat down with one of my assistants, Vivian, one day and actually tried to explain to her stuff from the Bomb and the Brain series of like, okay, the kid is going to get a rush of cortisol to his brain when you yell at him.
Sorry, I have a Chinese DSL. Oh, no problem at all, no problem at all.
Sorry, you were just talking about the rush of cortisol to the brain and how did Vivian react?
No, I was just, I was trying to explain that to them.
Like, you know, it'll change the kid, the way the kid's brain grows.
And that's why it's wrong to do.
And I don't know, she was like, Oh, how do you know so much stuff about this?
I was like, Oh, I have, there's a website you should see.
She was just like, okay, you know, she's already one of the nice ones that doesn't, you know, I've never seen, you know, like really yell at a kid or grab a kid or do anything like that.
So she was like, okay with it.
And I guess it made her understand why I never wanted to use like punishment or discipline.
But it doesn't really, like, help me that much.
So, I don't even use...
The other thing was they tried to get me...
This was early on, too. They tried to get me really to use, like, a reward system.
And this is probably the most popular article that I wrote on Chinarchy was three things I thought was wrong with the reward system, most of which I got from PET, parent effect.
Back in this training, which, you know, just stuff like, you know, like, giving them stickers for listening, and it's just, like, this fake, like, not a real respect back and forth, like, you know, just sit and do what you're told, and I'll give you this prize, I'll give you this sticker,
this piece of candy, and it works for, like, a minute, but then you always have to keep, you never build the mutual, like, Respect relationship, which is the only thing that will actually work.
Yeah, I don't know. I can't remember what my other reason was for why that was bad, but it's so...
I remember. Yeah, it was because it's rewards and punishments.
Like they want you star charts and take away stars when the kids don't listen or talk during class.
Really, it's like, it's not their responsibility to be listening or paying attention during class.
And all of the assistants, I mean, everybody, like, you know, all of schools and every authority figure thinks that it is the kid's responsibility and gets mad at them.
Like, why aren't you giving me the respect I deserve?
But if my lesson is boring and kids, you know, or if I'm teaching them about Australian flags and they're bored, how is that their fault at all?
It's either my fault and I need to come up with a more fun lesson or the administrator's fault for picking a stupid curriculum.
Yeah, it really is shocking when you see just how non-child centric education is.
Yeah, yeah. So if you punish the kids for not paying attention to terrible boring lessons or terrible boring teachers, How will terrible boring lessons or terrible boring teachers ever change?
Like, how would that ever improve?
Because you're blaming the kids for the result of the lesson.
I would come up with a game like a engine of Jeopardy!
that they love and they're all engaged and they all listen and You know, and so I would do Jeopardy!
one day and I'd do some other game the next day and the next day they would be, you know, quote unquote misbehaving and fighting or not talking or talking and not listening and all this stuff.
And then, you know, it seemed absurd to reward them for being genuinely interested one day in my lesson and then being genuinely bored the next day in my lesson when the only thing that changed was my lesson.
So, isn't it my fault?
You're there to teach a variety of subjects, not just English, right?
Yeah. Well, it's like, they say that to the parents especially, but really it's like, it's just teaching English, but then they try and have you like, okay, today do something related to food.
Today do something related to science and And usually it's just like teach them the words associated with that, like teach them a bunch of English words for food and eating and, you know, having dinner or teach them a bunch of science words.
And I'm actually trying to teach them stuff.
And this is like another thing.
The administrators got mad at me this month because the headmaster and the senior consultant, I did air quotes for that because I don't know what senior consultant means, but she gets to bitch at me.
When she thinks I'm doing things wrong, complained to me and my assistants that teaching the kids the difference between 3D objects and 2D objects was too hard.
And they're five, and I don't think it was too hard.
And then so it came to my end of April review.
Yeah, isn't the question whether the kids think it's too hard, right?
Yeah, yeah. Obviously, the only way to know anyway is to try to teach them that.
But it came to my end of April review, and every kid, even the ones that suck at English, could tell the difference between 2D shapes and 3D shapes.
And I could show them a 2D shape and be like, what's the 3D version of the rectangle?
And he'd be like, box. And I'd show them a sphere and be like, what's the 2D version?
And he'd say, circle. That's fantastic.
I thought you would do it with Avatar and 3D goggles.
So they totally got it.
I drew cool 3D shapes in Photoshop and made flashcards out of them.
And are you teaching them, I mean, where are they in terms of the alphabet and all that kind of stuff?
I'm not sure exactly where five-year-olds are.
Okay, this is going to lead to another rant.
I've realized that since getting here, this is how kids in the U.S. are being taught English, too.
It's called sight word.
Yeah, I thought that would be mostly discredited because it's just terrible for children's learning.
It's the whole word, right? You don't learn the components of the word.
Language into like a character-based language.
Symbolic language.
Instead of a phonetic language.
Because you just-- No worries.
Keep going.
Again.
You heard the stuff about SiteWord, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's that.
You said this is how the kids in the States are being taught as well.
Yeah, yeah. I think it's developed because it's an easier way to learn a language as a second language when you're mostly just going to be speaking.
But, I mean, if they're kids that language, it's a terrible way because it turns the language into like a symbol-based, character-based language where you see the word, I can't remember when I just said computer, To the word computer, and you just remember that it's like a symbol.
And when I see that symbol, I say computer.
And I know that it means computer.
How, like, Chinese characters work.
But in the Latin languages, you know, we have a word that is actually a set of instructions about what sounds to make.
Like, C makes the sound.
Obviously, you know this. But they're not taught, like, any phonetics at all.
Of one kid that knew the phonetic alphabet, they went home.
And that should be like, when you learn, you should learn the alphabet, and then you should learn the phonetic alphabet.
Like, you know, what, two years old, three years old?
And they're five, and a lot of them can speak English pretty well.
And if I write a word they haven't seen already, they have no idea how to sound it out.
They just can't do it.
Which is bizarre, because, like, It's treating the brain like a computer.
It's completely anti-conceptual.
Right. You only know what's already been programmed into you.
Yeah, it's messed up.
And Brett Vinot, the School Sucks guy, actually did a show that was kind of about this.
And the guy he was interviewing talked about how...
That's kind of like intentionally done to make like kind of drone worker types, you know, like a working class type of citizen education is intentionally non-conceptual, just kind of like, you know, you get what information is fed into you and that's what you know.
And so, yeah, I mean, it's not I don't think it's like a conspiracy, but I think it does benefit You know, people in power to not have people really understand how to...
Yeah, they need to understand written instructions, but you don't actually want them to compete with you for management jobs.
Yeah, right, exactly.
I mean, the kids that are well-off, that are rich, are going to learn anyway.
And, you know, the dumb, poor, working-class kids are going to get enough to get by, and that's it.
Which is exactly kind of like what you have, not even enough to get by in America.
But that's why you have...
This has to be the reason why there's like, you know, 50% or more like illiteracy rate or whatever it is for graduation now from high school.
These huge numbers and that if you teach a phonetic alphabet, I think that's it.
Like, you know how to read after that.
Even if you don't know what a word means, you can sound it out.
And you can spell words.
And so, and how long does that take?
I mean, you know, a few months, maybe?
Six months? Can it even take that long to teach a kid the phonetic alphabet?
And they're in, you know, they're going to be in school.
You can do it in about 100 hours, max.
Yeah, yeah.
So, that's really annoying.
I've been trying to teach them phonetics, but it's hard because I have, it's...
I actually went to the headmaster and the senior consultant and told them that it's kind of, even the native English speakers, I have a couple kids whose parents are from the States and one kid whose parents are from Australia, even they don't really know any phonetics.
So I went to the headmaster and kind of tried to explain it to them, or to her, and she was just kind of like, okay, I think that's good if you can do that.
Whatever. So I try to do it.
I try to squeeze it in around the other things that I'm like forced to do.
But yeah, it's weird.
And it's really, I don't know.
I don't even know how that came up.
We were just talking about that kind of instruction.
And how are you perceived or related to, I guess, as a foreign big-nosed white devil from people in China?
What's their reaction to you?
It's actually, it's not like Europe, where we kind of, you know, looked at with disdain.
As in Prague, you know, I went to Prague two summers in a row, and there's kind of like this typical urine, euro, urine, typical euro.
There's a typical urine smell.
There's a typical euro, like, oh, you know, you must have voted for Bush, you're from America, blah, blah, blah.
But the Chinese are kind of like, you know, They're more curious into you.
They like it when you speak Chinese, when you speak a few words of Chinese.
And they're pretty friendly, I guess, but they're not...
I don't know. They're not...
I've never gotten hate from anybody.
Sometimes it's weirdo curiosity of just staring at you because I'm 6'2", and...
You know, have like a brow and round eyes.
But the girls that we hang out with, I guess, get it way worse.
You know, if you're like a tall blonde girl, it's like you're like this miracle that's appeared in this sea of, you know, black hair and five people.
But Yeah, like Nash was talking about how he's, you know, super tall with like this huge head of curly hair.
People kept coming up and taking pictures with him.
That hasn't happened to me yet, but he was also not in Beijing, which is kind of used to foreigners.
But I'm received pretty well.
The kids' parents I've met, they all really like me because, I don't know, I don't, I mean...
Most of them can't even speak English, so I don't know if it's because of my personality or not when they meet me, but it definitely has to do with their kids coming home and telling them that they had fun and that I was nice.
One of them wrote me this note that was like, Alice came home today and she said that during class, all the kids got to sit on tables And I just wanted to tell you that I think it's really cool how you're trying non-traditional education.
And I'm really excited for the things that she's learning.
And I was just like, I never, I mean, I never let, like, I think it was just, they probably were sitting on tables and I didn't yell at them or care.
So it was like, oh, wow, you know, look at all the things we, look at non-traditional education.
Right, right. But it's good because the parents seem to really like me and that's good because it means that I can kind of push harder against the things that the headmaster and the senior consultant tell me because they don't want to fire me if the parents like me because that's way worse than...
Sorry, I don't even know the environment.
Is it kind of market driven? Like is it more of a private school?
Yeah. Yeah, it definitely is.
And there's apparently there's some public schools.
This is below primary school, though.
So they're all like five and under.
So I guess that is where there is a big market of of like kindergartens, especially for kids to learn English at because parents want to.
Well, half of it is like daycare kind of because all these parents work.
So it's like daycare plus There'll be foreigners who can speak English to your kids.
It is market, but it's the skewed market situation where the consumers aren't the one paying because the consumers are the kids.
A lot of it is just about, like, looking good for the parents and, you know, doing these things that they can write in reports to the parents that look like it's really great.
Like, you know, we're learning about all the different countries of the world this month, and then really it's just, you know, showing pictures of national birds to their kids.
So it is market, but it's obviously not driven by what the kids want.
I mean, I guess it is in the degree that the kids like me, so they'll go home and tell their parents that I'm a good teacher.
But the schools in general, plus it's Chinese markets, which are like, I don't know.
It's like knockoff driven and imitation is the highest thing that you can do.
All these Chinese businesses seem like that.
You talk to people that are Chinese, that are working for any company, and it's kind of like nobody knows really what they're doing.
Everything's moving so fast.
They're kind of just flying by the seat of their pants.
I think in America, a guy starting a business like that would probably be more upfront and honest about it because he couldn't get away with pretending like You know, his business was really great and he could do anything, handle any problem, but they never want to do that.
Like the smallest, most, you know, ass backwards business.
There's no problems.
They can handle any job.
And the school is whenever, you know, a parent asks for anything, anything, anything.
We can teach them this.
We can put up this display.
We can put on a play in a week.
And then they come to us teachers and we're like, there's no way we can do that.
Why did you tell them that?
Oh, because we didn't want to say no.
I don't know.
The Chinese market is weird.
Especially because the government has, this is not really related to teaching at all, but the way it's set up with so many rules and regulations and all that stuff is like you have to break them and you have to bribe people and have connections, have guanxi. Guanxi is like having inside routes and inside connections.
Guanxi is like the lubricant for everything.
You have to have like inside connections in the government or in this office or in this thing to get like the licenses to get whatever you need done.
And it usually involves, you know, if not outright bribes like favors, which means that whenever you do something that the government doesn't like, they don't really even have to dig up something you've done wrong because they can just look at like, you know, this laundry list of regulations and licenses or whatever that you've Skirted, because you've used, you know, your pull, your political power, and they can just be like, oh, well, you violated all these things, so we're shutting you down.
It's not because of, you know, the news story you ran.
Right, so everybody's always outside the law to get anything done, and therefore it's a self-perpetuating bribe-ocracy.
Right, right. And it gives them excuse to, you know, shut anyone down at any time because they broke the law.
And what would you say the general mood of the people or the culture is like?
Um, I don't know.
This is probably obvious, but the different age groups are way different.
The old people are just hanging out.
I don't know if it's always that way.
I ride a bike to work, which is terrifying, by the way, because the traffic in Beijing is psychotic.
But there's just old people. All the parks are full of old people.
They have playgrounds that are just for old people.
And they're just turning these big wheels or walking on these really slow bicycle, ski machine things.
And just like all day, the old people are just kind of like out there chilling, just exercising really slowly.
And I went to a park and there was like an old person sword club.
And there was just all these old people slowly waving around swords in like, you know, huge loopy patterns as like some form of exercise or something.
I don't know what's going on with them.
But... The...
The younger ones, I think, are more on top of, like, Western culture.
They're much more, like, promiscuous, I guess.
They, like, go on dates. They don't just get, like, married right away.
They're into, like, money and, you know, want to get rich and want to, like, you know, go to the West is the sense I get from a lot of people.
Toward the government, it's really weird.
Um, I don't know how the park gets so much, like, mythology on its side so quickly.
And so, like, it's like indifference.
It's like an indifference mythology of, like, 1984 style, like, the party's always here.
The party has always been, the party will always be.
Like, when I talk to people, even ones like the Chinese people I really like and I'm friends with, The most you'll get out of them is like, I don't know what I think about the party.
I know I don't have a choice.
I'll be like, yeah, don't you think that's wrong that you don't have a choice?
But it's kind of like, there's nothing we can do about it.
And, you know, that's just the way it is.
In America, that's stupid enough because the country is only 200 years old, but I want to be like, this is not just the way it is.
This has only been this way since the 30s.
The 40s, it's not the way it has to be.
Your grandparents grew up when there was no party, some of them.
I don't really get how they did that.
I guess it probably has something to do with public schools or something, but...
Yeah, I can't...
And stuff like Mao, I've given up...
The first few weeks here, I was like, you know, every Chinese person I met that was like a young person that was cool, that, you know, I'd meet at a bar, social setting.
I'd want to talk to them about, like, what do they think about Mao?
Because it's so weird when you think about...
He's on every bill.
It's not like...
I don't know.
You know how, like, the Germans...
I mean, I don't think that they're right to be ashamed.
By Hitler because they had nothing to do with it.
Like Karen Germans. But they have like that shame of like, you know, we don't really want to talk about that.
But Mao is like, you know, pictures all over the place.
He's on the dollar. He's, you know, he's in every book.
They went through a slideshow the other day at school.
And this is part of like Chinese culture.
And they got like this big picture of Mao.
And everybody like started clapping.
And I just, I didn't even react.
I was just like, I just looked around like, did that just happen?
I don't know why that's so strong.
How Mao got so fast, got such a godlike status or whatever it is.
I guess the party is like, because they did all the economic reforms, but the party line is still like, There were excesses when it comes to Mal.
There were some excesses, but it was what needed to happen.
Which, you know, I don't know.
I don't know why. It's so weird to me that people buy it.
Because even in the States, there's at least like...
There's at least a pretend encouragement to question authority or to go against social norms.
You can find currents of counterculture that are encouraged.
Especially in college.
Every professor thinks they're against culture.
Or they challenge American culture and typical ways of thinking and blah blah blah.
Even though they don't.
But I don't get that sense at all.
Culture is not meant to be challenged.
And tradition is not meant to be challenged.
I don't know, because even Mao's thing was even like, you know, destroy old culture.
So I don't understand how he managed to do that and then get himself as part of the culture that, you know, is sacred.
But, you know, that's the magic of statism, I guess.
I don't know. I just rambled on Mao for like 10 minutes.
But in some ways, it's...
I mean, at least they say there were some excesses.
Most Americans won't even say that about the Founding Fathers who supported slavery and one who raped slaves.
You know, in a sense, they're further ahead than most Americans.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is true, but I always attributed that to, like, you know, we had 200 years of, like, mythologizing them, and I just don't understand how he pulled it off in, you know, like, what, 40 years?
I don't know. 30 years?
But... Yeah, it's weird.
And the stuff like...
The Onion had this great article a few weeks ago about economists or whoever.
Somebody predicts that in the next 10 years, China will replace America as the world's biggest asshole.
I definitely get that sense.
They think that China is great and is the place to be the way that Americans think about America.
Totally different from the way that the Czechs were in Prague or even British people aren't that way.
At least the young ones I met.
But they're definitely like the Americans of the East who are into how great China is and China should be in charge of the world and who is this country for messing with this and they have so much in-group, out-group.
They hate the Japanese because of the rape of Namjing.
They hate the Japanese.
Even younger people will say things that are pretty racist about Japanese people.
Like, oh, someone was rude to me in a bar.
I'm pretty sure he was Japanese, so it makes sense.
He's from an evil country. You're like, what did you just say?
I don't know where I was going with this.
I think you're saying there's just not a lot of cultural self-criticism, which is sort of axiomatic.
And I think you can see when the adults say that...
When adults say they don't mischoice, I think you can see where that comes from with the five-year-olds, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's...
Yeah, they don't even... The teenagers, like I talked to them also about censorship and stuff like that and they just are kind of like, you know, we don't care.
We can use Baidu to search instead of Google.
We can use like Ren Ren and whatever.
The Chinese versions of MySpace, we don't need MySpace or Facebook.
YouTube is blocked. Facebook is blocked.
All blogger websites are blocked.
Let's see. A lot of stuff is, you know, any Wikipedia articles that say something that the party doesn't want.
But they're kind of just like, you know, there's other ways around it.
It's just like, don't you think it's wrong?
You don't know what you're missing out with on Facebook.
This is what freedom is all about.
But yeah, they're kind of like, yeah, we don't really need it.
It's not that big of a deal. So, I don't know how that is going to change.
I mean, I guess the same way everything is, they're going to have to start treating their kids better.
But there is, yeah, there is a definite, a stronger, like, cultural mythology that's sitting on everyone than in the West.
And stuff with family, too.
like filial piety and honors and that stuff is like way stronger here than in the West.
But there's a lot of kids, a lot of people my age and even a little bit older that like still live with their parents.
Chinese girls that can't wait to get married and move in with their husband's mother and father with him.
Like, it'll be so much fun, blah, blah, blah.
Sounds like the worst thing I've ever heard of.
But... Yeah, so...
I don't know, man.
It kind of makes you pessimistic about the whole...
You know, the whole philosophical revolution happening over here anytime soon.
Well, yeah, and I think that's reasonable to be pessimistic about that.
That's why the changes that you're doing over there is part of how the world gets saved.
I'm not saying you're doing it for selfless reasons or anything, but what you are able to do is really give them some options that they otherwise would never have encountered.
And those options will spread within their own community, among their so-called friends, and perhaps their family.
It will certainly spread to their own kids.
or philosophical parenting one where you talked about Izzy not like laying still when you were changing her and you just wanted to like just like hold like that a temptation of authority I just like feel it like you know like crawling like icy fingers up my neck I just want to like yell and clap my hands and be like everyone sit down right now yeah it's like turning off really loud static in your brain right Yeah,
yeah. And you know it'll work and I mean obviously it doesn't work in the long run because you just have to keep you know being more and more authoritarian but I've definitely felt that temptation many times and usually I will just like walk out of the room or go but especially with I don't know.
I have, like, I definitely have respect for, you know, you, obviously, but, you know, anybody that faces it, and there's some ways that, obviously,
I'm not, there's ways it's better and it's worse, I think, what I'm doing than having a kid, enough that I don't have to, like, you know, feed them and do all the stuff that you're doing, but, Some of the stuff that I am happy I will never have to deal with when I have my own kid.
Well, and it's tougher. I mean, what you're doing with, you said I think it was 17 or 19 five-year-olds in a foreign culture when you have all that strain and stress and it's your job.
It's a whole lot different when you have one or two kids at home in your own culture, so to speak, with your own language, without the pressure of a career and approval from your boss.
So what you're doing is kind of jumping in the deep end.
Yeah, yeah, and that's, I mean, it's good because all of the things that are harder about it is what are kind of, it's kind of like patience training.
When I have my own kid or, you know, in however many years, it'll seem so much easier, especially because the most frustrating thing, I think, is Is when these kids kind of like act like their parents because they I mean since they are five it's not like you know if having a classroom full of Isabelle's by the time I'm five or by the time five would probably be like the best thing but they all like you know are going home to all different kinds of parents and are spending the rest of the you know their time around adults that don't treat them the way I want them to be And so,
having to do when the kids will say something that is totally, like, not a five-year-old saying it to me.
Like, I'm trying to think of one of those.
Like, I'm reading, okay, this happened, like, the first week.
This girl, Ava, she's, her dad is from New Jersey, and her mom's Chinese, and she's, like, blonde.
She's, like, the cutest, nicest little thing.
She's, like, a tomboy, total tomboy, but she's so, she's awesome.
And, uh, but we're, like, reading a book one time, and I was, like, showing different pictures, and I was talking to the Chinese kids and, like, pointing out things in the pictures and saying the English words for them.
And she was sitting in the back, and she just, like, snapped, like, can we just stop looking at the book so we can finish it?
Like, it was, like, it was totally, like, her mom saying it through her, or, you know, a parent saying it through her.
And, uh, so that's the stuff that, you know, I'll never have to deal with, with my own kid, but that it's just like, oh, like, I don't, you know, after work, I like when it happened, I was shocked.
Then I was annoyed at her for doing it.
And then afterwards, when I thought about it, I never, I didn't say anything else to her about it.
But when I thought about it, I was like, that's not her personality at all.
Yeah, it's amazing how quickly and efficiently these voices are internalized and reproduced, right?
Yeah, I was actually, I was just going to say that I think by like five, I think so much of the personality is probably like set in stone.
And I mean, you can probably see that after like a year.
Like, imagine how she'll be when she's five.
She'll be like, you know, the person that she'll probably be when she's, like, 40.
And so, you know, it kind of sucks because the kids are, you know, bad parents are kind of like, they're that.
They have that already as part of their personality by the time they're five.
And I mean, I don't know.
It's nice, I guess, if you're raising them well because then, you know, By four or five, you can be, I mean, I don't know if the person that is available will be, but it kind of sucks, I guess, when the parents aren't very good.
I mean, that's the torturous thing, right?
Is that if we could get just one generation of rational, peaceful, healthy kids, the world would be war-free, state-free, religion-free, and would never change back because...
Yeah, and I don't even think you need 30 years of it.
Like, it's not like you need to be...
Five years. Five years of peaceful parenting for the next cohort of kids would completely change the world.
And it would never revert back to the living hell that it is in so many ways today.
That's what's so amazing. We are always only five years away from a peaceful world.
And you could even say three.
Three is where 70 or 80% of the personality is stabilized.
But of course, you might as well say, if, you know...
If random asteroids come down and blow up all the Capitol buildings and the churches, it would be considered a sign that we should get rid of them.
The odds are the same, right?
Right. But that was actually what I was trying to say.
You said it much better.
But what I was saying was it's kind of good because if you think about parenting, it's like, you know, you have you will have put in the work that's important.
But yeah, it's but it sucks when it's not good parenting because some of them, some.
I mean, the kids...
God, I never thought that a five-year-old could, like, do things that are so, like, I don't know, manipulative, foolish, or...
And they do it, usually not to me, but, like, to each other.
And... I mean, it just has to be, there's no other place it could have come from than their parents, so.
And, oh, this reminds me of another thing.
I know this is just me talking, but...
No, please go ahead. And I wrote a post about...
...look like the roots of statism in kids, or why kids would accept, you know, violent leaders, basically.
And... One of the things that I realized pretty quickly was that authority figures resolve every conflict.
Any conflict that happens is the authority figures that resolve it.
No matter who it's between.
And the littlest, stupidest things.
And the kids are trained to expect that and to go to authority figures to solve any conflict that happens.
So... During the first week or something, Ethan came up to me and he was like, Austin took my pencil.
And I was like, oh, okay. What can I help you with?
I don't remember exactly what I said.
And he was like, oh, well, I want you to give him a sad face.
And I was like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to be doing sad faces.
That's really cool. What do you mean?
I've never heard that before as a solution.
Where do you think that comes from?
What as a solution? Make a sad face.
That was like the rewards-punishment system the old teacher had.
It meant like draw a sad face next to his name.
Oh, okay. It was like a demarcation or whatever, a demerit.
No, Ethan is totally into appealing to authority figures to solve his problem, like most of the kids are, but he gets in so much trouble because he does that over and over again.
He'll start a flight and go to the authority figure, get the math, and then the other kid will just get...
It doesn't actually resolve the conflict, it just makes the other kid more pissed at him because that kid got in trouble because Ethan was the first one to run to the authority figure.
So that was what he did.
Like, you know, my first week he came and he's like, oh, Austin took my pencil.
And I was like, oh, what do you want me to do?
And he's like, I want you to give him a sad face.
And I was like, no, I don't think I'm going to do that.
I'll go talk. Will you beat him up?
I was like, no. And he's like, why not?
And I was like, he didn't take my pencil.
And he just kind of like did like this puppy dog head tilt at me like...
You are a broken authority robot that I cannot use.
I must find another one. Yeah.
And that's happened at times where, including with the rewards, like, oh, Mark was the teacher before me.
Mark used to, the first few weeks, I had to deal with this constantly.
Mark used to do this, Mark used to do that.
Mark used to give us stars next to our name during class if we were quiet and behaved.
And then if we got three stars, we got a piece of candy.
And I was like, well, what if I don't give you guys stars, but you just behave during class?
And then they were all just like tilted their head like, what are you talking about?
I have a piece of candy called happiness.
Uh-huh. But yeah, the conflict resolution thing is like, anytime, anytime anything happens, one kid takes another kid's marker, one kid, you know, pushes another kid, or there's any kind of disagreement, the teachers just swoop in.
And, oh, who did it first?
Who did this? Who did that? Okay, you go over here, you go over here, you know, apologize, shake hands.
Which is, you know, not resolution at all.
And the kids are never allowed to work it out on their own.
And so they just get trained, you know, eight hours a day of anytime I have an issue or there's a conflict, we go to the You know, the ruler, they decide for us.
Right. Well, imagine, I mean, of course, if the kids could, in a sense, teach themselves, which, obviously, they need some supervision, but if the kids could teach themselves and resolve their own conflicts, why would they need the teacher, so to speak, right?
Why would we need the state? There has to be this perception that people are unable to resolve their conflicts, which is why we need a government, and this is trained very early.
Exactly what I wrote in the post was that everybody accepts that you need this violent authority figure to step in and solve human social problems.
And part of it has got to be that every single day of school, anytime you have a social problem, there is an authority figure that stepped in and resolved it.
And like I said before, you want to be the one that appeals the authority figure because you're most likely to come out on top.
So there's so much negative incentive to actually resolve the conflict with the person you have the conflict with.
It's like a race to have a conflict and a race to get the authority figure to solve it on your behalf.
Which is, you know, interest groups.
It is statism.
And how do you feel...
Sorry, just to interrupt. This is a confirmation, of course, of the theories that we've talked about at FDR for quite some time.
And I think a very explicit and detailed confirmation.
How do you feel about that?
I mean, to me, it's very interesting.
And it's like the last thing you want is for kids to be harmed.
But in a sense, it's better than the theory being false.
Because this is the last and best hope we have to end the state in the long run.
But how do you feel about all of this confirmation?
I mean, I liked it the same way that I liked Bomb and the Brain 4, whereas like, oh, that feels good.
Wow, that sucks.
It's kind of like, yeah, there's definitely a part of me that sees...
All of these things that make people totally prime candidates, state them in violence.
And just being like, yeah, this is obviously where it all comes from.
So we're on track.
But, you know, it also just gives you like this sinking feeling of like, you know, I wish that now that I saw this, I could just fix it.
But it's like seeing it, being able to identify the problem and then knowing that that's going to be the problem for so much longer I think is where the kind of depression, pessimism side comes in.
It's just like – I mean I tried.
Obviously, I'll try and let the kids resolve their own conflicts.
I've done the, like, no-lose conflict resolution sessions when I've had a chance to, that, you know, he talks about, Thomas Gordon talks about in PET with the kids.
And it usually goes pretty well, but it's like, you know, me doing it one time out of one conflict in one day, you know, you just have a feeling of, like, you know, this is a drop in the bucket.
Gonna do so little.
So that's not that good of a feeling, but yeah, it's nice to have the confirmation.
I don't know, was that what you were looking for?
Well, I mean, I'm just curious, because obviously you've invested a fair amount in philosophy, and this is the prediction, and I think you have the confirmation.
I mean, it's a terrible thing to be right, right?
That's the weird thing about this stuff.
Yeah, it's like you talked about in the war, I think.
it's getting confirmation that smoking causes cancer.
I mean, it's good because then you know how to prevent it and then you know you're right.
You know how to fix it, but you also have all these people that have cancer and are going to keep having cancer.
So, yeah.
Now, I'm sorry.
I think we've been holding off doing Izzy's videos, music, so I think we're going to have to finally give her a shot to enjoy her music.
Oh, that's totally fine. I'm sorry.
No, no, don't apologize. I really, I mean, I'd love to keep talking, but I do want to make sure that she gets the chance to sing along with the Wiggles.
But, yeah, listen, thanks so much.
I'd love to, I'll send you a copy of this.
I'd love to post it because, I mean, it really is fascinating to hear what's going on.
But have a listen to it first and let me know what you think.
But, yeah, let's try and make this semi-regular if we can because it's really fascinating.
Yeah, I'm totally fine with that, as long as we can keep...
This time is probably the best time for me.
Yeah, we can certainly aim for this as best we can.
Okay. All right. Well, thanks, Will.
Thanks. Take care, and thanks so much for the update.
And listen, you're doing fantastic, fantastic work over there.
Thanks. You're going to say bye-bye, boo-boo? Am I supposed to say bye-bye?
Yeah, she's saying bye-bye. I don't know if you said that.
Say bye-bye.
Bye-bye. Bye-bye, Will.
Bye-bye, guys.
Take care, Will. Thanks a lot.
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