October 25, 2009

Letter 6: First Reflections on Student and Faculty Responses

No email for the last 6 days of the trip was a surprise after having it so often at the start!

 One of the reasons I have not gone into detail around the presentations we have given, and the responses from students and faculty, is my perception that people often have an immediate impression, a ‘day-after’ impression, and then an event finds a more honest place in our lives.  Sometimes it sits on a proverbial  fireplace mantel in our minds, often for weeks, before being transferred to a place of honor in our internal libraries of ideas, resources and experiences.  Sometimes it goes out with the week’s rubbish, an interesting but superficial experience.  An event can be the highlight of a dull week or month, without becoming a fundamentally life-changing experience.

Decades later, a seemingly inconsequential memory re-surfaces and winds up being a crucial element of our understanding. I use the metaphor of jig-saw puzzles to illustrate this phenomenon.  We manage to create little islands of understanding, and one day all these individual clusters of information and understanding are ready to fit together.  It’s a wonderful Aha! experience, to find that you had all the answers but hadn’t understood what the question was, or to suddenly see the work of decades (or a lifetime!) come together in an instant of insight.

Film and television were critical learning tools for me growing up.  They affected me on a visceral level, engaging both my heart and my mind, and flooding me with powerful visual images.

Students and faculty have different priorities, perceptions, and timelines.  An objective evaluation of any learning experience is like the tip of an iceberg.  Knowledge fades, but the ability to solve problems or creatively explore a topic can last a lifetime.  Buddhists say, feed a man and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

My lectures have brought a few students and teachers close to tears.  I interpret this as recognition.  They heard their own heart speak.  This time, expressed by another, a foreigner.  Next time, they may hear it in their own voice.  I remember the first few times I heard someone speak my own heart’s desire.  It was every bit as dramatic as the moment William Gibson recreated in The Miracle Worker, when Helen Keller connected the signs spelled into her hands with water.  Only sometimes I get to be Teacher, for a few brief moments.  And people wonder why this work inspires me!

I can’t know how many good teachers there are in China.  I hear from several students that primary and high school experiences were not pleasant or inspiring, but have no way of knowing if I am just hearing a normal percentage of complaints.  It seems obvious that the teachers who are opening up their classes to us support Western influences, while others may not; so we would hear more from the ‘liberal’ side than the conservatives.

Yet over and over we have also been warmly greeted and even hosted by government officials. Our most common departmental contacts are the Business Ethics deans of the School of Marxism in each university. Yet everyone I have spoken to says that in the last decade there has been another revolution, and those who have been privileged to visit every few years see enormous change each time.  While there are still tensions and sensitivities regarding personal freedoms, and the government is very sensitive to the cultural shame of losing face, Chinese culture is moving towards a middle way.

I have seen enough, heard enough, and have enough personal experience to believe that the Chinese government wants their young people, their educators, and their business leaders to have access to Western ideas about philosophy, ethics, and even spirituality.  (Shi Ma? = really?)  And how would you know that?

Because of the most outrageous day of our entire trip.

To be continued…