Greetings,
A foreign teacher visited a Khmer classroom. 300 local students study English, Japanese and Korean from 5-7 p.m. Monday through Friday.
A female Khmer teacher is writing Korean script on the board. There are three students. The visitor sits at the back of the room. A high school girl turns around asking in fluent English, Are you a teacher?
No, I am a student.
What do you study?
I study life.
Is it a short course?
Yes, it is.
Metta.
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Greetings,
Let's dance. To the sound they're playing on the radio. Under the serious moonlight. Let's blog to the dance of letter-words.
There are 30 million bloggers in the states. Various states of confusion. Let's be various. Young people prefer social networks like Facebook (Fabulously Boring) and Twitter. Faster, shorter and easier. It's so exciting to live fast, short and easy. If I suffered from Attention Deficit Disorder, and everyone suffers from something because existence is suffering, I'd be a bird practicing social twittering. Kiss and type.
Anxiety meets the tourist. They whisper, "I'm behind in getting my images up on Where Is My Face?" Once upon a space-dance there was a humbling life changing experience. Laughter was life learning dialogue.
I arrived hoping to teach at an isolated rural school 50km from Siem Reap. HOPE, the U.K. based charity organization sponsors the proposed school; My Grandfather's House. They require volunteers to have a criminal background check. As everyone knows, all-knowing, all powerful authorities do not issue this bureaucratic paper to aliens, nomads, misfits, vagabonds, itinerant weird genius teachers or other highly dubious life forms. So it goes.
I exist outside adult time.
Metta.
Greetings,
Yes, it's true, this passionate desire for pressure to pass exams in Chinese schools resulted in millions of children dying today in a stampede to escape their teachers after evening class. Stare at the stairs.
-It was raining, said the authorities. Blame the rain.
-The rain had nothing to do with it, said a survivor, age 10. It was a death trap.
Chinese educational tools.
The provincial education party leader was fired. The principal of the school was fired. The parents of dead children can't do a thing because they are willing victims of the system. They have absolutely no power. How can the system fire parents? They have no idea how we run the institution. We brainwash the students and their parents.
-Mandatory study from 6:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. seven days a week, said the system.
-This is your DUTY as parents, said the system.
-As students, your DUTY is to pass the exams. 60 is heaven. 59 is hell. Learning is secondary.
-We have developed safe and secure schools for your children, said the system. Look at our safety record. Look at the substandard construction materials and cost-cutting measures we have implemented to save money. Look at the bribery and corruption we've developed and nurtured to manipulate everyone from the bottom to to the top to create the finest, safest educational facilities in the entire world. We pay everyone off.
-As you know from our long history the value of human life is worthless, said the system.
-Our rigid educational safety standards includes spotless bathrooms, expansive sports halls where students are required to sing silly patriotic songs about the motherland, dining halls where they eat the same mass produced rice and stringy green soggy vegetables day after day, dorm rooms where we pack 8-10 students into rat cages, an empty useless library and lots of slippery tiled stairs which, in the event of a fire, panic, epidemic, plague, tornado, hurricane, typhoon, and earthquakes - remember Sichuan and the shoddy buildings that killed 8,000 kids - become death traps.
If you protest the death of your child because of our negligence we will:
Your teacher loves you.
The school, to prevent disorder and broken social harmony by distraught parents grieving over the unfortunate and unforeseen death of their young children, will hold a one minute of silence memorial tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. in honor of our loyal and patriotic students who perished in the latest tragedy in their pursuit of good grades and academic excellence.
May their untimely death serve as a reminder to all of us to remain vigilant and steadfast in our common purpose of command and control procedures.
Thank you for your attention.
Metta.
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