Connecting with Your Students Who Are Into Mangas (Japanese Graphic Novels Which Are Now Popular in English) and Animé

                                                                                                         Death Note:  Perhaps the most famous Japanese manga (graphic novel) ever written

Mangas are the new popular genre of literature currently sweeping through the world’s youth.  Are they something which should be accepted or encouraged by teachers and parents?  Are they worthy of respect?  This post will address those questions.

One of my teenage students is consumed with mangas, and this is how I came to know about them.  After investigating, I think the genre is worthy of respect, and something teachers and parents would benefit from knowing about.  However, they would like to know:

–What are mangas?  Why have they become popular?  What is the attraction?

–Are they acceptable?  Are they an art form, or are they trash?

–Should they be encouraged, or discouraged?

It took me a little while to understand what mangas were.  They are essentially Japanese graphic novels that span the entire gamut of fiction experiences covered in more traditional literature.  The best and most popular mangas are made into animé series.  Both mangas and animé feature characters with neotenic  features.

Mangas are divided into five general categories, according to target demographic audience (instead of by subject genre):

Kodomomuke:  for children

Simple and imaginative stories for children, which often teach morals and other good values, focusing on friendship, and solutions to problems.

Shojo:  for teenage girls, ages 10-18

Female lead characters, focusing on romance, interpersonal relationships, but also with action and adventure.

Josei:  for adult women.

Featuring adult women characters (and sometimes male lead characters), in action adventures, slice-of-life, realistic interpersonal relationships, romance, and serious subjects.

Shonen:  for boys under age 15

Young male heroes, focused on action, adventure, and fighting.

Death Note (in original Japanese with English subtitles), a psychological/mystery series, and one of the most famous mangas and animé series ever produced,  is aimed at the shonen demographic.  (Voice-over English version;  Voice-over French version).   Death Note is considered to be one of the best mangas ever written.

Great Teacher Onizuka, a humorous series about the problems of a young male teacher, is also for the shonen demographic.

Seinen – for young adult men, ages 15-24, but including men ages 25-50

Tend to be psychological or action thriller/adventures (with more violence than Shonen).  One Quora writer stated that seinen plots ae similar to Game of Thrones.

Mangas and Animé in Asia

In Asia, mangas and animé are read and watched voraciously by ALL age groups.  Why?

Because animé can be produced much more cheaply than movies with real people, animé makes it possible to have a much wider variety of themes; it is essentially a pulp-fiction market.  Therefore, many ideas can be explored which are non-existent in Western media culture.  Authors have a much higher level of freedom to explore their ideas than do authors in the West.  However, readers/watchers in the West are more hesitant to share that they are manga/animé fans, as most non-Asian adults don’t yet consider it acceptable and normal, as it is in Asia.

What Are the Manga and Animé that My Teenager Is Reading/Watching?

If you are a parent or teacher who is worried whether mangas and animé are acceptable–if your teenager is watching animé series–I suggest sitting down and watching a series with your child, right from the beginning.  You might be surprised to find it captivating.  Even if you decide to watch only a few episodes, you will then have an idea what it is about.

Alternatively, I suggest watching some of the Death Note series linked to above. I have provided one link with subtitles, and another link that is dubbed in English (voice-over), and a third link dubbed in French.   These series are all produced in Japanese, and your teenager may be watching them reading subtitles.  Mangas, written in Japan, are now produced and sold in English, and many other languages.

                                                      Persepolis Text Example

So far, I haven’t personally seen or read a manga, but I have read one graphic novel, Persepolis.  This is a true story of a teenager who grew up in Iran after the Iranian Revolution.  I was really shocked when I found it being read in English class in our local high school, as an assigned book.   I then read it myself, and it changed my opinion.  It was an interesting story which held my attention. I included a photo of the text above so that readers may see just how the text looks, and what the reading level is.

I thought about poor readers.  There was quite a bit of reading here, and in a format more accessible to poor readers.  Also, teenagers who are extremely visually-oriented may be able to read this more than a traditional novel.  This doesn’t mean we should discourage traditional novels, but I do think there is room for graphic novels, as well.

I have watched both entire series of Death Note and Onizuka.  I thought they were both good series.  Some parents ask if Death Note is advisable for preteen girls and boys.  I would say yes.  While the story initially seems a bit macabre, it’s actually about a boy who finds a notebook, then discovers that if someone’s name is written in the notebook, that person will die.  So he decides to start doing good in the world by getting rid of all the serious criminals.  But after some time he becomes tempted by the power he has, and begins to use the power of the notebook toward his own personal gain.  This leads him down a morally-dark path.  However, these are just the sorts of moral dilemmas our children and pre-teens  are dealing with every day.  Our children endure daily conflicts with other students, teachers and parents–some of which lead to thoughts of revenge.  Such issues are explored through this medium of fiction, just as they are in other fiction mediums.

It’s been some time since I watched Death Note, but as I recall, it has a morally good ending.  Onizuka was good, but in my opinion, not appropriate for pre-teens.  I’d say it’s more appropriate for older teens and adults.  It also deals with realistic moral issues in a humorous way.

Most mangas and animé series seem to be dealing with action, adventure, relationships, and moral issues–exactly the same issues seen in all fiction mediums.  Yes, the format is different, but let’s now look at why some people like it.

Why Some People Enjoy Mangas and Animé

1.  Getting Involved in Characters’ Lives and Ongoing Situations:  Many popular animé series have many, many episodes, similar to watching a whole series.  Sixty to one hundred episodes are very common.  A few even have 900 episodes, comparable to watching a soap opera that goes on for years.  This means that during the day, while doing other things, they may be eager to get back to the manga or animé to find out what happens next, and they may be thinking about the story and the characters’ lives and dilemmas.  (This is just how any of us feel while reading a good fiction book or when we are caught up in watching a series or daily soap opera).  In other words, the plots are really amazing, and the reader/viewer cares what happens to the characters.   Many plot lines are very complex, deal with many real-life issues on the cutting edge of current life.
2.   It’s a good, positive way to relax.  Students have daily stresses from school, interpersonal relationships, homework, and physical activities and responsibilities.  Just as any good book or program can transport us to another place, and another life, so can mangas and animé.  Emotional involvement in the characters’ lives and dilemmas transports us far from our own problems, gives us a break, and returns us to our own lives refreshed, and more ready to deal with our own situations.  Reading/watching offers us a fantasy escape from our real lives, or even just an enjoyable fantasy adventure.  Also, seeing characters’ successfully resolve their dilemmas helps us gain positivity that we can, in fact, successfully resolve our own dilemmas.
3. Manga and animé fans really enjoy this type of artwork.  Neotenous figures (characters with juvenile-appearing characteristics, maintained into maturity are very popular in Japanese society and culture) are a particular feature of both manga images and animé characters of all ages (and of many  people in Japanese society).  One feature of the character artwork which is highly appreciated by fans is the way through which characters show their emotions through artwork, rather than through words.   Stress might be shown by beads of sweat falling from the forehead, or excitement might be shown by the way a character’s hair is moving.  These sorts of things can be done in animé, but would be difficult to do with live, human characters.

Before we are too critical of someone liking this sort of artwork, we need to             remember that all artwork is primarily a matter of personal taste.  For example, my personal preference is very realistic drawing and paintings, while other people seem to enjoy modern art.  While I personally cringe at both modern art and animé art, everyone has the right to their own personal preferences.

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Should you be worried if your children or your students like animé?

After investigating this topic, I would say NO, DON’T WORRY.

While the most popular series can be dubbed so that they can be listened to in your child’s own language, most animé is in Japanese, and your child will be forced to read subtitles in order to watch it.  While the language is not complicated, there is still a lot of useful vocabulary in the reading.  Even if it is not traditional reading, AT LEAST IT IS READING AND LEARNING  VOCABULARY (which is a lot better than many young people are doing today).

Even in stories that contain action and violence, the characters are usually acting out of motivations such as saving their friends, or saving the world.  In cases where characters begin to act selfishly, viewers see the moral problems this creates, and see the bad results the character brings upon himself.

As a parent, I would much rather have my child or teenager watching animé and thinking about all the issues presented, instead of a lot of less productive and less positive activities he or she could be up to.

As a teacher, it’s our job to expose students to various kinds of literature.  If students can realize that the teacher knows about mangas and can appreciate why some people could enjoy mangas and animé, students will also be more open to engaging with the teacher and class regarding more traditional literature.

I highly recommend to all teachers and parents to watch some or all of the Death Note series, at the links I have provided YouTube).  You will find the story surprisingly interesting, and your students will impressed that you have watched it.  It will give you another way to engage with your child, or with your students.  (Personally, I watch most of the series that teenagers tell me they are watching, and I recommend it to you, too.)

 

 

Why Reading Levels Continue to Decline–PART I (of 2)

The problem of students who are unable to adequately read their grade-level textbooks is not new; the problem starts in early elementary school and only gets worse as students move up in grade levels.  Unfortunately, the rise of the internet in the past twenty years has only exacerbated the problem.

Let’s look briefly at the pre-internet reading situation in middle-class schools and above (poor schools have additional problems which will not be treated in this particular article).  Looking back, the most important function of the school library was to be filled with books to be used for school research projects which were at the correct reading levels for students.

Not only were grade-level books provided, but there were plenty of below-grade-level books on every topic available to readers who were still below grade-level.  For example, a middle-school student with a lower reading level could still find good primary-level books on any research topic assigned. There used to be hundreds of books available through publishers, on every conceivable topic, for school libraries and public libraries to choose from.  Bookstores made them available to the general public.

Today, funding priorities are focused less on providing new books for the school library–partly because of the explosion of new topics and knowledge in our modern world, and also because of the explosion of information on the internet.  Now funding must be divided between  books, and new library computers.

The market for children’s non-fiction has plummeted since 2005.  Sales to both libraries and bookstores have dropped substantially. Therefore,  fewer nonfiction books for children are being written and published.  Publishers and booksellers decided to drop most nonfiction, and focus primarily on children’s fiction–for which there does continue to be a market.

 The lack of nonfiction is particularly damaging for boys.  They tend to prefer autobiographies, nonfiction, newspapers, and realistic topics. Ever since 2005, as the internet has become more powerful, children’s nonfiction has declined.  This decline is preventing many boys from developing as readers. National standards in Britain and America drive the decline even further, “…as the strictures of the national curriculum have driven many publishers to stop producing anything very original, and how many books on Vikings and rainforests do we really need?”

Starting in middle school–most commonly Grade 6 and above–teachers now direct students to the internet for research, instead of to school libraries. One reason is that science classes are now often researching topics which are not even available in books in the school libraries–things such as genetics, and various types of cells–and this is happening in Grades 6, 7, and 8.

Students are now being asked to research obscure people for reasons of diversity in the classroom, rather than famous people.  This means that the information can only be found on the internet.  Students are now expected to use the internet for all research.  This is now true even in elementary school.  Students may be assigned reports on animals, for example.  Perhaps there are perfectly good books in the school library at the right reading level; however, it has now become “too much trouble” to even check , when one can “just look it up online.”

Using online sources creates a much worse problem–aside from the problem of whether a source is reliable, biased, or incomplete–that is, the problem of reading level!

Below is reading sample from a Grade 5 science text which more than half of students (even in good schools) might find too difficult to read without the teacher’s help.  Why?  Because students are now used to reading only fiction in reading class.  They are not used to the vocabulary in non-fiction; nor are they used to reading expository sentences..

 

Not only have student reading levels declined in real terms, but the sources students are now attempting to use are usually written at far too high of a level for their age.  Students in middle school and high school usually go first to Wikipedia (and are often specifically told to do so by their teachers, particularly in international schools that have much less access to English-language printed material).  Unlike school library books or school text books of old, vocabulary is not controlled for difficulty.  Sometimes the articles are poorly written, and written by scholars who are just trying to impress other scholars with their difficult vocabulary.

Below is a section of what one of my 7th-graders attempted to read for a report on glial cells last year, using Wikipedia.  Most students now need adult help to translate and explain what they are trying to read.  To a poor reader, this may as well be in Chinese:

Those students who can afford it hire private tutors.  My students show up and say, “I have a project or report due next week on glial cells (or guard cells, or an obscure historical figure).  Can you help me?”  Students arrive knowing nothing about the topic, and are expected to research on line, and write a report listing their sources.  So, together we look on line and usually find very scholarly articles, which I, as an excellent reader in my 60s with a graduate degree and decades of experience teaching, sometimes have trouble understanding!  So we pull out little snippets of information from various articles, which I explain in plain English and then mark our source.  Even many Wikipedia articles are written by scholars, seemingly just in order to impress other scholars!

I learned a great trick years ago when I was in a professional writers’ group.  If you need good, concise information on an area or a subject, one of the best ways to find it is to go directly to children’s books, where you can find the information thoroughly distilled and written in clear, easy English.  I use this same strategy now and show students how they can search on the internet using the search terms “my topic + explained for children.”  It doesn’t always work, but it often does.  Sometimes we arrive at a website where something has been clearly explained at a reading level appropriate for middle-school students.

The thing which most excited me about the internet when it first began, especially as an overseas teacher with little access to English-language reading materials, was its potential as a world library at our fingertips.  Sadly, much of this potential is being lost for two reasons.  First, children are not developing adequate non-fiction reading abilities to function in society.  Second, most of what is available on the internet is written at far too high of a level for students to be able to benefit from it.

In most American schools, for the past several decades, the textbook has been seen by teachers as only one resource of many for classroom use.  In fact, years ago, over-reliance on the textbook was almost seen as the mark of a lazy teacher, within the teaching profession.  Unfortunately, the current result of this attitude has now led to teacher over-reliance on the internet, with students who are unable to understand either their textbooks OR the internet!  I personally have come around 180° to the view that students would be better served if they learned and discussed in class everything which is in the textbook.  Now, however, there is a new problem!  Many schools are now moving entirely away from textbooks as a way to save money, and teachers are mostly downloading random worksheets from the internet. Unfortunately, it is students who are again losing out on their education.

Part II of this series will discuss what parents, schools, and teachers can do to address these problems.

–Lynne Diligent

Do Cat Thieves Give Clues to the Origins of Criminality in Humans?

Here in  North Africa, I watch the neighborhood animals, who belong to no one, and make their rounds in the same places daily.  We have a lot of street animals, and cats often jump in to our house through the windows (other people’s houses, too), in search of food. Some of them can get quite aggressive, especially with our own cats.  Our cats feel they have to go outside and “defend the yard” every time they see a cat jump in over the garden wall.  Of course they go absolutely wild if a neighborhood cat jumps into our house.

I began to think about these intruders as thieves, because that’s what they would be considered, if they were humans. It’s easier for them to steal food than it is for them to hunt for it themselves in an urban environment.

It’s also easier (than working) for human thieves to do the same–either because they are lazy, or their environment didn’t give them other reasonable options, or because they are more greedy than others (white collar criminals?). I wonder how much of this laziness/greediness could be genetically determined, or if it is somewhat genetically programmed into all of us.  In fact, scientists are now finding evidence of this (see HERE and HERE).

My observation of cats in the neighborhood has lead me wonder whether ALL cats would be thieves if they weren’t fed by their owners.

Therefore, what keeps ALL humans from becoming thieves? Rather than asking the question who is likely to become a criminal (in human society), perhaps we should seek to understand this question  by asking instead, what KEEPS people from taking the easy route of becoming a thief/criminal? Instead of asking who cheats and why, maybe we should be asking, “Why doesn’t EVERYONE cheating/lying/stealing? What keeps those of us who are law-abiding citizens, so?”

I wonder if the answer lies in the environment.  Instead of saying that the environment causes criminality, perhaps the reverse is actually closer to the truth.  Perhaps we would all be criminals, except for if we have a positive environment which, as we are raised, gives us POSITIVE REWARDS (such as RESPECT or ADMIRATION) for becoming law-abiding citizens.  Those who grow up in impoverished environments (or cultural environments) where they never experience these rewards, are unlikely to become honest and law-abiding.

What do others think?

A Health Problem in North African Schools and Society?

Typical American school restroom for primary-school girls

As an American teacher living in North Africa, I was complaining to a public-school teacher friend in the same country about my perception of lack of adequate toilet facilities for girls in the international school where I taught previously.

I said that we only had had only four girls’ toilet stalls for four classes of girls.  Each elementary-school class had about 30 children, and about half of those were girls, so we had four toilets for about 60 girls.

The problem was that for several months, two of those toilets WEREN’T WORKING.  For more than two months, ONLY ONE TOILET WAS WORKING.  (For reference, current American law requires that for students over five years old, one toilet needs to be provided for every 20 pupils.)

My friend began to laugh, and told me that in his small-town school of 1600 students (approximately 1,000 boys and 600 girls), there were only three toilets for girls, and three toilets for boys!

No wonder my own school didn’t view getting the toilets repaired quickly as a problem in need of urgent remedy!

Modern school bathrooms in the United Kingdom (England)

Lurking in the background is a behavior assumption which is still unclear to me.  I have been told by some in North Africa that it’s “not polite” to use the restroom (toilet) anywhere other than one’s own home (or relatives’ home).  Yet when I asked other people, they haven’t heard of any such “rule.”

This is the type of toilet found in most schools (public and private), but as you can imagine, they are not nearly this clean.

Many public toilet facilities are unclean, but the cleanliness issue is not the subject of this post.  The AVAILABILITY of toilets, and whether or not it is socially acceptable to use them, is the topic.

When I go out with my North African husband, and we are away from home for several hours, I think it’s normal to need to find a restroom.  But my husband gets very upset and complains that “other people don’t need to use the bathroom” and that I “must be drinking too much water” or that it’s “embarrassing” for HIM if I need to find a restroom!  I wondered if this is normal, or just my husband?

When I mentioned to a North African woman friend that my husband didn’t want to take me to a musical event in the evening which he goes to regularly, and I mentioned that the reason he gave was that I said I would certainly need a bathroom during the course of the evening (8-10-hour event), she immediately agreed, “Oh, yes, that would be a big problem!”

The type of evening musical event which my husband and friend indicated would be “a problem” to take me to (if I should need a bathroom).

Doctors in North Africa have told me often over the years that people here don’t drink enough water.  On the other hand, both men and women over the years have told me, “Yes, it’s true all the doctors say to drink more water, but I don’t do it because then I would need to go to the bathroom!”

At this large music festival in Morocco, I wonder what all these people are doing about finding a restroom–are they all “waiting all day, until they get home?”

My North African husband drinks very little water (he tells me he drinks about half a glass once a week).  He does drink Coke, juices, coffee, and milk, but not much (by the standard of drinking one-and-a-half liters of liquid a day–and doctors recommend at least a liter of that be water, or four glasses a day–in America, we are told to drink eight glasses of water a day).

All of the above is similar to a problem I once experienced with a Greek lady in America, where my best friend was Greek.  My friend’s grandmother was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and I offered to take the grandmother out for an afternoon in order to give his mother a break from her care-taking duties.  During the afternoon we went to a movie, and had been gone from home for about three hours.  In the middle of the movie, the grandmother got up and walked out.  I assumed she must need the restroom (she was losing her ability to communicate in English), so I took her there.  But she did NOT need it.

Later, when we got home, my friend’s mother said that in her entire life, she had NEVER seen her mother use a public restroom, that in fact, her mother (who came from Greece at the age of 18) could “hold it all day.”  Being born in America herself, she said she could not figure out how her mother could do that.  (Like North Africans, she probably was purposely not drinking any water.)

Women’s public restroom in American movie theater

So now that I live in North Africa, I wonder if this could be a Mediterranean-wide idea.  Is it that WOMEN shouldn’t use a restroom in a public place, or is it that NO ONE should use a restroom in a public place?  Is this why schools seem to think many restroom stalls aren’t necessary for children?

In most schools here, students go to school for four hours, then go home for lunch, and then come back for an additional four hours.  However, at the schools in the countryside, students are often walking 6-7 kilometers to school (4 miles) each direction, and certainly would not be walking “home” for lunch.  What are they supposed to do?

At our international school we kept foreign hours from 8:30 am – 3:30 pm, but it was still a half-hour drive for most people to-and-from school.  Believe me, it took a lot of time (when we should have been teaching) to get all the girls through the restroom when there was only one working toilet.

I hope I will have some feedback on this issue from men and women in North Africa and the Mediterranean areas, as well as from anyone experiencing any similar problems in their schools or otherwise!

–Lynne Diligent

Each Tutor’s Most Crucial Dilemma

“Thinking back to literature tutoring days, there’s a fine line between helping students, and doing the work for them.  Students and parents are happiest only if the tutor crosses it.  How do you handle such situations?”  a fellow tutor asked me.

This is the tutor’s most crucial dilemma, in a nutshell.

Most successful long-term tutors have also been teachers.  As teachers, we want students to benefit from doing their own work.  However, as tutors, we have to remember who we are working for, if we wish to stay employed.

Most students who choose to use a tutor are not reading the required books in school anyway.  Few students are.  These days, tutors or not, I’m finding that upwards of 90 percent of students are just watching the movie, and a few students are going to Spark Notes and reading those notes, or taking those quizzes.  (Few actually read the Spark Notes well, and even fewer bother to take their quizzes.)

As a tutor, what I’m really being paid for is to make sure my students get good grades.  Parents are willing to shell out money for this, but not so much for someone who tells students that they must read on their own and who does not coach non-reading students for their tests.  So, what is a tutor to do?

Formerly as a teacher, I prided myself on getting all of my students to LOVE reading for pleasure, and to become truly interested in whatever subject we were studying.  Presently as a tutor, I pride myself on getting my non-reading students to read SOME, and to APPRECIATE what we are reading or studying.

I use all sorts of techniques to achieve these aims.  I sometimes rewrite books that use difficult language, to tell the story in simpler language.  I read these simpler rewrites with my students, and once they understand, they are sometimes motivated to read the original.  Sometimes they are unable to read the original, but at least they read SOMETHING, and learned about the story, and are able to pass a test asking them about the story.  We discuss the story and how we feel about it as we read it (even if it is in its easier version), and the students gain an appreciation for the piece of literature.

Is this acceptable?

As a tutor, I cannot take the same attitude I would take as a teacher.  As a tutor, I am coming from the perspective that students are not reading, and are not going to read.   If I can get them to read ANYTHING (even if I have to “spoon-feed” it to them), they are reading more than they would if they were not coming to me.  If I can get them to APPRECIATE the story, they are appreciating it far more that if they were not coming to me.  If they are PASSING THE TEST, they are learning far more than if they were not coming to me.

Should we spoon-feed pupils?

So yes, I DO cross that “line” as a tutor, but I try to do it stealthily, where I sneakily make the student work and understand more than he planned to do before he came to me!

This same dilemma exists in helping with writing assignments, with math homework, and with everything else that a tutor does  As a tutor, I try to help lighten the students’ burden, while at the same time actually teaching the student on a one-to-one basis, in a way which would be impossible in a full classroom.  For example, I often do math homework problems on individual white board along with the student.  Then we compare answers.  If they are the same, we move ahead.  If they are different, we go back through the problems step-by-step to see where we diverged.  I feel students learn more this way.

I would like to hear about how others deal with this dilemma.  If you are a tutor, where do you draw the line?  If you are a teacher, what are your thoughts?  If you are a parent, what are your feelings?

-Lynne Diligent

WHY Parents and Teachers Need to Watch the Same Television Shows as Students Do

As a parent or teacher (even outside of America, and regardless of your religion or lifestyle), have you tried to instill proper values and behavior in your own children or students, yet watched while the following values and behavior appeared instead?  Have you wondered where this has been coming from?

• Requesting a bulldog
• Popularity of sushi
• Proliferation of fake ID’s and even younger high school students attempting to use them
• Underage drinking, even at home parties, where parents leave and let children party alone
• Obsession with champagne
• A sudden interest in learning Burlesque dancing
• Requesting or attempting underage driving
• Obsession with Ivy League colleges
• Teenage obsession with wearing only “designer” dresses
• Thinking it’s not normal for parents to make a “curfew” time
• The idea that even young teenagers “go where they want, and do what they want,” and that “their parents give them the freedom to do so just like adults;”  they TELL their parents what they are doing, rather than ASK them.
• Girls (even young girls) acting in a sexually aggressive manner toward boys (girls insisting that they both take off clothes)
• Girls thinking that it’s normal to date older men secretly without their parents knowing about it
• Thinking that normal parents just go to bed, and “don’t wait up for their high school children who come home late.”
• Sassy, angry attitude toward any parents who question any of the above assumptions!
• The idea that “success” in life equates ONLY to how much money you have, and how “glamorous” you appear to others!
• Honesty, dependability, responsibility, and/or service to humanity are unfashionable, boring, stupid, and undesirable
• Kindness to others is “out;” while “one-upsmanship” and rude “put-downs” at the expense of others are “in”
• An expectation that life is supposed to be one continuous “party”

Any parent or teacher who is having trouble understanding teenage values and behavior today should IMMEDIATELY watch the three television series Beverly Hills 90210 ; Gossip Girl; and 90210 (a different show than Beverly Hills 90210).   Even watching a couple of episodes of each show will give you an idea of where this culture is coming from.  (Click on these titles for direct links to the series which should work worldwide.  Make sure to start with Season 1, Episode 1.)    These new values are coming directly from television.

Unfortunately, teenagers are now watching these shows WORLDWIDE.  Some are watching on the internet, in English (especially with the global rise in study of English, it is now accessible).  But in most countries, these shows are now dubbed in local languages, and right on the television.  Not only is American culture changing, but world culture is assuming that these TV shows represent traditional American values (which they most assuredly do NOT).

The people who made these shows recognized that they are FANTASIES of how teenagers WISH their lives were.  That’s what makes them fun to watch.  However, unfortunately, the children who grew up watching these (without any input from their parents) grew up assuming that this is what they WOULD be able to do as teenagers, and now, the upper middle classes ARE DOING it. Some of the middle class parents don’t know that their children are behaving this way.  Among more conservative families, parents should BEWARE if their child asks to spend the night with another family, because they are often going out, or even sneaking out to nightclubs.  It doesn’t help that the full age of majority in many countries is 18, rather than 21.

I live in the Middle East, and throughout our region, this is exactly how most teenagers are behaving.  The emphasis in our region is all on appearances to create the impression with others that you are rich (even if you are not).  Most of those who are rich turn their children (even girls) loose with plenty of money and the family chauffeur (usually driving an expensive, black, four-wheel-drive vehicle) for the weekend.  They certainly don’t wait up for their children to come home at night.  Most of the kids have fake ID’s and go to night clubs (which don’t even open until 11).  Their age is clear, but they just slip $20 to the doorman, who lets them in.

Father Knows Best

In the past couple of years, I’ve read a number of articles where generations following the baby boomers are now criticizing the work ethic of baby-boomers (born 1946-1960) and wondering where this work ethic came from.  It’s very clear to me now.  It came directly from TELEVISION (as well as from our parents, and from society in general).

Shows during the 1950s and 1960s (and even into the 1970s) showed children working hard, being kind, taking responsibility, and most importantly, GETTING RESPECT FROM OTHERS FOR DOING SO.  Some of these shows were Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, The Rifleman, The Waltons, and Little House on the Prairie.   In contrast, teenagers who behave this way today don’t get any respect from others.  Instead, they get “USED BY OTHERS” (in the words of a teenager I tutor).  Today, it’s showing-off and acting in accordance with the list above that gets a teenager respect from other teenagers.

–Lynne Diligent

Anti-Theft Lunch Bag: A Solution to the Stolen Lunch Problem

Anti-theft lunch bag

Among students who bring their lunches to school, there is nothing worse than opening up your lunch only to find it stolen.  This is a big problem in elementary schools where students don’t have lockers and are required to leave their lunch in a commonly-accessible place .  I came across this humorous picture, but thought it would provide a great solution for kids having this problem regularly.  It could be done with a permanent magic marker on the outside of the bag.  It would also help deter lunch bullies.

–Lynne Diligent

When a Former Student Turns Out Bad……

Teachers are human beings, and as human beings, we have human feelings.

Every year when I got a new class, being human, there were students I felt I liked and disliked.  But I always did my best to never let that affect me, and to get to know each student as an individual.  Almost always, after getting to know each student personally, I was able to find something to like about every single student.

Students behaving badly

Students who behave badly and cause a lot of trouble in class for the teacher and other students are most definitely not the same as those who have severe character flaws or personality disorders.  I could see right through the behavior of some of the worst-behaved students to see that in spite of their behavior, that they DID care about their friends, and have feelings for other people.  Provided they could stay out of delinquent behavior during their teenage years, I had every confidence that these students would grow up to be responsible adults and parents, and contributing members of society.

American rapist and serial killer Ted Bundy, as a child

However, in many years of teaching, there were only two students where I was not able to find anything to like.  These two students, even at mid-elementary school, scared me.   In both cases, I felt that there was something seriously wrong with these them.  Knowing the students’ parents somewhat, I did not see anything wrong in the parents’ character.  But the students had a very, very serious character flaw.  Midway through elementary school, they had not developed any conscience, and they both had no feelings whatsoever for other people, or other living things.

At one point during his school year, one of these children threatened me with he “was going to send viruses to destroy my computer” if I didn’t do what he wished” (I no longer remember what he wanted me to do do).  I talked to him many times throughout the year and he told me over and over that he didn’t care about anyone else besides himself.  And it was really true.  This boy was a reasonably good student and extremely intelligent.  While I hope for change in this boy, as he left my class, I felt that I would not be surprised to hear he had become a white-collar criminal in future years.

As the years have gone on, he is thankfully out of my class and out of my life, he is still around, but my assessment of him has so far not changed.  However, in his case, we still have the future to see what happens.

For the other boy, his future has already arrived.

When the second boy was in my class, he was already a hard-core pornography addict.  At this time, our Middle Eastern country was receiving triple-x pornography (the type where in America you would have to go to a particular part of town, show ID that you were at least 21 to even enter the store, and watch the movie in a “private” cubicle) right on the television, broadcast from Europe, over the satellite dishes.  Many parents were unaware that their children had discovered these TV channels.

Many students told me that they just flip the telecommand every time they hear their parents coming, and then just change it right back afterward.  I wondered at the time how this would influence the boys (and girls, too) who were exposed to this at such a young age, particularly as to how this would influence their future dating behavior and how they would treat or view the opposite sex when they got into their teenage and young adulthood years.

Knowing some of those children well at the time, and seven-to-twelve years having now passed, I see that those who were decent children in mid-elementary school have mostly continued to be decent young adults, and from what I hear from other teenagers, are going to be okay.  On the other hand, those who had problems, I’m sure those problems already had those character disorders accelerated and developed at a younger age than before.  In some cases, girls and boys have come to view behaviors as normal that are really not normal between loving adults.

From reading articles on the subject, pornography is most damaging to young boys when it is coupled with violence.

American rapist and serial killer Richard Ramirez, in high school. Ramirez was present at the age of 12 when his cousin Mike, a Vietnam Veteran, killed his own wife, the blood splattering on Ramirez. Previously, Mike had shown photos of himself in sex acts with Vietnamese women, and subsequent photos of the beheaded bodies of the same women, who he bragged to Ramirez about torturing to death.

So, this second boy in one of my classes, even although a hard-pornography addict in early elementary school, probably did not have his problems caused by the porn, but merely exacerbated by the porn.  He was a good-looking boy, but extremely lazy, always out of his chair, not interested in learning anything (although I did try quite hard to have some success with him).   He did some mean, nasty,  and even evil things to others even at that age.  (I’m sorry I cannot go into specifics; I wish I could, but I cannot.)  He did more mean and evil things as he aged, and continued to be a very bad student who was always in trouble.  The boy’s  father, who did care about his son,  died while his son was still in elementary school, and therefore he did not have a father’s influence during those important years.   Later on, he had a girlfriend for several years toward whom he was extremely abusive.  His behavior in many areas eventually got him expelled from high school.

He remains a dangerous person in a small town.  He is extremely rich, drives an expensive car, and is from a powerful family.  In societies like ours, this means that he has “carte blanche.”  He does horrible things which seem to escalate each year and which are becoming well-known, particularly among people of his own age group, and everyone feels that they cannot do anything because of the powerful family he is from.

Dominique Strauss Kahn

This is the same reason that Dominque Strauss-Khan was able to get away with his behavior for so long, was that he essentially has the same “carte blanche” in French society.  It is the reason why corruption continues in all societies where WHO you are is of primary importance.  When there is an evil person with “carte blanche,” neither the police, nor the judges, nor anyone will help.

So what people do, unfortunately, is to behave in an extremely servile manner toward that person, and “pretend” to be his or her “friend” just so that they will not fall on the bad side of that person.  “Carte blanche” means essentially that a person, or particular group of persons, is “above the law.”  The law does not apply to them, and no one in the society will DARE challenge them.  Anyone who tries will be hurt severely, or have their family hurt severely, and no policeman, court, or judge will lift a finger to help them.  This is another reason why there is such emphasis on WHO you know in these sorts of societies.  Often, your only protection is knowing someone MORE powerful than those who might be against you, who have the power to control this person, or protect you from other persons in that group who have “carte blanche.”

So, back to my student.  I really, really thought something was seriously wrong with this student even in early elementary school.  It’s clear that I was right.  The really dangerous thing, in my opinion, is a child who develops no feelings for others; it is what creates a sociopath.  And not every sociopath was abused as a child.  I wonder if Ted Bundy’s (American serial killer in the 1970s and 80s) or Jeffrey Dahmer’s (American serial killer of the 1980s) teachers saw something wrong with them as a children.  They probably did.

American Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer as a child

I think having only two students like this in twenty years of thinking is not bad.  Maybe I had two or three others over the years who were borderline, but for whom I still have hope, even after several years have gone by.  I feel horribly depressed about this one student, hearing regularly from others about the things he does that are so bad, but which I cannot even safely mention, and about which no one feels they can do anything.

–Lynne Diligent

Why Teachers Should NOT Treat All Students the Same Way

When I first began my teaching career, I made a great effort to be fair with all students by treating them the same way under the same circumstances.  We all want to be fair with students if we are decent human beings as teachers.

However, over many years of teaching (and parenting) I discovered that treating all the same way was not producing the best results.  Over time, my focus changed from concentrating on being “fair” to doing whatever was necessary to bring each student to his highest and best performance in my class.  Furthermore, each student’s best performance was not at the same level as any other student.  This is where teaching becomes an “art” rather than a procedure, or a delivery.

Let’s look at some specific examples.  If students don’t do their homework (math, for example), they arrive in class unprepared to learn from their mistakes in that day’s lesson.  It is not important if they got the right answer in their homework; what is important is whether they attempted the problems and knew at which points they encountered difficulty.  Then they were ready for that day’s work and explanations.

So, how can teachers get students to do their homework (each student’s highest and best effort)?  In my early teaching days, in attempting to be “fair,” I would have given an identical penalty to every student who did not do their homework.  After two decades in the classroom, my approach had changed.  In Grade Three, I put A’s on every paper where the homework was completed (correct or not, although grades were not counted–unknown to the students, but known by their parents) and F’s on any homework undone or uncompleted (again, not counted, as above).  Other than that, I used different incentives for each student.

One student might need a threat–threat of a phone call to a parent, threat of staying in from recess, threat of extra homework.  Another student might need a reward–verbal praise, positive note home from the teacher, getting to be first in line all day long, reading a book while others continue to work.  Still another student might need extra help in class, extra time with the teacher, help from a classmate arranged with the teacher’s blessing, help speaking to a parent.

This is where teaching becomes an art.  In order to know when to use the carrot and when to use the stick, and how much carrot or stick, or which carrot or stick to use, a teacher must know all of his or her students individually, and know them well.  In a normal class of 25-30 students, it takes about two months to know the students this well.

Some teachers don’t want to know their students, and put up a wall.  It’s also harder for younger teachers who are closer in age to the students they teach.  The older one is, the easier it is to get to know students individually without compromising privacy or classroom discipline.  Sometimes older students assume that younger teachers want to be their “friend,” whereas younger students with an older teacher don’t make this assumption even if they do become actual friends at some point.  So the older the teacher is, the easier this is.  Sometimes younger teachers need to erect more of a barrier.

So, how to get to know one’s students?  The first way is through grading their papers, reading their opinions, and by commenting on their papers regarding what they have said.  The second way is through classroom discussions, and by being open and honest with students in classroom discussions, which encourages them to be open and honest with teachers in return.  You both learn about each other.  It’s always easier to do this in primary school than in secondary school.

Regardless, any effort expended in knowing students individually will pay dividends both in personal rewards as well as for knowing what to use to motivate that particular student.  Students who know and respect a teacher will work hard for that teacher as a person.

The reason students must not be treated the same is that some are motivated by carrots, some by sticks, and most by alternate use of various carrots and sticks at different times, and under different circumstances.

–Lynne Diligent

Teaching Conditions Faced by Teachers in the Rural Middle East and North Africa

Imagine 46 students per class (with the teacher having 550 different students per week), no chalk, no electrictiy, and no heat in freezing winter conditions.

The current generation of young teachers are often placed in government public schools which are now built in agricultural and mountain regions.  I spoke with one of these teachers, an incredibly dedicated first-year English teacher, who is teaching in one of these schools, and listened to him describe to me the teaching conditions he has to endure.

He teaches in a school without electricity or any sort of heat (and it is winter now with freezing temperatures), and without enough chalk for him to use.  The school finally was able to obtain one box of chalk to use.  When I asked him how long this was supposed to last, he told me the whole year.  I asked him if it might be possible for him to buy additional chalk from  his own pocket (even though he shouldn’t have to).

A rural, public secondary school.

He said that the problem was that as a new teacher, he hadn’t received his salary yet.  When I asked why not, he told me that all the teachers placed in public schools did not receive their salary for the first one-to-two years on the job (although I am assuming that they do eventually get the salary to which they are entitled)!  He said that teachers at private schools do get their monthly salaries upon starting, and that this is just a problem in the public-school sector.  When I asked about salaries, it appears that new teachers in the public sector generally make about $400 a month; whereas veteran teachers of many years usually make about $700 a month.  The top end of the salary scale is around $1,000 a month for the most veteran teachers in the most difficult subjects (possibly math, chemistry, physics).

My next question was, therefore, how was he managing to live, if he wasn’t getting any salary?  I asked if students ever invited him to their homes for meals.  He said no.  He said that he was very fortunate, compared to some teachers, because his parents had actually moved to his new location with him (he’s 25) so that he could live with him and they could support him during his first few years in this job.  (In this country, most new teachers are placed first in rural areas, and after several years of teaching in such conditions, they can apply to come to the city.  But it usually takes many years to actually be able to get to a school in a city.)

School hours are from 8:00 am – 12:00 Noon, and again from 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm.  This particular teacher is an English teacher in a middle school.  He has 550 students a week.  His classes average 46, and in each class, the age of students ranges from 13-20!  Each of the 550 students spends about two hours a week in his class, once a week.  So each day he has three classes.  One goes from 8:00 am to 10:00 am.  Then he has a ten-minute break.  The next class goes until noon, followed by an hour for lunch.  The third class is from 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm, and another class from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm.  He has tried assigning homework, but has so far found that only five or six students out of 550 actually did the homework.  He says that most students take notes, but never open their notebook once they have left class.  The school has no library at all, and twenty classrooms which are equally as crowded as his.  The school has no extra resources even to buy an extra box of chalk for the teachers.

I asked about the sex ratio in his classes.  He said that being a secondary school in a rural area, it’s about 70% boys and 30% girls, but that the girls are far more serious, and study better.  Some of the reasons behind the lower attendance of girls have to do with girls’ labor being needed in the home, as well as it being dangerous and far for the girls to walk to school.  They cannot walk alone (for safety reasons).  The school is 2-3 kilometers from most of their homes.  The older girls get, it is more difficult for families to keep them in school, than it is for boys.

This teacher told me that he started his class year by having only two rules, which he explained to his students.  These are to have RESPECT, and to DREAM BIG.    He talked to the students about respecting themselves, about respecting others, about respecting their teachers, and about what it means to have respect in each of these areas.  Next he talked to them about their dreams.  He tried to encourage them in whatever their dreams were, to take steps toward pursuing them, whether it be becoming a soccer or basketball player, or becoming an artist.  The saddest thing, he said, was that most of them don’t have ANY dreams at ALL.  He said they have been raised in such a way that such thinking and ideas are not encouraged.

A typical public secondary school in a small city.

I told him (speaking as a teacher of many years) that no teacher can hope to be that “special” teacher for everyone, but that every teacher CAN hope and expect to be that “special” teacher for at least some students.  Teachers can change the lives of students by opening up possibilities and giving emotional support.  We discussed it, and he said that while middle-class students are now having dreams, that lower-class students (the majority) are not yet to that level.

As a first-year teacher, he told me that he desires to be a “modern” teacher, using games, songs, and playing.  However, he quickly found this did not work.  “If you have fun with them,” he says, “then they think you are a cool teacher who ‘lets them do whatever they want’ and they don’t respect you.”  He has problems with students getting up out of their chairs out of their chairs without permission, and many students talking in class, disturbing the others.  When he tries to get them to CALM DOWN they don’t want to listen.  These are the same problems I had for many years in my classrooms in this country, although I found getting older (as a teacher) helps!

Interestingly, English teachers in this French-speaking country tend to follow Western models of teaching, and the education departments follow modern methods from America.  They are not being taught in ed school just to have students “memorize” and the like; however, they have the same trouble as foreign teachers do with finding that often more fun and interesting methods don’t seem to work with students who have been raised with different sorts of ideas by their parents, and by the local culture.

This teacher and I live in different parts of our country, and I spoke with him over Skype.  His English was unbelievably good, even compared to other English teachers I have met.  We are a French and Arabic-speaking country (upper classes speaking French, and lower classes speaking the local dialects of Arabic).  It was as good as if he had been raised in England or America, and only had a very slight accent.  He spoke with perfect grammar and pronunciation, and in our two-hour conversation I heard only one slight mistake, which he self-corrected.  I think it’s amazing that someone of this quality is teaching in such a far-off rural school.

I mention this teacher’s good English as a comparison  to my daughter’s experience less than ten years ago in respected private school in a big city in our country.  I went to a presentation for parents in a large auditorium.  The English teacher got up and spoke to parents for five minutes from the stage, explaining what the students were going to do.  Yet, I could barely understand a word!  When my daughter (a native speaker) was in her class, she used to tell my daughter that she wasn’t speaking English correctly (not true).  Since that time, I have found that the English standards of the public-school teachers generally seem quite superior to those of many private-school teachers (although I’m not yet sure why that is).

This teacher’s dedication really impressed me and made me feel as if I wanted to be a student in his class!

–Lynne Diligent