Moral Ambiguity

Sometimes I think about what would happen if you put last July’s Emily Cohen and me into the same room. I’m the same person, if hopefully a little more mature and a little wiser and with a few more life skills, but there are things about me that have most definitely changed. There are stances I’ve taken and things that I’ve done that last summer’s me would never have considered. Some are rather ridiculous, like the fact that I, Emily Cohen, now wear eye-liner and lip gloss almost daily (nobody is more shocked than I, I assure you) so that my kids will think of me as a little older and thus take me more seriously. I also bake, knowingly, with bleached flour. Some are stupid and dangerous, like biking on mountain roads without a helmet (sorry, mom!), because bike helmets just don’t really exist in China, and perhaps not washing all my veggies as meticulously as I might. And some continue to make me wrestle, resigned but not content.

I remember so clearly during the very first week training reading an essay by one of Pengtun’s former fellows about corporal punishment in the classroom. He wrote eloquently about his personal moral struggle with how to handle behavior problems in a system that prizes physical over all other forms of discipline. He decided that he would bring students to the lead teacher and to the principal, where they would almost certainly be hit. Reading the essay, I remember understanding his logic and respecting his decision but firmly convinced that I would never, under any circumstances, make a similar call.

I have. I have on not just one or two but on a number of occasions. I’ve brought kids to the lead teacher. I’ve brought kids to the principal. I have grabbed kids by their upper arms and collars to make them stand up. I have collected lighters and knives by using pressure points. I’m not proud of any of this, but I’ve learned this year that there are times when, to a certain degree, it can be necessary to bend one’s personal ethics in order to better mold to and positively impact one’s environment. I know, I know, that sounds really bad, and where are the boundaries? Does allowing my kids to be hit this year mean that I’ll make the same decision regarding my own children in 10 years, or that if I end up teaching in the States I’ll wish I was allowed to strike my students?

I don’t think so. I remember conversations at the Minneapolis public school where I worked where teachers lamented phone calls to parents, because they knew that reports of bad behavior at school would result in hitting at home. Nonetheless, at school, there was no hitting. At school, there were other punishments, a system that maxed out with expulsion rather than slapping. There were also reward systems, a relatively new concept for my students. This year, I’ve implemented an extensive rewards system that’s been largely effective for my good kids but hasn’t succeeded in curbing bad behavior. For that, as it was with the teachers at my old school, I’ve needed punishments.

Since September, I’ve tried a plethora of American-style discipline techniques, ranging from seat changing to lectures to holding students back after class to texting parents to extra homework to sharing treats with only well-behaved students to kicking students out of the classroom into the cold in the middle of winter (I lived in Minnesota for five years. Yunnan cold is not cold). Some have been vetoed by the administration of my school, others by the lead teacher, leaving me with few options and even fewer that I’m capable of enforcing without help. Calling on this help risks corporal punishment for my impish students; not calling on it risks an utterly chaotic classroom for my engaged and dedicated students. I’ve come to the difficult decision that the latter is worse.

These kids have been hit by their teachers since they were in first grade—swats on the legs and top of the head for not paying attention, strikes on the hands for incomplete homework, being dragged by the ear or hair from classroom to office for bad behavior. Hitting is technically illegal, and hence it isn’t regulated. Although I’ve never witnessed this, I’ve heard stories of students slapped across the face, thrown to the floor, hit so hard they dropped out of school. My poorly-behaved students do not take my ‘lighter’ punishments seriously. If I were their only teacher I would probably have more success, but the 1-4 hours of the school day that are left in my care aren’t enough to mitigate the other 10-13 spent with hitting teachers.

I will never hit my students. I’m actually, according to CEI, not allowed to hit my students. I will, however, continue to bring my kids to teachers who take reports of bad behavior as cause for physical punishment. I have moral qualms with this, but I have deeper moral qualms with the notion of a few badly-behaved children keeping the other 40 from being a part of a classroom conducive to study. My students are products of their school environment, an environment that, unlike school environments in most of the United States, includes hitting. I don’t like it, but like so many other parts of rural education in China, I’ll work with it.