Return to Australia

My friend

Xu yan

NOTICE OF TERMINATION

Yesterday we had a good talk; you are as I wrote, a warm person and a decent person.

I told you of the sexual assault on my wife; that she walks approx 20 km to and from college when she has split shifts [in morning and afternoon] and the veins in her legs suffer badly from this walking and then standing in class. 

Yesterday in front of the university gates I was hit by a car driven by a man entering the university. He stopped and put his head out of the window but did not get out to see if I was injured. The car seemed to be a university member's car.

My letter to you is affixed below this: I am not sleeping as life here is very disturbing and both of us are severely depressed. The people above us seem not to care about the noise they make and we can't make a home here when we can't even relax with the thumping above our heads. The building itself is riddled with ants in the walls; flying ants and the walls are seeping with ant refuse. If there were to be a mild tremor I would suggest that this building is not safe. You have to be here to believe how fragile is its structure. We both know building from our training and experience.

What I wrote in the letter to you still stands and despite what we seemed to conclude yesterday I feel that we don't have the conditions by which we can continue working and living in Huangshi. I therefore think it is time to give you notice.

You may have indicated that I control the courses but as a foreigner teaching here my task [and Qi Kailin's] is continually undermined by the structural presence of Chinese staff to whom the students go when they encounter language difficulties with us. With this in place it is a known academic fact that language training requires immersion and not mere teaching. 

I have no longer the energy and interest to keep trying to persuade this college of our position, both work-wise and accommodation-wise. Simply put: notice of intention to return to Australia, with the term of notice to be discussed by you and me at 9.30am today [Friday].

Talk to you at 9.30

Cheers

An Derui

Ni hao

 

Both you and Lifen have heard my opinion re study skills and both of you agree. As for the diaries no one has told the students not to do them; but I have told the students exactly what I think of the diaries ...simply doing the diaries does not absolve the students from actually doing the work. So many of them think that once the diaries are completed [and frankly very few diaries are worth reading!] then their study is complete. I have been battling hard against this lethargy. It is a fault of the course itself to have the diaries included.

I have tried to text Zhou Li of my thinking; but my text failed. It is this: As far as I am concerned, the diaries are a total waste of time and if anyone took the time to look at the diaries and was honest they would agree with me. I will not continue this farce, Xu yan and I have indicated my philosophy on this to the students. I will not be hypocritical and go back on my principles. I have engaged the students so far from 803 on an exercise on the merits of English teaching against the merits of Study Skills teaching and the verdict, according to the students of 803, is that English is by far more important to them than SS.

 

I have examined the diaries to date and frankly they are worthless and they do nothing to improve the study skills of any of the students. I will not take part in this farce any longer and that is my final word on the subject. My wife is also engaged on pathetic bureaucratic nonsense that is taking up so many of her home hours; she works till midnight on material that has not been explained to her and she learns from rejection rather than from explanation. This is not the way to manage academic material.

 

I don't care what you say, Xu yan. I have seen enough of this college to realise how farcical things are and most of it is pretence and the advancement of the students is a joke.

 

I have been here in China five times and this time is the joke of a lifetime. If you truly want decent and honest teaching you will not perpetrate dishonest teaching and you certainly will not get me involved in such academic fraud.

 

Zhou Li intervened in one of my classes and got the students of 804 to write diaries and the result is a joke. The course material was not given to the students before I came and I had to get something for them to work on and still they have no decent written material that can work within a Chinese context and help them to prepare for exams. I have worked from a different angle, inculcating within them a sense of achievement rather than simply writing nonsense that eventually means stuff all.

 

I will concentrate on their very poor English skills and within this their study skills will improve; but if you need a fool of a foreigner to legitimise the NCC requirements then get yourself someone else. I will not do it.

 

An Derui
 

 

Adrian Keefe MA [Lit]

International College

Hubei Normal University

82 Cihu Road

Huangshi Hubei 435002

People's Republic of China

 

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