Official Minutes from One Last Teacher Rampage, 5/04/2011

Teacher: Okay. Look. Hey. All of you. Look. Look at me. Stop what you're doing. Stop it. Stop that. Stop. Please stop. Close those books. Close them. The cell phones. End them. Shut up. Please shut up. Look at me. Look. See? Okay.

Teacher: How old are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-one?

Students: [incomprehensible murmuring]

Teacher: Okay, twenty. So you're young. I was twenty, too, like eight hundred years ago. And you won't believe me when I say this, but believe me when I say this: you will miss college someday. You will wish you could go back. You will wish one day you could go back and do it again, only better. You will miss all the free time you had back in college. Which is a roundabout way of saying that you won't have any free time at all after you graduate.

Teacher: Now, I know (or strongly suspect) that you find my class boring. You've demonstrated that to me by doing fuck-all for the past three weeks. You probably find your other classes boring, too, and for that I can't exactly blame you. I've sat in on a handful of them, and they are, indeed, excruciatingly fucking boring. But bear in mind that you'll be out of here in a year or two and you will never be able to come back. You'll never go to college again. This is it. After college, either you'll be working your asses off, or you'll be married and working your asses off, or you'll be married with a kid and working your asses off.

Teacher: You will never have an opportunity like this again. Right now, today, you have all the free time in the world. And I think it's time you started thinking about how to use that time. You are English majors, and English will in all likelihood become your vocation, your job. But never again will you have eight hours a day to study English. Never again will you have a native English speaker at your disposal, willing to bust his Anglo-Saxon balls to answer your every question about English, about America, about the Western World. Your English won't improve after you graduate, not unless you get out of the country. Otherwise, you won't have the time or the means to improve it. You may teach English for the rest of your natural life, but your English will probably remain exactly as good as it was when you left college. If anything, it will only get worse. Because you will never again have the time, the resources, or the ability to study the way you can right now.

Teacher: I'm 28 years old. I can learn the basics of Chinese fairly quickly if I work very hard at it, but I will never find the time to master it. And I will never be as good as I could've been if I had started studying Chinese when I was your age. Over the years, the brain gets hard. Like a rock. You grow inflexible. More and more set in your ways. Less and less thrilled by the new, more and more hung up on your old habits. Haunted by memories. Memories of old women. And part of the calcifying process is, you learn languages much, much more slowly than you usedta could. So, if you want to learn English, this is your time.

Teacher: But what do you do during my class? You're busy reading those books. Those exam booklets of yours. Which are mostly written in Chinese, anyhow. Those (here, a profound note of disgust issues from Teacher) ... fucking ... books won't do you a damned bit of good in the long run. No matter how deep you stick your noses into them. You know how many students I've taught at this university? Over a thousand. Close to two-thousand by now. All of them just like you. English majors. You know how many of those students could hold up their end of a conversation with me by the time they left? Ten. Maybe fifteen. Those ten, maybe fifteen kids learned English because they studied the language, not the books. They watched movies. They read novels in their free time. They talked to me and talked to their classmates. In English. During class time. The other 1,490 kids passed all their exams, sure. But "How are you?" I'd ask them when we passed on the streets. "I go home," they'd say.

Students: [laughter]

Teacher: I'm serious. You're laughing. But those students failed. I passed them, sure. I'm obligated to pass everybody, as I will probably pass all of you. But those students failed at English, in a bad way. Ten, maybe twelve years of studying, and they never learned how to answer a simple how-are-you -- because they believed in the book, not in the language. All of them, like all of you, had already studied English for at least ten years when I met them. And all of them studied English by the book -- by those exam booklets you seem so fond of sticking your noses into when you're supposed to be working on my assignments.

Teacher: And that's fine. You're adults. You're twenty years old. I'm only eight years older than all y'all, remember. So I'm not going to force you to do anything you don't want to do. I'm not going to chew you out, or scold you, or punish you. You are adults. Next year, you will be working adults. I'm not your boss. I'm just your teacher. And if you don't want to put in the work that this class, that the English language, that any language demands, that is your choice. But this (gestures at board) this is the work. This is the only way you will ever improve your English.

Teacher: I know all of you want to improve your English. Almost every single one of you has come up to me and asked me for help at some point. Mr. Panda, how can I improve my English? My answer is this: you have to do the work. That is the only thing you can do. The work.

Teacher: You have all studied English for ten years, at least. All of you are English majors. Each and every one of you is capable of talking about the topic I assigned you today. But each and every one of you either stuck your noses into those goddamned books of yours or spoke straight Chinese to your friends for eighty minutes; at any rate, you ignored the assignment and accomplished absolutely nothing during my class time. This is the work. What I assigned you today. What I assigned you two weeks ago. What I assigned you three weeks ago. The work I give you each and every class period. That is the work. If you really want to learn English, you need to really want to learn English. And if you really want to learn English, you need to do the work. (gestures again at board) This is the work.

Teacher: I can't understand why you wouldn't put in the work. You're already dedicating eight hours a day to studying the language. But you're not learning it that way. You're just studying English. You're not learning it. My question is: do you want to pass the exams or do you want to learn the language?

Teacher: I expect a lot from you. You're smart kids. I have no doubt about that. But from my perch, up here behind the podium, all I see is 47 noses stuck in their fucking books, studying for some other class that doesn't happen to be my class. I've taught plenty of disrespectful students - mostly eight year old Korean kids, and some Mexican teenagers who egged my house, twice - but nothing has ever pissed me off more than seeing you, young adults, English majors, fucking around with your extracurricular bullshit during my class time. You are wasting my time and you are not doing the work. And I have been patient with you. I have allowed you to get away with not doing the work. Because you are adults and I treat you that way. But understand that when you don't do the work, you are insulting me. You make me wonder why I bothered to wake up at 7 AM, when I was so blissfully dreaming of making out with the Assistant State's Attorney from The Wire. You make me wonder why I bothered to pay the cab fare to get here, to teach you. If you're not willing to do the work, I should've just stayed in bed and saved myself the seven kuai. And, oh, Rhonda ...

Teacher: Would you do this in front of your Chinese professors? (gestures towards hallway) Show up and start reading some bullshit book from another class? Would you do that during your Chinese classes? (gestures once again towards hallway) I can only fucking imagine what your Chinese professors would do if you started doing my homework during their classtime.

Teacher: I'm sorry. I don't mean to scold you. You are adults. If you don't want to put in the work, you don't have to. I will just give you a bad grade, that is all, and life will go on for the both of us. But this is the language. This is the work. If you really want to learn the language. If you really want to make something of yourself. There is a world out there. Outside of China. And it speaks English. If you want to be part of that world. If you want to be more than a middle school English teacher in some redneck Chinese town. If you want that, I'm listening. But if you want that, if you want something better, understand that you have to do the work. And this is the work. That shit there on the board. Which I didn't just write for my health, contrary to popular belief. I spent time planning that shit, see. And I spent time writing it. And I spent time explaining it to you. Not for my health. Certainly not for my health. I did all that work in the hope that you would do the work. This is the work. You don't have to do it. But I'm 28 and, looking back, I'm going to say that you kinda have to. For my sake.

Students: [silent, one half inspired, other half angry and insulted]

Teacher: Well, it's a beautiful day. I'd hate to keep you all pent up in this crappy classroom when you could be out enjoying yourselves. So I'll let you out a bit early, unless you have any questions.

Student: Mr. Panda, do you have a girlfriend?

Teacher: Well, I'm not really sure about that right now.

[bell rings]