Chinese Culture

I had a meeting with the mother of two of my students the other night. They are either Chinese or Taiwanese, I'm not sure which one. The father is no longer around so its just the mother. The boy is in 7th grade and the girl is in 6th grade. The boy isn't too bad, he does need to be straightened out a little, but overall he is not bad. The girl is a little trouble-maker and I have to keep a constant radar on her and what she is doing.

The reason I called the meeting is because both of them had dropped their grade in my class dramatically over the course of about 2-4 weeks. By dramatically I mean about 20 percentage points. What bothers me the most is that I emailed the mother because both of them were doing so well, especially the girl, and I wanted her to congratulate them. The girl ended up failing in my class last semester and she had around a 77% when I emailed home. But since the email was sent, her grade began to tank. I was so dissapointed because it was almost like she didn't want to be recognized for doing well.

I simply wanted to call the meeting to bring it to the mothers attention that her children's grades were starting to drop in my class. I thought she had the right to know and felt that I had the duty to tell her. Well, she was more than appreciative and she was very supportive of me, which made me feel good, but one thing she said during the meeting disturbed me.

We had met about the girl before, with other teachers who she has, and some things came out and the mom found out the girl had been lieing about school work and receiving extra help from teachers. During the most recent meeting, the mother said that after the last meeting, she hit the girl. She blatantly came out and said that she beat her after the last meeting, and then she said that it was part of the Chinese culture and she can do that. As if there is nothing wrong with beating your kids.

Now, I believe that kids need to be corrected and I feel spanking is an acceptable form of discipline, if used sparingly and correctly. But the way this mother described it, there was a lot more than spanking involved. But she was very open about it and admitted it without reservation. The special services teacher was in the meeting as well and we talked afterwards. She told me that in America, she would turn her in, but its a different culture over here.

I am shocked at the fact that it is acceptable and that the mother was so open about the beating. But like the special services teacher said, its a different culture and more accepted in Asia. I've actually even heard of Chinese or Taiwanese teachers actually hitting students in class. Not foreign teachers but native teachers.

The main aspect of this that made me feel bad was that the whole evening, I couldn't help but think that me calling the meeting caused that girl (and maybe the boy as well) to get hit that night. All I wanted to do was bring up a concern to the mother, but there were some other things that I brought to her attention (disrupting class, talking to other students, etc.) that I felt she should know about. I felt bad because I know those kids probably got hit when they got home, maybe even before they got home. Not really something I want to be responsible for. It causes me to question how quick I will be to call another meeting with this parent.

Aaron