Low Expectations

Low expectations are something I've been seeing a lot in China. There's a pretty low expectation on what we exactly can do as foreign teachers. There's not much expectation of exactly what the school can provide for the kids. Today when I asked my students basically what they wanted to do once they were done with school there expectations of what they could do were so low as to in some cases border on the comical. I'm remember a 30 Rock bit where one character is coaching a inner city baseball team and asks them what they want to do with there lives and they all say things like, "I'm going to be a talkative doorman with a drinking problem." The most common response that seemed to indicate some hope for the future was businessman. The thing was almost none of them had any real idea what sort of business they wanted to be in. I suppose if I asked at the Engineering school their answers would have made a little more sense, but it's not just that one or two didn't know what sort of business they wanted to go into not one could come up with a coherent answer. The most constructive answer that I got is that a number of them want to be Home school or lower level English teachers. Another group wanted to be translator, almost without fail the worst students. I think one day one of these kids is going to start a war or economic collapse by grossly mistranslating some important document. Then there were the response which begged the question of why they were in college in the first place: there was the kid who wanted to be a cook, the ones who wanted to be doctors but had no idea there are things like medical school to go through, there are was a sizable group who wanted to be secretaries and simply hoped there bosses would be smart, finally there were the ones who I think were essentially hoping to marry some one rich. It's just that at the end of the day I got the sense that this is not where the future leaders of China are made.