Guys and Dolls

The boys and girls in my classroom act almost constantly like there in elementary school when it comes to anything having to with one another. It's amazing that anyone in this country ever goes on a date with the distance they keep between each other. The only time when you ever see a boy sit next to a girl is when: A, I make them or B, they are already dating. In one class I needed everyone to be in twos for an activity and there were three boys so one had to be put with a girl. When I had the girl move over to where the boy was sitting she looked at me with such an expression of shock that you'd of thought I'd asked her to marry him. Not that it takes a lot to start these classes giggling but any mention of anything like, marriage, kissing, etc just sends them into convulsions. Dave suggested at one point that we should ask the school if we could teach them basic sex ed since I don't think they ever got a class like that. Part of it comes from the fact that China still has gender relations more like the US in the 50's then the west today. Before the Communist revolution here China was a society with little regards for any rights for women. The basic Confucian idea was that the women should obey their fathers, then their husbands, and if widowed their sons. The Communists pushed gender equality but it's come out unevenly. You still don't really see many women in the upper echelons of the party or in other positions of power. In fact its only recently that women were even close to half of the students at university. In my classes they make up about 90% and a girl is always the class monitor who should essentially be the best student.