Eric's Beijing Diary

Well, I think I am finding the balance for the freshmen in Langfang. I am supposed to be teaching them Technical English, but the whole idea of the class is to help them feel comfortable speaking English, and they just don't get very conversational about technology. This week I wrote another essay for them. Wonder if Mel remembers this one:


-------------------------
It was late in the fall of 1961 or early in ‘62. We were living in the city of Sakata, Japan. We were only there on weekends, because during the week we attended a boarding school in another city about 60 miles away. We went to school on Tuesday morning, and came back on Saturday afternoon.

I remember one Monday morning we were sitting around the house waiting for the day to get started, when there was a knock on the door. It was the Commander of the local United States Navy base in Sakata. His name was Burns. Commander William Burns. He had dropped by to see if my two sisters wanted to go with him to his house to play with his two daughters. Mary was about nine then—she made the decision rather quickly. But Melody was much more hesitant. Mel was six. I could tell that she really wanted to go, but she wasn’t quite sure if she should. My parents asked her several times if she wanted to go, but she couldn’t seem to make up her mind. Finally she decided to play it safe, and chose to stay.

Well, the moment Mary left with Commander Burns, I could tell that Mel was regretting her decision. She had made the choice herself; nobody pushed her one way or the other. Still, there are times when you make a decision that you don’t really like because you can’t find within yourself the strength to make the decision that you would prefer to make if you could be sure that everything would turn out right. Somehow the fact that it is your decision doesn’t seem to make you feel any better about it. In fact, I think sometimes it makes you feel worse, because you are kicking yourself for not having enough courage to do what you really wish you could do, but none of that changes the fact that you are just a little more afraid of getting into a situation that you can’t get out of because you made a decision that you can’t change. Anyway, what’s done is done, and Mel soon got about the business of making the best of things.

About an hour and a half later, there was a knock on the door. To our surprise, it was Commander Burns again. He had taken Mary all the way out to the Navy base, and then he had come back to see if Melody didn’t want to reconsider. Well, this time Melody was ready to go. She had had plenty of time to think about what she must be missing, and when the chance came to do things right, she wasn’t going to miss it a second time.

Seize the Day! That’s how the saying goes. But sometimes we just aren’t ready to make the decision when the decision needs to be made. Most of the time, you don’t get a second chance. So what made Commander Burns turn around and come all the way into town to give Melody another shot at the opportunity? We usually don’t think of leadership in those terms. Military commanders are generally evaluated on the basis of how many battles they win, not on how many children they keep happy. But battles are fought and won to make sure that kids have the freedom to be kids. So really, when it comes right down to it, there isn’t that much difference between leadership in battle and leadership in life. Anyway, it is clear that Commander Burns came back because he was concerned about a little girl who wanted to play, but who just didn’t have the courage to make the decision. If he had thought for a moment that she really didn’t want to go, he would never have tried to force the issue. But that was not the case. What she wanted to do was obvious. It was written all over her face. She just needed a little help making the decision. A little time. A little encouragement. A second chance. If Commander Burns had merely been concerned with fulfilling his neighborly duty, he could have called and asked if Mel wanted to go. He could have offered to come and get her. Then my parents would have said, that no, she made her decision, and they didn’t want him to go to all that trouble. That would have fulfilled his gentlemanly obligation, but it wouldn’t have helped Mel.

Commander Burns acted as he did because he really was concerned about a little girl who needed a friend. Burns was a man of responsibility. The Navy base in Sakata was part of the NSGA (Naval Security Group Activity). The function of this base was to monitor the activities of the Soviet Union during the height of the “Cold War.” But on this day, Commander Burns wasn’t thinking about the Soviet Union. He wasn’t thinking of all the men under his charge. He was only thinking about one little girl who needed leadership. The kind of leadership that cares about little girls, not just big wars.


1. How do you think Melody felt when Commander Burns and Mary left the first time?


2. Consider this statement in the third paragraph: “…there are times when you make a decision that you don’t really like because you can’t find within yourself the strength to make the decision that you would prefer to make if you could be sure that everything would turn out right. Have you ever been in a situation like this? How did you feel?


3. What do you think it was that made Melody change her mind? Time, regret, wishing she had another chance…all of these may have been factors. Which do you think was most significant?


4. How do you feel when you have made a decision that you wish you could change?


5. If Mel had gone the first time, do you think she would have been more likely to regret her decision and wish that she had stayed home?


6. Do you think Commander Burns did the right thing to come back? How might things have turned out differently if he had not? What other options did he have? How do you think he arrived at the decision he made?


7. Do you think Commander Burns was a good leader or a poor leader. Should a military officer with this level of responsibility allow himself to be distracted by the childish concerns of a little girl? What weakness, if any, does this demonstrate?
----------------------------------

When I asked them the question about situations where they wanted to do something but were afraid, most of them mentioned their fear about speaking up in an English class. I then asked them how many of them had never had a native speaker for a teacher. Most of them said that I was the first native speaking English teacher they had ever had. One student actually told me that I was the first foreigner he had ever talked to! This, of course, is a real problem, and China is trying very hard to deal with it. Interaction with native speakers at an early age is a very big part of developing the kind of "near native" proficiency that is going to make young people competetive in the market place. There are more English speaking people in Asia than there are in America. English is the international language of trade, and students who are not comfortably conversational will certainly be left behind.

Labels: Sakata