It was my first teaching job after I’d got my ESOL qualifications, at a private boarding school, a ‘special character’ Christian denomination school. I had previously taught curriculum English at a low decile school but this was the first time I’d worked at a decile 10 elite single sex school and I was experiencing a bit of culture shock; nothing like the culture shock the international students endured, of course, but this school definitely had a different culture and a different clientele of entitled boys. I had lived in New Zealand for most of my life but I felt I could empathise with the international students.
I had a couple of NCEA English classes and I was also the Teacher in Charge of international students, most of whom were Chinese, the sons of industrialists, government officials, diplomats and the like. A few had parents in New Zealand but most had been sent from China to benefit from a Western education in a safe country with a good reputation for education. Some, I discovered, had been sent to the antipodes because they were an inconvenience or had behavioural issues which made them an embarrassment to their family.
The boys in my all Kiwi Year 12 English class were curious about the Asian students, the Chinks as they called them.
“Do you mean the Chinese boys?” I said.
“Yeah, the Chinks,” Anton Rattenbury said.
“Chinks is a racist term,” I said.
“Yeah,” Anton said, with that rise/fall intonation that says Well, of course it is.
“Racism is nothing to be proud of,” I said. “It’s based on ignorance and prejudice.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“They’re your fellow students,” I said. “Don’t disrespect them.”
“They’re not our fellow students,” Anton said. “They’re Chinks and they always hang out together. They don’t mix.”
“It’s not easy to mix with racists,” I said. “Of course they hang out together. You’d hang out with Kiwis, even Aussies, if there was a group of you in China.”
Oliver Coyne said he wouldn’t go to China. “Why would I want to go to China?”
“Some of the Asian boys are here through no choice of their own,” I said.
“Did their parents just dump them here?” Oliver asked.
“Yes, some of them, I said. “Any of you boarders get dumped here?”
“At least we didn’t get dumped in China,” Oliver said.
“And what about Su Zhang,” Anton said. “He just sits in Physics class picking his nose. What sort of a name is Su for a guy anyway?”
Yeah”, said Leo Buggins, “He’s the boy named Sue.”
“Cultural differences,” I said.
“And he just spends all his time on his cell phone,” Anton continued.
“He’s got his electronic dictionary on his phone,” I said. “He’s struggling with the language.”
“What are they like?” Oliver asked. “Do they have personalities?”
“Of course they have personalities,” I said, “they’re individuals just like you, maybe some more than you.”
“That’s racist,” Anton objected. “That’s prejudice.”
“It’s not racist,” I said. “It’s not a stereotype. It’s observation. It’s not prejudice. You’re prejudging people you don’t know.”
“They hang out together and talk Chinese. They talk about us.”
“Do you understand Chinese?” I asked.
“No, of course not.”
“What makes you think they’re talking about you?”
“They look like they are and they’re laughing at us.”
“You’re just being paranoid,” I said. “They’ve probably got better things to talk about. So have we actually. Now let’s get on with that essay on Macbeth. I want to see your outlines.”
*
I also felt a bit sorry for the international students because I didn’t think they were getting a good deal from the school. According to the school’s staffing formulae, there weren’t enough internationals to warrant dedicated ESOL classes for intensive English language programmes, so the boys were mainstreamed, regardless of their level of English proficiency, and allocated some hours of ESOL to support their other subjects. Total immersion in classes with English as the medium of instruction was not working for boys at the lower end of English proficiency. Immersion became submersion and their morale was rapidly sinking.
The school had a falling roll and falling revenue and management opened up admissions to senior girls. Hard times call for desperate measures and historic precedents. A Japanese girl was enrolled in Year 13 and was coping with Maths and Physics but struggling with the English syllabus, especially with Shakespeare, let alone standard modern English. So Yoko, who had Pre Intermediate level English, was allocated a paltry few hours of ESOL per week with me to catch up. International students were a good revenue stream and their tuition fees were a welcome boost to the school’s coffers.
*
The Chinese boys hung out together, of course, though there were also cliques and conflicts within the group. I’d had to break up a couple of fights among the younger boys and there was one occasion when a Chinese and a Thai boy patched up a lovers’ spat with kissing and making up. I was all in favour of peace and harmony but objected to such public displays of affection between boys in the class.
The Chinese boys always seemed to be on the outer, even the boys who played sports for school teams: soccer, badminton, hockey. Rugby was king and might have granted acceptance to any Chinese boy who played ‘the man’s game’, but none did. I took the boys to badminton club and on recreational outings occasionally, like to the go kart track. They raced each other frenetically but inexpertly around the track and the whole spectacle reminded me of the chaotic traffic in the Chinese cities I had visited.
Victor (that was his adopted English name) was a standout hockey player but he was still a loner off the field. In fact he didn’t hang out much with the other Chinese boys and I suspect he was probably a bit of a loner back in Quangzhou. I liked Victor. He was always respectful to me and he was doing his best to improve his English, even though he disliked being at the school. He was a boarder in Hilary House and unhappy living there because he didn’t like the food and he was being bullied by some of the other boarders. Spook McIlwraith, the house master, kept me informed about the international boarders and told me that homesickness and bullying were common problems, and not just for foreign students. Lawrence McIlwraith had acquired the name Spook for his habit of quietly patrolling the dorm at night after lights out, with his keys jingling on the carabiner on his belt.
One boy in particular, Jonty Prendergast, a peer group leader in the dorm, was goading Victor and telling him he should just fuck off back to China. Jonty was being egged on by a few of his hangers on, who had their cell phones out, recording the action. Victor was quietly seething and glaring at Jonty with what the boys called the Chink death stare, then suddenly whacked Jonty across the side of the head with his hockey stick. The other boys were stunned and backed off, though they were not as stunned as Jonty, lying on the floor. Jonty’s minions scurried off to get Spook, and Victor quietly drew his curtains shut and went to bed. Jonty came to in the sick bay with no serious damage.
Victor was suspended and summoned to the Headmaster’s office and grilled about the incident. Spook and I were also present as we both had some responsibility for pastoral care of international students. The students’ cell phones provided video evidence of the assault and also the provocation. Victor was sullenly uncommunicative and I suggested we bring in an interpreter as he was not sufficiently fluent in English to properly explain himself and, while I had a bit of Mandarin, I had no Cantonese at all. I called on a friend from Hong Kong who was working at the university’s East Asian Studies Department to attend at another interview. Following that meeting, a restorative justice meeting with the victim of the assault was arranged and Victor was expelled from the hostel but not from the school. Private accommodation was found with a Chinese homestay family, which, from Victor’s point of view, was a satisfactory outcome.