How the Chinese Language is Tarnished by Bad Behaviors of Chinese Students in Foreign Countries
A professor at the prestigious Duke University in the US found herself in hot water last week after social media broke the story of her telling Chinese students in her department to not speak Chinese while in the department building. While the professor merely emailed the students of the department after receiving complaints from other professors, the subsequent outrage to the email focused solely on her wording in the emails, eventually with the professor issuing an apology and the school getting involved in the investigations.
The outrage to her email is justified and even supported by the professor herself in her original email asking students to refrain from speaking Chinese. There is no doubt that students from China feel more comfortable speaking Chinese to one another outside the classroom, and their use of the Chinese language is a way to relieve some stress from difficulties studying in a foreign environment. Their homesickness can be reduced from speaking Chinese, and the fact that they speak Chinese does not necessarily prevent them from being productive in English while in proper academic settings.
Yet, the question remains that, in a university like Duke, where the student body is diverse and many foreign students speak in various foreign languages for the same reasons noted above, the professor deliberately picked out Chinese students and the Chinese language in her original email. After all, her argument that students can benefit from speaking English even outside the classroom is applicable not just for students from China but all students whose first language is not English. It is simply unfathomable that all foreign students aside from the Chinese abandon their native tongues after enrolling at Duke.
On one hand, the answer to why the professor directed her email at the students from China is quite a simple one: there is just so many of them compared to other foreign students. Whether it is this particular department at Duke or other English-language programs around the world, those from China often make up a massive portion of the foreign student body, attracted by the prestige of the school names and admissions driven by a need for more income from foreign students. When there are so many students from China, there are just so much more opportunities to get together and speak Chinese.
But, on the other hand, just having more foreign students are from China than elsewhere is an over-simplistic answer. When professors first complained about the Chinese students, it was not necessarily about the language per se. They noted the loudness with which students talked in the common areas, disturbing those in nearby offices and classrooms. Some even said the students should not in areas shared with the faculty and instead go to areas reserved for students. In a nutshell, the complaints were about the behaviors of the Chinese students, with the language only helping to identify them as Chinese.
The hostility toward how individuals from China behave outside China is not news and has been talked about previously on this blog. Yet, when the issue is talked, people, both in China and abroad, tend to assume that the perpetrators of bad behaviors are the Chinese underclass, poor, ill-educated people with little exposure to the outside world who are making a scene when going to a foreign country for the very first time. The Duke professors' complaints show that self-awareness about bad behavior is also low among some of the country's most highly educated youths, who are supposedly more worldly in outlook from studying and living abroad.
And the fact that there are just so many Chinese students on American school campuses only serve to magnify that sense of bad behavior. As the Chinese get together and speak Chinese, bad behavior becomes no longer limited to one or two "bad apples" but many people. From such a perspective, it is completely understandable that professors feel frustrated by the Chinese presence in particular, and not foreign presence in general. And by focusing solely on the "right" of using foreign languages on school campuses in the angry reaction to the emails asking students not to speak Chinese, the general public gloss over the real need for even the most educated Chinese people to change their behavior, specifically to become more considerate in public.
It is impossible to ignore a simple incident at Duke as a proxy for the increasing public hostility toward Chinese individuals in America. As much as people fought back against the Duke professor's blatant call for banning Chinese language use in her building, the negativity toward students from China there and elsewhere will linger. Until the underlying issue of the bad behaviors of those from China is addressed properly and behavioral education implemented thoroughly, similar incidents are bound to crop up again in the future. In a world when even ethnic Chinese from other countries often refuse to associate with those from China, for students to hide behind their argument on being free to use whatever language they want is quite unproductive.
The outrage to her email is justified and even supported by the professor herself in her original email asking students to refrain from speaking Chinese. There is no doubt that students from China feel more comfortable speaking Chinese to one another outside the classroom, and their use of the Chinese language is a way to relieve some stress from difficulties studying in a foreign environment. Their homesickness can be reduced from speaking Chinese, and the fact that they speak Chinese does not necessarily prevent them from being productive in English while in proper academic settings.
Yet, the question remains that, in a university like Duke, where the student body is diverse and many foreign students speak in various foreign languages for the same reasons noted above, the professor deliberately picked out Chinese students and the Chinese language in her original email. After all, her argument that students can benefit from speaking English even outside the classroom is applicable not just for students from China but all students whose first language is not English. It is simply unfathomable that all foreign students aside from the Chinese abandon their native tongues after enrolling at Duke.
On one hand, the answer to why the professor directed her email at the students from China is quite a simple one: there is just so many of them compared to other foreign students. Whether it is this particular department at Duke or other English-language programs around the world, those from China often make up a massive portion of the foreign student body, attracted by the prestige of the school names and admissions driven by a need for more income from foreign students. When there are so many students from China, there are just so much more opportunities to get together and speak Chinese.
But, on the other hand, just having more foreign students are from China than elsewhere is an over-simplistic answer. When professors first complained about the Chinese students, it was not necessarily about the language per se. They noted the loudness with which students talked in the common areas, disturbing those in nearby offices and classrooms. Some even said the students should not in areas shared with the faculty and instead go to areas reserved for students. In a nutshell, the complaints were about the behaviors of the Chinese students, with the language only helping to identify them as Chinese.
The hostility toward how individuals from China behave outside China is not news and has been talked about previously on this blog. Yet, when the issue is talked, people, both in China and abroad, tend to assume that the perpetrators of bad behaviors are the Chinese underclass, poor, ill-educated people with little exposure to the outside world who are making a scene when going to a foreign country for the very first time. The Duke professors' complaints show that self-awareness about bad behavior is also low among some of the country's most highly educated youths, who are supposedly more worldly in outlook from studying and living abroad.
And the fact that there are just so many Chinese students on American school campuses only serve to magnify that sense of bad behavior. As the Chinese get together and speak Chinese, bad behavior becomes no longer limited to one or two "bad apples" but many people. From such a perspective, it is completely understandable that professors feel frustrated by the Chinese presence in particular, and not foreign presence in general. And by focusing solely on the "right" of using foreign languages on school campuses in the angry reaction to the emails asking students not to speak Chinese, the general public gloss over the real need for even the most educated Chinese people to change their behavior, specifically to become more considerate in public.
It is impossible to ignore a simple incident at Duke as a proxy for the increasing public hostility toward Chinese individuals in America. As much as people fought back against the Duke professor's blatant call for banning Chinese language use in her building, the negativity toward students from China there and elsewhere will linger. Until the underlying issue of the bad behaviors of those from China is addressed properly and behavioral education implemented thoroughly, similar incidents are bound to crop up again in the future. In a world when even ethnic Chinese from other countries often refuse to associate with those from China, for students to hide behind their argument on being free to use whatever language they want is quite unproductive.
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