[Oe List ...] Saipan Tribune for Monday, Nov. 25

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

A touch of light and flighty on our pedagogy!


Jaime


The Old Man and theTea

 
Early on, the faculty liaison officer that welcomed me to HangGong Hang Tian Da Xue (Shenyang Aerospace University) transliterated my name to"Hemi", which was the sound she heard when I pronounced my name; shethen had me identified as such in the teaching assignment schedule list.  Not long after, my students started callingme "Hemingwei" since most of them read Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea in HighSchool.  They remember the Zhongwentranslation rather than the English they were supposed to learn but sincepassing tests is what school courses are designed for, actually learning thelanguage did not matter, as long as they memorized the terms used by theteacher.  
 
The old man in Hemingway's story is Santiago whose name is St. James in Castilian,  "Jaime" in the Basque country thatstraddles France and Spain, the name my father received from Spanish namegivers, of which I am a junior.  Hemingwei fell smoothly into my personalnomenclature, so I did not hesitate to appropriate the name.  Nor did my students.
 
In Hemingway's story, Santiago the fisherman goes for 84days without catching anything, and his young apprentice Manolin is ordered byhis family to leave the old man to join other fishermen who might be moreproductive.  Still faithful to the agingfisherman, Manolin helps haul his net at the end of the day, and keeps himcompany in his shack while the young lad talks of his favorite baseball playerJoe DiMaggio.   Santiago in turn continuallythreatens to sail far out into the Gulf Stream, promising to catch a big onethe next day.
 
He does take his skiff far out the following day and bymid-morning, gets a bite from a big one. The marlin at the other end of the line puts up a valiant act ofresistance, and ends up pulling the skiff out into the Stream.  Santiago uses all his strength and his fragilebody to counter the tug of war.  In theprocess, Santiago develops a quiet respect over his adversary, and even callsit his brother.  Of the marlin'sintegrity, Santiago concludes that no one is worthy enough to eat the fish.
 
It takes two nights and three days before the marlin circlesthe boat indicating tiredness, at which point, Santiago hauls it in, harpoonsthe tenacious fish, straps it against his skiff and sails home.  A mako shark attracted by the fresh blood ofthe marlin attacks and in the fight, Santiago loses his harpoon.  For a makeshift harpoon, he attaches hisknife to his oar to ward another five sharks attracted to his fish.  By the time he hits shore, however, othersharks reduced the marlin into a carcass and a head.  The fish measured 16 ft. long!
 
The old man immediately hits the sack in his shack whereManolin gladly ministers to his needs. The struggle with the marlin invigorates the old man and he dreams ofhis youth and lions in an African safari. 
 
We have obviously come to be identified with the "oldman" in our class and in our mind. We disambiguate on the title: our cup of tea is not with the Tea Party.  China's tea is our sea - vast, invigorating,and when fermented, a soulful nectar of the divine!  Students, mostly in for a quick ride towardsa diploma, are our marlin surprised when dished out an unexpected journey intotheir lives.  
 
But first, we had not come to China to catch anyone in a qi pao. We leave the enterprise of the chase to the swift-footed young.  Charged by my siblings to be a bit on the effeteside, I stand accused of having been on occasion the one easily caught!  We have, in fact, in today's single ladieselegy, "if you like it, you should have put a ring on it", beenguilty on putting one too many more than what we should have done "on it"!  An SF colleague suggests I learn to bowtowards Mecca so I can legally ring four!
 
Our tea is pedagogy - instructive and educative.  In our current stage of scholarship, ourmethod is imaginal.  Our assumption:  Everyone operates out images.  We create images from words and metaphors,pictures and numbers that we use to describe our sense experiences, express ourfeelings, articulate our thoughts, and formulate our deeds.  Images we create determine behavior.  When images change, behavior changes.  In science, that is called a "paradigmshift." 
 
For the spread of our tea analogy, one might just considerthe varied categories of white, green, yellow, black teas, and names likeoolong, Darjeeling, Nepal, Assam, Nilgiri, Turkish, Ceylon, pu'er, tisanes(herbal, not technically tea), along with the many methods of preparations andways of serving, blends and additives, to realize we are in a whole universewith its own stellar paths and flavors. Whether one calls the ingredient te,cha, tea, chay, does not matter, but if one goes through the delicate movesof a Gongfu cha ceremony, one readilysenses elegant olfactorial presence of one of the beverage wonders of the world.
 
We view our pedagogy in the same vein as we sip our tea, variedyet integrated, intentional though unconstricting, leaning unapologetically onthe authority of authenticity rather than the whims of fads and the winds offashion.  Students attend class ready tobe surprised at the awe and wander of their own existence, and taking fullownership of it.  That, for the moment, inour best and most profound orchestral and facilitative repertoire, is in ourcup!


Jaime Vergara
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe-wedgeblade.net/attachments/20131120/90e72619/attachment-0001.htm>