To be getting really fed up with my students' racism/sexism etc.

[yellowraincoat]

I work in adult education, teaching English as a foreign language. Sometimes I love it, but recently I've started really really hating it.

One of the main problems is that a large number of my students say racist, sexist, homophobic things and I never know how to handle it. Sometimes, when they say something overtly racist, it's easy to know what to say, but it's so insidious that a lot of the time, I'm completely flummoxed and just let it lie because I feel it's not my job to educate them in being reasonable human beings.

An example from today: "I saw an Indian guy on the tube today beat his wife. He wasn't poor-looking, he was well-dressed".

For a start, I can almost guarantee the guy wasn't Indian, but probably Pakistani or Bangladeshi - for another, it's totally irrelevant to the story what nationality he was. But in my class, no matter how often I tell them, they say "Indian" for all countries in South Asia and "Chinese" for all countries in East/SE Asia.

For another thing, the idea that poor people are violent really annoyed me.

Almost every day, I get comments about gay people. "Oh I hate going out in Soho, it's full of gays."

But it doesn't seem to matter how often we have the discussion ("how do you feel when people think people from your country are all the same?" and so on) they will come out with something the next day or week. Then in 2 months I'll have new students and they'll start the same process all over again.

I need a new job.

At my AE college we have an anti discrimination/anti bullying code of conduct. It is published, discussed in class and signed by every student and tutor.

Does it eradicate these actions? No. But it does state clearly what the tolerance levels are. Thus a student or tutor who is offended has a context within which they can raise a complaint and the school as a context with which they can address the matter and take action with the offender.

OP if your college does not have such a policy you should raise that with the college seniors.

I guess it's your job to point out why what they've said is offensive in their new culture, OP.

I just find they mention race a whole lot more often than they need to

This could partly be a language thing, with Spanish speakers, anyway. In Spanish it is normal and extremely widespread to turn adjectives into nouns (& to drop other nouns, to make the sentence shorter) to refer to people; this is not considered prejudicial, just factual, providing specific descriptions of the situation to make it more vivid. Spanish takes a lot of short-cuts in how it refers to people and even prefers to just use the adjective-cum-noun ("Indian" (man)) rather than a generic noun ("man") by preference, it's a linguistic and perhaps cultural habit, not necessarily an expression of racism. As a linguistic habit, it will spill over into other languages (in the same way that English speakers try to restructure other languages to how they think & speak). So in Spanish you would say

El Indio le pego a su mujer
o
El hombre le pego a su mujer

both equally mean The Indian (man) hit his wife or the Man hit his wife.

and it would be hard thinking for the Spanish speaker learning English not to include the adjective (Indian), because in Spanish you modify adjectives to be nouns all the time.

I don't know if Italian works the same way re adjectives turning into nouns.

Ragged.

I don't see anything wrong with the description 'Indian'. How many times do we hear ourselves being described as 'Brits' (much to my anoyance because I am a Briton. If anyone in a foreign country said that he'd seen a Briton on his train, I think that's acceptable.

You're acting as if you'll get a prize for being the most thick-skinned person here, and that's missing the point

Nah, I'm just not agreeing with you, and you don't liek it. may I quaote the best satire I have seen on you lot, the "Professionally Offended" class:

"Naturally, white people do not get offended by statements directed at white people. In fact, they don?t even have a problem making offensive statements about other white people (ask a white person about ?flyover states?). As a rule, white people strongly prefer to get offended on behalf of other people.

It is also valuable to know that white people spend a significant portion of their time preparing for the moment when they will be offended. They read magazines, books, and watch documentaries all in hopes that one day they will encounter a person who will say something offensive. When this happens, they can leap into action with quotes, statistics, and historical examples. Once they have finished lecturing another white person about how it?s wrong to use the term ?black? instead of ?African-American,? they can sit back and relax in the knowledge that they have made a difference.

White people also get excited at the opportunity to be offended at things that are sexist and/or homophobic. Both cases offering ample opportunities for lectures, complaints, graduate classes, lengthy discussions and workshops. All of which do an excellent job of raising awareness among white people who hope to change their status from ?not racist? to ?super not racist.?

Another thing worth noting is that the threshold for being offended is a very important tool for judging and ranking white people. Missing an opportunity to be outraged is like missing a reference to Derrida-it?s social death"

I rest my case.

I don't think I've ever lectured anyone about their being homophobic or racist. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid doing, in fact, as I've pointed out above.

I don't know why you're assuming I'm white/straight.

I think OP's problem, Colken, was that her student probably didn't know if the guy was actually Indian (or Pakistani or Burmese or what). That he seemed to want link violent man's ethnicity to his behaviour, that was what bothered her, methinks.

My only contribution is to point out it's a linguistic habit for some to describe specifically, even when they can't be accurate, it's not purely out of wanting to denigrate the other culture.
I understand why OP feels she has to confront such statements, even the subtle references. OP may need to be more sensitive to how the speaker intended it, how it would perceived in their own language/culture.

Do y'all remember the footballer scandal, some Spanish coach said to his player (something like) "You aren't afraid of that black guy are you?", only in Spanish, where it isn't racist at all (most would say), but translated it sounds pretty bad. That was a linguistic habit difference and blown out of all proportion in the British media.

Whatmeworry, you seem to be hijacking this thread for your own agenda. You seem quite concerned about the 'professionally offended', yet refuse to engage in debate about the spurious points you made in order to support your argument.

But then again, perhaps you simply can't see me.

Meanwhile, have you seen that Suggs has started campaigning for human rights?

It's madness gone politically correct.

I agree, this doesn't seem to be anything to do with the OP's question and, honestly, it comes across as if whatme is totally unaware (willfully unaware?) that a class is a workplace and not just the OP's weekly meeting with her mates.

I think FrightNight's idea of raising the issue of a Code of Conduct is a good one. Increasingly I think you need this stuff in writing as a basic precaution against accusations of bad practice anyway.

Yellow

I used to TEFL and I came across it lots. I think the worst one was this 25 year old student had been up to London - she came back to class asking why 'all' the shop assistants in Oxford Circus were of one particular origin- were they slaves?!!!!! I had no answer - where you do start?

Different countries have their own boundaries for what is considered offensive or not and they may not mean to be offend. But I'm pretty sure many know they are stepping over the mark as I'm sure if their teacher had been of Indian origin they wouldn't have said it. Many people have a preconceived idea about what Brits look like or should look like.

Not great but that's how it is. My big issue with TEFL was that I don't look particularly English and I had a few complaints along the lines of 'I pay all this money to have an English teacher - she's not English'.

You can tell your students lightly about what is broadly considered offensive (v. useful if they're going to be based here) but I doubt your school will thank you for it. They want bums on seats and won't want to piss of their students.

You're totally right giveitago. I'm sure my school does have a policy - I'm also very sure they don't really care about it one way or another.

I too have come across students complaining that teachers aren't "English".

Sigh. I have to leave this job. This has been worrying me all weekend.

Yellow - it's just a job.

The thing I loved about TEFL was the immediate response as a teacher - they either get it or not - and it's down to how you engage with the student. That's brilliant and isn't it great when you teach them a particular class and they are inspired and getting it and using the vocab or grammar or function.

Honestly, I'm from a part asian background and I could have been hugely offended. I was sometimes (if honest) but then I just think 'I'm the teacher, they are the student' - and try to forget about it. The thing I found very hard was with mixed nationality if they were taking a pop at each other!

It's better that someone (like you, Yellow) who cares about this stuff stays in the job and does challenge them (hopefully with humour & grace). The alternative is probably someone who shrugs their blinkered attitudes off and never confronts them and therefore tacitly condones prejudice.