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I guess in light of Andrew teaching his ESL class what "Make
out" means.
I sang "silent night" for my class.
We decided to go over national holidays, and festivals. I broke them into American Holidays, Chinese Holidays, and Christian Holidays. I didn't have a chance to get to the Jewish. It's strange how many of the secular holidays are the same between China and the US. New Years Day, Independence/National day, Labor day, Memorial/Army day, Mother's/Woman's day, Presidents Day/Founding of the Communist party. Etc...
But my favorite holiday is still the Dragon Boat Festival, in the honor of Qi Yuen, a famous Chinese poet who was killed, because of his protest against the injustice within government censorship and plutocracy.
To correlate, I told them about Martin Luther King Jr, that he was killed,
and how he was a great man, and a religious teacher, who preached a message
of justice and love. A great
man, who was killed at the peak of his power, by those jealous of the
message he came to bring. This naturally led into the story about Christmas.
So since they know we have so many songs about Christmas, I chose to
teach them silent night. Mostly because, it was the first thing that
came to mind, I could sing it, well at least most of it.
So I went over the words with them, and how it's in celebration of a birth. I think the sketchy person I am got fixated on the inherent contradiction of the line "Round young virgin mother and child" it's quite an oxymoron. So I explained it that virgin means clean, pure and unadulterated. Such as virgin wool. However I explained the sexual connotations to it. They immediately laughed. So I asked my them how it was possible to be a virgin mother. The teachers, being bright people, immediately picked up on the irony in describing it as "miracle" and "divine birth."
So I enjoy teaching adults, because you don't have to sugar coat the history, or allow it to make perfect sense. It's dark, violent, full of goodness and evil, in addition to the stories of redemption and triumph.
Saturday, October 04, 2003
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