If You Can't Change the World...

As I get older, I become increasingly aware of that painful and humiliating truth that they don’t teach you in school or university, and which your parents certainly don’t warn you about. And it is this: NO MATTER WHAT YOU TRY TO DO, YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO CHANGE THE WORLD.

This truth recently soaked into me like the black ink of a permanent tattoo, when I finally understood the sheer futility of any attempts by myself to teach my students how to improve their English. When I first came to Malaysia, I was full of enthusiasm and positivity and all of those prized classical virtues that are supposed to make teaching and learning a noble activity. I came here with my little bit of knowledge and genuinely tried to help my students to become better communicators in the English language.

I corrected their grammar and pronunciation errors. I spoke to them like adults, not children so that they might gain confidence. I advised them never to read from the script and always to maintain eye contact with the audience when giving presentations. I told them that the only way to really improve their English was to practice, and to read regularly. I even told my students not to call me Sir, like in school, but to address me as Professor or Doctor, like in university.

I also told them how important it is to be punctual for class, to attend all classes and not to keep getting up and leaving the class without permission. Useful skills for the workplace, I would have thought. Yet I have never seen any need for harsh, schoolmasterly discipline, as I feel I am a university teacher with a brain, not a school teacher with a cane. An imparter of knowledge, a man of letters, a scholar, etc etc etc.

But...

No matter what I do or say, it seems that my dear students still make the same mistakes in writing and speaking that I have taught them not to make, they still read slavishly from the script when doing a presentation, and most of them don’t practice speaking English because they will be made fun of by their friends, or they lack self-confidence.

Most of them still say ‘hello Sir’ when they pass me in the corridor, and so many of them seem unable to arrive for class on time, and still mysteriously start to miss classes after the seventh or eighth week of semester, and still have that irritating habit of getting up half way through the class without so much as a by-your-leave.

So I can only conclude that virtually everything I say to my students falls on deaf ears, or at best is mis-interpreted. I am wondering if anything I do in my classes is making a blind bit of difference.

So what can I do? What can I do?

There is a wonderful pop song I heard many years ago from the 1990s group The The. I believe the lyrics have an urgency and a poignancy that cannot be ignored by a man facing what I am facing. One line is particularly pertinent:

If you can’t change the world, change yourself....

Wow! What a concept... You know, that actually might work, if I put my mind to it. Let’s see – stop getting upset and depressed about all the things I can’t change and instead focus my energies on changing all the things about myself that cause me heartaches. Where have I heard that before...?

So, that means I will have to do something about my weight problem. Stop eating chocolate and ice-cream in industrial quantities. Do more exercise. Smile at people more often. Go back to the Toastmasters. Trim my beard. Learn how to become a better teacher.... And, yes, maybe even write my blog more often!

And if that doesn’t work, what then? Well, the next line in the song provides the answer:

And if you can’t change yourself, then, change the world!!