Talkin' 'Bout Writing: How to Discuss a Colleague's Writing While Preserving Your Working Relationship and Career by James Bell Picture this: You're eating lunch at your desk and a head pokes into your doorway. It's a colleague asking you to take a look at a report he's written before he turns it in to the boss. You know he wants constructive criticism to help him improve the document, but you don't know exactly how to give it to him. You don't want to risk offending him if he doesn't like your suggestions, but you can't refuse to look over the report either. Chances are you've been in that situation, whether you're someone colleagues trust for feedback or a manager reviewing your staff's work. The question is, how do you respond in a way that helps the person develop as a writer and preserves your working relationship? Although there isn't one best way to critique someone's writing, there are some general guidelines. Here's how to offer effective feedback without stepping too hard on the writer's toes. Clarify the goal. A request to review writing can come in many forms. Some examples: Would you take a look at this? What should I put in this section? Is this what you wanted? Before you offer feedback, you must determine your purpose. In all cases, you probably want the writing to communicate effectively, adhere to company standards, and uphold a positive image of the company. But which goal do you want to emphasize: editing the text or improving the writer? If you focus on correcting the text, the document will improve but the writer probably won't. He may not understand the corrections, be overwhelmed by the number and variety of errors, and learn, above all else, that you're a good writer and should do all future editing. If, however, your objective is to help the person become a better writer, then you have a much more interesting but difficult job to do. We'll assume the latter purpose. Meet. Meet with the writer at least briefly. Written comments are impersonal, open to misunderstanding, and leave little opportunity for the writer to clarify her meaning. You can request the document before you meet, or, if it's short, read it on the spot. Try to lessen the writer's anxiety. He may fear harsh criticism and worry about looking incompetent, especially if you're his manager. Here are some tips to lower the anxiety. * Put the writer in charge. Ask, What's the main thing you'd like me to look at? That emphasizes a crucial writing skill: self-evaluation. It also conveys that the writer is responsible for the document and shouldn't expect you to clean it up. If the writer replies, "Look for everything," say, "I can't read for everything at once. Do you think I should focus on content, organization, sentence structure, grammar and mechanics, or something else?" That list offers the writer a useful hierarchy of concerns. For instance, there's no point fixing grammar or punctuation errors in a paragraph that will be deleted when the writer reconsiders content. * Agree on what will happen. State the objective for the meeting and how you'll both achieve it. For example, "I'll read to see whether you have enough support for the purchase requests. If I agree that there might not be enough support, we can brainstorm more ideas." At the same time, you may want to say what you won't do. For example, "I know you have the company style manual, so I won't look for formatting problems. You can catch those." * Talk less about what's right and wrong and more about what's appropriate, acceptable, or inappropriate. For example, in this sentence, After the latest changes, we have less assembly-line problems, less should be fewer because problems are countable. However, it will be more useful for the writer if you discuss how the sentence may be acceptable in an email message between two crew bosses but inappropriate for the company's annual report. * Give reader-type responses rather than expert judgments. Instead of saying, "You should move this sentence from the bottom of the paragraph up to the top because it's your main idea," say, "When I was reading this paragraph, I didn't know where it was going until the last sentence, which I think is the main idea." The first comment invokes either acquiescence or argument from the writer. The second comment invites discussion and, ultimately, leaves the decision with the writer. * Focus on just a few things each pass. Resist the temptation to dry-clean the paper and make it come out exactly the way you want. Correcting every technical and stylistic error will overwhelm the writer and put you in the position of editor. Instead, teach your writers to edit their own work. * Try to point out something positive about the writing, making your praise as long and detailed as your most in-depth criticism. The employee will likely repeat that element in his or her next writing project. * Dispel the myth that people either can write or can't write, and if they can write, then they can write anything. Competent writing can be learned and is a process of gradual improvement. Ensure that your writers know that even professional writers must keep sharpening their skills. * Create a climate in which sharing writing is natural. Asking other managers or staff for feedback on your writing speaks louder than words. Structure the meeting for success. The following steps facilitate productive talk about writing. * Step 1: Ask the writer what to focus on and what questions she or he has. * Step 2: Read silently. * Step 3: Briefly answer the writer's questions. Suggest an objective--not what you'll do but what the writer will be able to do by the end of the meeting. Then, state how the two of you might accomplish the objective and ask whether the writer agrees. Although that process may sound cumbersome, it needn't take long. Here's an example: "I agree that there's not enough support for the purchase request if it's going to the vice president. One way we could address that is by brainstorming. Does that sound like a good approach to you?" Rather than collaborating on brainstorming, some writers may prefer to revise based on a model that you create. Others might want you to ask questions to help them generate ideas. You can tailor your approach according to the writer's preference. * Step 4: Now that you've focused on the writer's chief concern, address one area you consider crucial. The typical hierarchy of concerns stipulates that once the content is sound, you can address organization; once that's logical, you can address sentence structure; and once sentences are in shape, you can address grammar, mechanics, and punctuation. * Step 5: Conclude by asking what the writer will do next. That checks her understanding and clarifies the progress of the document. If the writing has to be perfect technically, you can ask to see it a final time. Although you may be a more experienced writer than the person asking you to review, you don't need to rewrite even a small part. Use these steps to create better writers--which will serve your and the writer's purposes better in the long run. James Bell is sole proprietor of Bell Education and Consulting in Brtish Columbia, Canada; jim11b@yahoo.ca.

Questia Media America, Inc. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Article Title: Talkin' 'Bout Writing: How to Discuss a Colleague's Writing While Preserving Your Working Relationship and Career. Contributors: James Bell - author. Magazine Title: T&D. Volume: 56. Issue: 12. Publication Date: December 2002. Page Number: 57+. COPYRIGHT 2002 American Society for Training & Development, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

The Mock Interview

What sort of jobs have I interviewed for? Here's a partial list:

U.S. National Security Agency country/regional analyst

People Airlines (now defunct) flight attendant

retail store assistant manager

Those are jobs that I applied for, got interviewed for, and was not hired for. (Thank god!) During my university studies, I never even heard of a course such as the one I now teach, a communication skills course in which a segment is dedicated to assisting/familiarizing students with resume and application letter writing, and then with preparing for and performing at a job interview. If I'd had such a course, who knows where I would be today....

Where was I today? In class facilitating mock interviews. In each class there were four team. Each team of three or four students read and evaluated the application materials that another team's individual members had prepared, peer reviewed and revised in advance. The evaluating team, much like a hiring committee or HR group, would rank those individuals from the other team based on the quality of the materials in relation to a specific job, internship or graduate program application and then begin the interview process.

The interview process entailed setting up the room in office-like quadrants, with one team per corner behind a row of desks. In their respective stations each team created their first set of interview questions, set for the peer they'd ranked #1. During a point in the question preparation process, each team then lost one of its members, that being the person who was ranked as having the best set of materials. She or he, along with the top ranked person from each of the other teams, was directed into the corridor, there to wait until being called upon by the peer team for an interview of approximately 10-15 minutes.

Back in the classroom, each team crafted its questions, and each individual adopted a particular stance, whether friendly and smiling HR person, impatient and brusque interrogator or something in between. A request was made for Academy Award worthy performances, both from the interviewers and the interviewees. No matter what the demeanor of each interviewer was set to be, all sessions had a principle interviewer and a note-taker, the person whose main task was to reflect on the verbal and nonverbal behavior of the applicant. When the first round of interviews finished, the process was repeated in a second round then in a third, and then in a fourth. In this way, every student had an opportunity to be an interviewer multiple times, and to be interviewed once.

After all the rounds were completed, a debriefing session was held where students were encouraged to share something about their experience.

This is another opportunity for such a debriefing. How do the students view the process and these interviews? That's exactly what this bog post is all about.

Students, please add your thoughts. Innocent bystanders, please see the commentary below.

Peer Teaching

“Teaching depends on what other people (as in the students) think,” says Deborah Ball, dean of the school of education at the University of Michigan, “not what you (as the teacher) think.”

Team peer teaching in the professional communication module I teach is coming to a close for this semester. Over the course of the past six weeks teams of students have taught their classmates 30-minutes lessons on performing effectively at job interviews, creating good resumes and application letters, using wikis and other collaborative workspaces, writing effective business correspondences, and designing effective survey questionnaires. These are all content topics that the "student teachers" had to learn themselves (with a list of websites at their disposal) then teach.

As I've mentioned, the most amazing thing for me about the peer teaching is that for many students, it's the first time they have stood in front of a class. It's also the first time they have created a lesson plan, managed a classroom, delivered a content-based lecture, and directed teaching/learning activities. Amazingly, they have done so while not receiving any instruction on teaching. They've had to learn and teach simply by doing.

What then makes this possible, or plausible? A simple mix, really, of three attributes: Intellect. Courage. Heart. Add to that a good portion of hard work, e voila!

In the lessons I've attended, I've seen a good number of natural-born future teachers, and quite a few peer teachers that are diamonds in the rough.

What makes teaching so special? And what might contribute to a person becoming an effective teacher? See the article "Building a Better Teacher" by Elizabeth Green in the New York Times for an overview.

I'd like to hear your reactions, in a couple paragraphs or less, to the experience you had teaching (and learning as a peer teacher and a peer student) this term.

 

Above the Law

Recently, I learned of the passing of a person who had generated lots of controversy because of his outlandish behavior. That individual was the former monarch of Malaysia and sultan of the country's southernmost state. 

As a former British colony, Malaysia -- even upon independence -- kept its tradition of ascribed hierarchies. For that reason, today there are 9 "royal" families. These family groups and their many members, numbering in the thousands, receive not only financial subsidies from the federal and state governments, but special privileges. In short, the common man pays tax dollars to support a system of collective imperial welfare. At the same time, the system makes specified allowances for behaviors from these royals that would not be deemed acceptable of others.

The late sultan, according to many well regarded sources, exceeded the typical limits of his office. In fact, many allege that he was so abusive of his position that his subjects' well being, and at times very lives, were at stake. The story is that he killed several unarmed people: one of his golf caddies for snickering at him after a missed shot and a trespasser who dared to walk too close to the sultan's helicopter.


Oddly, when the man died, the major newspapers of Malaysia responded as if a national hero had succumbed. In the obituaries it was universally stated that he had been loved by his people.

The absurdity of such eulogies hit home when my mother-in-law, a resident of said southernmost Malaysian state, was pressured to wear a black arm band to demonstrate her sadness about the late sultan's demise. Because of his reputation though, this was something she and, according to news sources, a large number of other citizens were loathe to do. This brought questions to my mind:

Where does liberty lie when a person, because of a traditionally ascribed status, stands not just above the law but above common decency? And what aspect of the much vaunted Asian values are on display when government-owned Malaysian newspapers as well as government officials and other members of the entrenched aristocracy treat the passing of such an individual as an event that should publicly mourned with grand respect?

I welcome your opinions. But be careful. According to a number of sources, the Malaysian authorities are on the look out for bloggers who get too nasty when writing about their wayward former king.

She Bop

In a lecture that I attended today given by Professor Emeritus Sandra McKay, a sociolinguist from San Francisco State University, she discussed some of the implications that English becoming the paramount global language might have for teachers of English in places like Singapore. One focus of this discussion was on the sort of feedback that teachers should be giving developing student writers in light of contemporary " sociolinguistic theory" that posits that all varieties of English have legitimacy.

Generally, according to McKay, one important issue is this: It is easy to see that new lexical items (think new base verb forms, for instance, "to google" and "to sms") appear then quickly gain global acceptance and legitimacy. Similar innovations in grammar may develop, such as the way that people worldwide who use English as a second language (and the number of these far outnumbers that for whom it is the first language) often drop the "s" on simple present verb forms in the third person singular: she bops >>> she bop. However, acceptance of such a change in grammar is very slow to develop. In fact, many teachers would consider this an "error" and would make mention of it in feedback to the student.

The question sequence then is this: What should a writing teacher do when encountering such a "drop" of the "s"? Should he or she (we!) accept this drop, seeing it as legitimate, or not?

Let's add a very real context to this: What should I do if and when I encounter an occurrence like the following in a student's blog writing?

I write like this and she write like that. 

I can give McKay's view, but I'd like to hear yours first.  Please give me your opinion and explain why you feel that way.

Have a Green Day

Back in November when I first ordered the mosh pit tickets for the Green Day concert in Singapore, I didn't fully understand the ramifications. Sure, my daughter Billie's excitement about the gig announcement was clear. And certainly I am an admirer of the raucous band's hard-driving music, considering American Idiot lyrically and musically one of the most important American cultural statements of the first decade of the 21st century. So I quickly got online and did the Sistic credit-card thing. But the mosh pit?

Should we get tickets for the mosh pit? I asked. Yes! was the response. Our fate was sealed.

Within a week the tickets arrived by mail. After opening the envelope, it suddenly came to me: I saw on each ticket the ominously printed section name: Pen A. Oh to feel like a soon-to-be caged (and slaughtered?) animal.

Months passed, the holidays came and went, and I had nearly forgotten about the concert and the mosh pit. Apparently, I had also overlooked Green Day's appeal, even here in Singapore. The day before the concert Billie asked me when I'd be home from work, in the same breath suggesting that we head to the stadium venue by mid afternoon in order to have a chance to get in early and get close to the stage.

What? Mid afternoon? I asked incredulously. Why?

I was remembering how two years earlier we'd gone to WOMAD Singapore at Fort Canning, and for the concert by Britain's Asian Dub Foundation, we'd waited to the last minute to go and still gotten choice spots alongside the stage. This would be different, I'd imagined.

I'd still balked, but I came home from school by 4pm so that we could leave the house by 4:30. When we arrived by taxi at the stadium grounds, I was surprised so few cars were in the lot. There ya go, I thought. No one here yet.

Right on one front, but generally wrong! What was true was that no one who could drive a car was there yet. After a detail of security dudes directed us to the line for Pen A, we discovered, hidden under the eaves of the stadium, at least a 150 fans sitting on cold concrete in a line cordoned off by a thick purple strand of theater rope. My guess at the average age: 18 or so.

Still, things were calm---it wasn't anything to worry about. So there we sat for nearly two hours, amidst the developing line and growing piles of burger wrappers. But that was just the beginning. As more fans arrived, the buzz became more palpable, and then just after 7, the doors were opened and through the turnstiles we quickly went. Unlike the fans in several of the stadium concerts I'd been to in the distant past -- seeing The Who in Cincinnati and the Stones (twice) in Cleveland come to mind -- these kids were amazingly well behaved.  In fact, once through security, I was one of only half a dozen people I saw running for the front!

Easy as pie. I got right up to the chest-high metal barricade separating the mosh pit area from the stage. And that's where we stood as the arena filled. And filled. And filled some more. And the more it filled, the tighter our space became. Finally, just before the opening band got on stage (a rather dull and pompous glam rock group named Prima Donna), I realized that yes indeed we were penned against the barricade. The only way out would have been via "life flight" care of the muscular bouncers who stood just opposite us, smiling in their own spacious comfort zone.

Then came the moment we'd all been waiting for, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool running on stage, and the audience sway became a tidal wave.  It seemed that everyone behind us, from little Malay dudes in colored hair to Indian girls with nose rings, wanted to enhance his or her position so as to see these musical heroes. With hundreds of cellphones and video cameras held high, with sharpened elbows plying for the perfect screen shot, the impassioned fans heaved into a collective mass of humanity. Luckily, I was able to hold my own in the fray (and protect Billie), but smaller characters, including a skinny 15-year-old Chinese kid Billie had befriended back in the initial line, now fought for a breath as they were squeezed more and more. From the rhythmic force of the first bars of the first song, a power surge ensued, and the crowd's moans and bellows followed.  Within our immediate view, at least a dozen kids soon were begging the bouncers to be plucked out of the maddening throng. (After being lifted over the barricade, they were escorted out of the front of the arena to the back, from where they could still watch.)

Up on stage it was all a 21st Century Breakdown. What excites fans about Green Day is the high energy level and great execution. These guys play with a maniacal conviction. No one hits the drums (or loses drumsticks) like Tre Cool. No one pinches the bass strings (or his brow) like Mike Dirnt. And then there is Billie Joe, a bit of a Charlie Chaplin character: one part poetic genius, one part circus clown, and three parts masterful communicator/lead singer/rhythm guitarist of one of the hottest bands on the planet. The band's three more anonymous sidekicks are all heady musicians as well.

In action, Billie Joe and Mike run from one end of the stage to the other, they jump, they slide---all the while kicking out song after song after song. They also interact with the audience in a manner that I've never witnessed, Billie Joe going so far as to invite the entire audience to sing along as he did with "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," or asking volunteers from the crowd to come up to strut their own stuff and to not just sing along but to hold court---king or queen for a moment in the evening. One young Malay dude with green hair was just such a lucky invitee. Though his vocals were mediocre, he used his chance under the hot lights to imitate Billie Joe with quite a bit of finesse, much to the band's obvious satisfaction. After his singalong through "Longview," he and Billie Joe embraced, then Billie Joe slipped a fat envelope into his back pocket: money or back stage pass?

Back in the mosh pit, life had become a bit more civilized. Yes, personal space was lacking. Yes, the breath of the tall Chinese kid beside me was repugnant. Yes, my neighbors' hand-held cameras occasionally slipped too far into my view and I was forced to push them away. But we were all in it for the music, and in that way, we bonded, even if only momentarily, chanting along: ole ole ole ole, or hey oh, I say, hey oh!

The music went on non-stop for two and a half hours, the musicians showing not just a great talent for reproducing the gems from their albums but also very serious athleticism. When Billie Joe finally bid us good night and then completed his introductions of fellow band members, no one was fooled. We knew an encore would follow in the form of the classic songs, "American Idiot" and "Jesus of Suburbia." What none of us might have suspected though was that a medley of three more songs would follow --- "Last Night on Earth," "Wake Me Up When September Ends" and "Time of Your Life"--- all played  commandingly in acoustic solo fashion by the singer-songwriter himself.

By the time the last stroke of Billie Joe's clangy guitar faded into the rafters, the mosh pit had become as meaningful as a giant womb, with each of us finding a sort of collective calm in a cultural experience of accelerated worth. No regrets, I then thought to myself. Not on this day.

Bricks in the Wall, or What?

In much of the educational process throughout our lives, we as students want to be taught. In fact, we expect that our teachers/lecturers/professors "give" us knowledge, we see ourselves as receptacles for a particular content, and we submit ourselves to this process often without questioning its linear fashion, assuming that the educator knows best and that he or she has our best interests in mind.

Here are two quotes that for me throw a different light on the educational process. I would like to know how you view either one of these statements (or both) in the context of your own study.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Booker T. Washington


*****

A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them.



Mahatma Gandhi

If I said that these two statements reflect to a large extent my own philosophy of education and my expectations for not just teacher-student interactions in the courses I "teach" but even the way I structure my classes, how might you the student respond? Would you want to reconsider your decision to join my sessions -- and perhaps even withdraw immediately -- or might your curiosity be stimulated?

I look forward to reading responses to thoughts on these issues.

The Science and Art of Effective Problem Solving

In a recent article in the New York Times entitled "Multicultural Critical Theory. At B School?," author Lane Wallace describes how, in light of the recent worldwide financial crisis, a large number of prominent American university business schools are rethinking their curricular offerings to include a greater focus on what was once seen as the cornerstone of not a business education but a liberal arts one: critical thinking. One aspect of such thinking that Wallace mentions is “problem framing,” whereby students are asked in their studies to "think more broadly, question assumptions, view problems through multiple lenses and learn from history.

Do students at NUS think critically? Do the modules they take require them to "think outside the box" and explore alternatives that might be shaped by a deep understanding of historical precedent or radical perspectives?

Further, do students think through complicated issues while taking into consideration any moral imperatives?

If you are an NUS student, I'd like to know what you think of your university education in the context of how this education has already facilitated your development of critical thinking skills.

To read the Wallace article, go here.

The Power of Two

We've all thought about the nature-nurture issue and about what makes us who we are.

For a powerful statement about both the strength of our genetic make up and serendipity, read this article from Newsweek that recounts how two young girls adopted by different sets of American parents from the same orphanage in China not only turned out to share the same DNA but also the same given name. And much much more!

...

Facebook Follies

In a recent article from Salon.com, "Facebook, the Mean Girls and Me," Taffy Brodesser-Akner takes on Facebook and the way that via the social networking megalith, she has rekindled relationships with various girls who she had been friends with until junior high school, when they all turned nasty and bullied her. The article becomes a place for the writer to air this laundry and wonder about the worth of revisiting past people and times through new profile pics, current photo albums and status updates.

I wasn't bullied in school (except on rare occasion), and was generally popular, but I do have my own doubts about Facebook and its authenticity. On Facebook I have been requested as a "friend" by a good number of my high school classmates from 30 years back. What I have found is that though I always answer these requests by "accepting" and then writing a brief and friendly "you attitude-focused" letter, I have quite often received no response.

When I do receive responses, I have always written a message follow up, praising the writer for whatever accolades they have received or grandchildren they've been rearing, asking relevant questions, and trying to dig a bit deeper into that great divide that has left us well on in the latter stages of life. That's when the wall of silence really appears.

I'd estimate that nearly 75% of those new (old) "friends" never write again, not even when I ask them explicit questions or make comments on their photo albums. Never again.

Which certainly does beg the question: What have I done to create such a situation?

Or is it them and not me?

Ultimately, the question may be, what is the point in all of this?

Granted, I have been able to reconnect in an exciting way with some friends from past eras whom I really had wanted to keep contact with all along but simply had lost in the shuffle. An e-rendezvous with any one these folks is rewarding. But then there is that other mass of humanity who just sit warehoused in my growing friend list.

Now I wonder what to do: Should I conduct a Stalinistic purge, or let the pile of photos and profiles accumulate?

The Social Atom

As I might have mentioned earlier, I rarely lift and post substantial amounts of texts from books I'm reading. This post, with a focus on an excerpt from Mark Buchanan's The Social Atom, is an exception. I have posted what follows as a pretext for discussion in my classes. (now over!) This was done in the context of a review of the communication/life skills that my students had learned about/practiced this term. The discussions that followed were interesting, but unfortunately, none of them made it into direct responses to this post. The students generally had had enough of the assignments I'd given them, including the blogging/commenting.

While I was tempted to delete this post, I've decided to keep it up for next term.

Here are a few of Buchanan's (not very original, really) ideas:

"...rule number one for the social atom: We're highly skilled at recognizing patterns and adapting to a changing world. We interact with the world and learn from it. But we also learn, or try to learn, from others. We live our lives within families and networks of friends, with colleagues and neighbors, and amid a cacophony of voices and opinions blasted out from television, newspaper, and the Web. Far from being isolated, like atoms in a perfect vacuum, we are fully interdependent and embedded in a thick social tapestry of others, like atoms in a dense liquid, where we can barely move without jostling against others. Our social 'embeddedness' influences what we wear and eat, the work we do, our social opinions and thoughts. We do not think entirely on our own---what we believe and why depends strongly on our interactions with others.

"...Next to our ability to adapt, perhaps nothing is so pronounced in human behavior as our capacity for imitation. Infants learn within a few minutes to imitate their parents' facial expressions. The Romans, well aware of our imitating tendencies, hired professional mourners to kick off the wailing at important funerals. We have hardwired instincts for imitation yet often we also imitate consciously, as imitation offers a strategy, often our only strategy, for taking advantage of things that others may have learned. Of course, imitation can lead to weird and costly distortions, because those others don't always know very much. But ultimately, the surprising influence of imitation needn't be mysterious or puzzling --- scientists are finding that it often leads to patterns as regular as clockwork."

Mark Buchanan,  The Social Atom

1Malaysia

I have a deep connection to Malaysia. In 1985, I moved there from the US on a six-month lecturer contract without knowing much about the country, its people, history and cultures. I ended up working for five years for two different American university twinning programs under the auspices of the openly discriminatory tertiary educational institution, Mara Technical Institute, which was created exclusively for members of the Malay ethnic group (with a small number of native students from East Malaysia thrown in for appearances' sake).

Soon after arriving in Malaysia, I learned about the "race riots" of 1969, the "special rights" given to the Malay people, and the resentment that this caused amongst members of other ethnic groups. Realizing that "affirmative action" (as we call such programs in the US) is at times justified, I was able to rationalize my work on behalf of the government and the Malays when the programs I served were providing educational opportunities for a group of students that was mostly from rural and impoverished backgrounds.

What I could not help questioning was the considerable number of middle- and upper-class Malay kids on our campus, guys and gals who were getting a free ride just because they were Malay and not because their parents could not afford to send them to school. In fact, I even had the son of Malaysia's foreign minister at that time in one of my classes, and I watched in wonder as he was chauffeured to school and eventually drove his own BMW to classes.

I worried then about how the college-age children of the underclass of other groups were faring. But I became even more in tune to those folks' plight when I married a young woman of mixed Malaccan Portuguese and Chinese/Indian descent, a girl who had excelled in secondary school but was not offered a single ringgit by the government for her educational studies. The hypocrisy of the New Economic Policy's mandate to assist the poor "irrespective of race" really hit home.

It's 20 years later now, and I have watched Malaysia sink further into the abyss of ethnic divisiveness, much of that caused by communal arrogance, authorized greed, blatant corruption and a host of wayward government policies. It's easy to be depressed by the situation, even though I feel that I am now "part Malaysian." And it's rare when anyone might see light at the end of that long tunnel.

Tonight, however, I saw just such a light when I read the Merdeka message written by Sharyn Lisa Shufian, the 24-year-old great granddaughter of Malaysia's first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman.

Rarely do I give over space on my blog to the writings of others, but this is just such an occasion.

Please read Sharyn's message and see why I feel that those of us who love Malaysia can have some hope:

Both my parents are Malay. My mum's heritage includes Chinese, Thai and Arab, while my dad is Minangkabau. Due to my skin colour, I am often mistaken for a Chinese. I'm happy that I don't have the typical Malay look but I do get annoyed when people call me Ah Moi or ask me straight up "Are you Chinese or Malay?" Like, why does it matter? Before I used to answer "Malay" but now I'm trying to consciously answer Malaysian instead. 


There's this incident from primary school that I remember till today. Someone told me that I will be called last during Judgement Day because I don't have a Muslim name. Of course, I was scared then but now that I'm older, I realise that a name is just a name. It doesn't define you as a good or bad person and there is definitely no such thing as a Muslim name. You can be named Rashid or Ali and still be a Christian.


I've heard of the 1Malaysia concept, but I think we don't need to be told to be united. We've come such a long way that it should already be embedded in our hearts and minds that we are united. Unfortunately, you can still see racial discrimination and polarisation. There is still this ethno-centric view that the Malays are the dominant group and their rights must be protected, and non Malays are forever the outsiders.


For the concept to succeed, I think the government should stop with the race politics. It's tiring, really. We grew up with application forms asking us to tick our race. We should stop painting a negative image of the other races, stop thinking about 'us' and 'them' and focus on 'we', 'our' and 'Malaysians'.


No one should be made uncomfortable in their own home. I know some baby Nyonya friends who can trace their lineage back hundreds of years. I'm a fourth generation Malaysian. If I am Bumiputra, why can't they be, too? Clearly I have issues with the term.


I think the main reason why we still can't achieve total unity is because of this 'Malay rights' concept. I'd rather 'Malay rights' be replaced by human rights. So unless we get rid of this Bumiputra status, or reform our views and policies on rights, we will never achieve unity.


For my Merdeka wish, I'd like for Malaysians to have more voice, to be respected and heard. I wish that the government would uphold the true essence of parliamentary democracy. I wish for the people to no longer fear and discriminate against each other, to see that we are one and the same.


I wish that Malaysia would truly live up to the tourism spin of Malaysia truly Asia. Malaysians to lead - whatever their ethnic background.


Only ONE NATIONALITY -MALAYSIAN. No Malays, No Chinese, No Indians - ONLY MALAYSIANS. Choose whatever religion one is comfortable with.

The Last...Lecture

It must say something about the times we live in when even the "last lecture" of a dying professor can be commercialized to such a high degree.

That's what I thought when I wanted to add a link on this blog to the late Randy Pausch's famed speech at Carnegie Mellon for all my students to see only to discover that the lecture was now a whole website, a book, and other odds and ends. My gut reaction was to can my intentions.

Is everything really for sale? I asked myself. Let's look for a speech by Martin Luther King or Barack Obama.

Then calm took me under its wing again, and I capitulated. There are so many reasons that the Pausch lecture is interesting, we shouldn't be dissuaded by the hype.

So here it is, ladies and gentlemen, Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. Just be careful about bumping into the hawkers in the door way.

Riding the Cultural Rails




How can a person explain the power and significance of cultural identity in a way that's not overly simplistic and trite, especially to a kid like my daughter Billie, who's lived in two countries and traveled the world, or to students like the ones I'm now working with, most of whom have grown up in multicultural societies such as Malaysia and Singapore and who have also traveled extensively?

One way would be to show them the Academy Award-winning documentary film Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. The main focus of the film is children, European Jewish children, who -- until Hitler's pogroms of the late 1930s -- were shown to have had many of the the same preoccupations as kids today, worrying about who was going to come to their birthday party, what Mom and Dad could afford to buy them, and whose heads they would turn with a smile and a wink.

Proliferation of the Nazi creed, centered on German ethnic pride and politico-economic ambitions, changed all that. While Hitler and his circle of sadistic henchmen laid the foundation for war in Europe and proposed the "Final Solution," they also worked hard spreading propaganda among the masses, much of it aimed at creating a sense among their fellow Europeans that the Jews were dirty immigrants, an inferior, money-grubbing race, whose very existence was undermining the progress of the Germans. Within that prescribed belief system, the Germans were touted as the master race, creators of a unique civilization, the original and most highly cultivated of all peoples. (Of course, using the term race in this manner is a misnomer. Social scientists generally avoid the term, but if they must, confine its usage to descriptions of physical attributes. Physically, the so-called Ashkenazi Jews are similar to Europeans. It is really only in culture, and in the perceptions of what culture entails, that they differ.)

In the film, period photographs and archival film footage are woven together with the individual stories of half a dozen Jews who escaped the increasing hostility of the Nazis because they had been selected into a special program initiated by the British government that would allow nearly 10,000 children under the age of 18 to leave their families and travel by train westward from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia for foster homes and youth hostels in Great Britain.

One thing that seemed amazing to Billie was how similar the Jewish kids were to those of the land they were leaving. "What made them different?" she asked.


That's when I stopped the DVD player and did my mini-lecture on the religious beliefs of the Jews and how they differed from the German Lutherans and the Czech and Austrian Catholics basically by virtue of not adhering to the New Testament of the Bible. I mentioned how they looked physically similar to their neighbors, had many of the same values for family, hard work and a good education, and could even speak the same languages, but because they held different religious beliefs and traditions, and because many of them were successful in business, the arts and professions such as law and medicine, they were viewed suspiciously. 

And that was enough.

Soon after nearly 10,000 of the young Jews had arrived at their destination and been set up with surrogate families, war was declared between Germany and Britain, and the kindertransport ended. All communication between the kids and their increasingly forlorn parents was also stopped. Ironically, even in Britain there was enough suspicion that these German Jews might have some allegiance to their homeland that a whole boatload of them, mainly teenage males, was shipped off to Australia. (Toward the end of the war, some of these would return to the UK to train and fight on behalf of their adopted homeland.)

What was it about the Jews that made them so hated? In Hitler's eyes, they were clearly different, a group of people who competed with his own for resources, stealing, as it were, their livelihood in the place that he felt should be the lebensraum, or living space, for the Germanic peoples above all others. This exclusivity, along with the negative stereotyping and hate-mongering, was easy to peddle, especially as Germans of every walk of life were striving for renewed greatness after the calamity of their country's defeat in the first world war (1914-1918). The Jewish kids might have looked and sounded like acceptable Europeans, they might have shared many traits with the peoples their ancestors had been neighbors with for a thousand years, but what they didn't share was a common identity, and without that, they had no safe place in Hitler's vision of destiny. 

Into the Arms of Strangers , exploring through its subtext the link between what is seen as familiar and what is foreign, ended with what we knew would come to pass: the war ended as the Germans were beaten, and the kindertransport kids survived while most of their parents were executed in the Nazi camps (along with 1.5 million children and millions of others). The life stories of the interviewees wrapped up with a mix of triumphant tales and tearful reflections.

Sadly, long after the DVD players have been turned off and the deservingly positive comments on the film shelved away, the twists and turns of race and ethnicity continue, and the bumps in our road to better intercultural relations remain.

Another Buckeye Tale

If I were a first year student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), I might be living in one of the residences, King Edward VII or Prince George's Park. The names impress me, and as an 18-year-old, that might have been enough.

When I was considering my own university studies a long time ago, I chose the only school I was really familiar with: Ohio State University (OSU).  OSU was as familiar to me as a small town Ohioan as NUS is to anyone in Singapore. However, there is one major difference. For me, a love of OSU was based not so much on my fascination with its academic laurels, which is clearly how the NUS brand resonates throughout Southeast Asia, or my desire to work in any particular school or college at OSU. My college choice was not built upon a careful study of acceptable ACT/SAT scores, scholarship options, or campus contours. No, it was made mainly thanks to the image of excellence represented by the tradition of OSU football.

At this stage in my life, having worked in university education in a variety of contexts for 30 years, and having seen the richness of higher ed and the extent to which it can impact young minds, I realize how absurd my original motives might have been. The only way I can support the parameters of my naivete is this:  OSU football is so HUGE in Ohio that for many it is the face that OSU shows off most gloriously.

This is not to denigrate the various colleges and schools within the university, both undergraduate and graduate. It's not a slight to the teaching staff and their commitment to education, or to the researchers and their world-class achievements. It is mainly a reflection of the university landscape that the media, and the university itself, opens most clearly to the world. And despite the many who may think such imagery begins up on High Street on the steps of the Law School, or at the entrance to the Ohio Union, or in the glass of the Wexner Center for the Arts, or somewhere on the Oval facing the William Oxley Thompson Library, the real deal begins on the east bank of the Olentangy River, at the corner of Cannon and Woody Hayes Drive. For there, in its 80-plus years of architectural and sporting majesty, stands Ohio Stadium, the center of our Buckeye State universe.

This stadium, more affectionately know as the Horseshoe, or just The Shoe, does not only present an image of OSU to the people of Ohio, but also to the entire nation (and I'd suggest to the world). Through its history, Ohio's coliseum has been a magnet for millions of people as they come out on autumn days of sterling sunshine or bleak chill to cheer a hundred-thousand strong in support of the university's cherished Buckeye football team. As a kid even when my family would go trailer-camping in the Hocking Hills or at Wolf Run on September and October Saturday afternoons, it was nearly a holy rite to set time aside between lunch from the kerosene stove and the evening's fire-pit dinner to listen to an OSU football game.

Though I only ever played football on the playground and not in an organized setting, as far back as I can remember, the OSU football games were watched in my home by us kids and the elders alike. More importantly, they were blimped over by zeppelins, analyzed by radio and TV show hosts, serenaded by the OSU Marching Band, and immortalized in the impassioned play of the team members themselves: heroes like quarterback Rex Kern (from Lancaster, close to my hometown) and defensive back Jack Tatum from the 1969 National Championship team, the two-time Heismann Trophy winner Archie Griffin (who attended OSU when I did), linebacking studs such as Chris Spielman and James Laurinaitis, the 2003 NCAA championship game underdogs and winning team members, and the current squad's quarterbacking hope, Terrelle Pryor.

Now the games and the stars even get skyped onto computer screens set up on living tables like my own here in Goodluck Garden, Singapore, pushing Buckeye pride into the globe's farthest corners.

Knowing such background and my allegiance to OSU football, few now might question the method of my college choice.  But there was one other factor that tipped the scales furiously over in favor of my attending OSU: My acceptance into the Stadium Scholarship Dormitory!

Yes indeed. For two wonderful seasons (my first two years of college), I resided in the dorm that from the 1930s had housed an elite group of young scholars (and fervent pre-game party-goers!) like myself. I still remember the buzz of game-day Saturdays, and how by early morning, fans would be parading the vast parking lot beneath our residential unit's floor to ceiling windows, amazed to see students like me loitering inside.

Some of those folks even became our "clients," waving around fresh 20-dollar bills to entice us to open one of the dorm's ground-level entrances.  (Yes indeed! From those entry ways, stairwells led up to three levels of hallways that would open into our living units; in the same stairwells, there were other doors that directly accessed the stadium's massive interior walkways.)

Of course, living in the stadium had numerous other bennies: 1) if we didn't have tickets, we could enter games for free anyway, as long as we were willing to scrounge for a seat ; 2) if we did have tickets, we could get in early, beating the crowds; 3) if we wanted to impress back-home friends, we could arrange pre-game parties in our dorm rooms, then lead the entire group into the stadium at game time; 4) we could access the stadium at any time, morning, noon or night, taking pleasure in the city's biggest sports arena as our private backyard playground, from the field itself to more romantic environs high up in C Deck. And that I did, on numerous occasions.

In fact, I remember that once during my last year as an undergrad, long after I had moved out of the dorm, I took a prospective girlfriend to the stadium late at night, entered by the main dorm door, then using dorm contacts, got quick approval and slipped into the stadium's bowels. From there I led the young lady out into the seats and up to the top of one of the coliseum's four main flagpole-bearing columns. There she and I sat until just before dawn, chatting, drinking a bottle of wine and surveying the shifting horizon. I even remember one of the topics from our heart-to-heart that night, travel, and I can recall saying that I wanted to explore the world, which might have seemed like just another naive thought at the time. Yet how grandly accessible the world looked from that vantage point!

Though I never played football "officially" at OSU, though I never felt the electricity of emerging from the tunnel on game day with my teammates into the wild screams of 105,000 well-wishers, I did live my own OSU dream, I took that golden educational opportunity to learn and expand my horizons, growing immeasurably in the process, developing other sets of goals to pursue.

Where I am today is very much an offshoot of that original seed idea, or a branch from the tree, if you will; and I am still a Buckeye, through and through.

And tomorrow, at 8am Sunday the 13th in Singapore, 8pm Saturday the 12th Columbus time, I'll skype one of my siblings in central Ohio,  and in family-bonding mode, we'll watch the #7 nationally ranked Buckeyes as they tackle the #3 Trojans of the University of Southern California in another classic match up.

Like a schoolboy, I can't wait!

[Addendum: The OSU team lost Saturday night's passionately fought battle, 18-15. But win or lose, the Buckeye nation supports OSU, its student athletes and their lofty dreams.]

*I'd like to thank my cousin, Bev Elder Sturm, another OSU grad, former OSU Marching Band member and Buckeye fanatic, for the use of her photos. This one's for you, Bev!

The Road Home

I'm a romantic at heart. That's why when tonight I watched the 1999 Chinese film The Road Home, starring Zhang Ziyi as country girl Zhao Di, a teenager who experiences love at first sight with the first-ever primary-school teacher to work in her village, I get so emotionally involved in the story that I believe yet again that something such as unflinching love is possible. My daughter Billie, a 14-year-old who seems wise beyond her years in this situation, cynically questions that, then tells me that the innocence of 18-year-old Zhao Di would be impossible in today's world.

"18-year-olds now plan to lose their virginity," she says, surprising me. "But this girl looks so cute following him all around. Nowadays she'd be considered a stalker."

In the movie, Zhao Di isn't thinking sex, but stalking she does. Since first seeing Luo Yusheng, the handsome young man, during the building of the one-room schoolhouse, she shadows him everywhere, such as when he is walking his young students through the fields; she's happy to have a chance to cook a meal for him (done in rotation as a village obligation); and she's captivated hearing his voice reading aloud to his pupils. Her love has a high price though when Teacher Luo is suddenly ordered back to the city. She suffers torment not knowing if he will ever return, and her mother remarks that he's left and taken the girl's heart with him.

But all turns out well. We see the love story both past and present, young Zhao Di's early saga framed by a narrative 40 years in the future. It's in this bigger picture that we meet the story-teller, the adult son of Zhao Di and Luo Yusheng, come home to his father's funeral. It's in this context that the mature love is posited, with Zhao Di insisting that her husband's cortege be done in the traditional way, even in the winter, with his coffin carried for miles and miles from the county morgue back to the village home where their love had blossomed and endured.

This is a film of few words yet deep pure emotion and stunning rural vistas --- a must view for anyone who longs for the ways things might have been.

Together (There are heroes!)

In my previous post, the one below that addresses the national health care reform debate now taking place in the United States, I made a fairly sweeping attack against what I see as the degradation of American values. What are values? Those ideals that we hold dear. Values that Americans, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, Chinese and others the world over consider important include friendship, work, nation, education, technology and material gain, just to name a few. This is not to say that all citizens of our respective countries, or that you and I, or that my brothers and I have exactly the same views of these areas, but we do generally see the worth of each.

Similarly, "family" is a core value in all societies. However, the way family is defined and value that family is given by different individuals, and within different societies, can and does differ. Here are some "funneling questions" I have on the matter of family:

What exactly is meant by the term family? How does one's family differ from, say, one's tribe? Where are the boundaries of our family? In short, are we all brothers and sisters or not?

There are related issues and questions:

Most of the so-called "great" religions of the world espouse the view that we should extend a helping hand to others, not just to family members. But does that happen? To whom and in what way do we typically extend help? Am I or am I not my mother's, sister's, brother's, son's and/or neighbor's "keeper"?

And just how powerful can the love of family -- be that nuclear or planetary -- be?

In that previous post, I made the claim that for many Americans (not all, of course), individual material gain is more important than social equality/justice. I also wrote that this translates into the widespread belief that it's a dog-eat-dog world where only the fittest survive, and that the government should stay out of the fray.

That is one of my worries about American society (and any society, for that matter). That while we are often far too familial, tribal, national (in short, in-group) focused, the even bigger problem is that we are too individualistic or self-serving, and that we don't envision ourselves sharing this planet and facing challenges together enough.

An e-mail from a friend made me think about this on a different level. She sent a link to a video that, upon viewing, made me reflect on my own ideas of family, support and togetherness (or teamwork) again. It also forced me to reevaluate my sweeping generalization about Americans.

Check out this inspiring Youtube video about Dick and Rick Hoyt, an American father and son team with an exceptional bond, and see what I mean.

If you'd like to see another 10-minute documentary (with audio) about Rick and Dick Hoyt, click here.


There are real heroes in this world after all.

Too Much Fat in the Health Care Reform Debate in America

I wrote the message that follows below and posted part of it in response to a blog article in the online journal, The Huffington Post. The article, entitled "Obama's New Hampshire Town Hall Brings Out Birthers, Deathers and More," relates the sad and truly violent situation that has arisen in America as a result of the health care reform debate.

One reader of the article mentions in a "blog comment" how Americans have been "left behind" because of their poor education, and as a result, they don't understand complex issues such as those involved in the health care reform discussion. An example of such ignorance is the number of public statements that have been made by anti-reform advocates who warn that the government should stay clear of their Medicare, itself a government-run medical assistance program for the elderly.

This same ignorance has led to an uninformed, irrational and potentially dangerous reaction to the Obama Administration's proposal for national health care reform. (See the article and the video that accompanies it here to get a clear idea of how dangerous the right wing in America is making this issue.)

Here's my rant on the issue:

Many Americans have been left behind. We have nurtured a society where sports worship and "American idols," TV dramas and superstardom are elevated to the highest level. Goals and values are skewed toward competition, acquisition and materialism in the extreme and away from fairness and empathy. In many neighborhoods kids learn the importance of money, and they are inculcated with the idea that the real heroes are of three types: gun-toting soldiers, flashy TV/movie stars and rich sports idols. Period. The time when being an astronaut or a doctor, an explorer or a teacher or a humanitarian was viewed as a heroic profession has seemingly passed. It's now all about the image and the cash. The more the merrier. Big is beautiful: big house, big car, big boat, big screen, big slice of pizza, big salary, big abs, big boobs, big hair...you get the picture.

High schools have bigger budgets for football and basketball than for their libraries. University coaches make more money than the professors. (In the rest of the world, this would be an absurdity.)

The result: the mentality, both corporate and individual, that what's most important in life is getting all you can get, getting the biggest slice possible from society, hoarding what is yours, with little sense of payback or sharing. It's based on a recipe, maligned though it may be, from the survival of the fittest manual. (You see the results of that in the way that many on Wall Street, during the recent economic crisis, were so clearly in it just for the money, and achieving that end made any means justifiable.) For many Americans, the very idea of government is bad because it represents an intrusion into that process, a chink on the armor of that ethos.

Meanwhile, in countries like Singapore, like China, like Japan, hard work and study are highly valued (maybe to an exaggerated extent!), and egalitarianism is not scorned. Sure, ownership/ materialism is alive and well even in Asia, but there also seems to be a focus on developing in kids and supporting in other citizens a set of social values that exists for the sake of conscientious economic development, a better/safer neighborhood, more lucrative opportunities for the youth and for future generations, not just more money and power and glory for the winners.

A former student of mine, a university graduate now doing an education diploma at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, recently told me that one of her main first-year teacher training courses is "service learning," in which she needs to develop a project that serves some particular community. That sort of focus is precisely what I'm talking about.

I grew up in Ohio and love my homeland for many reasons--but having lived and taught in several different countries in Asia for many years (and in the US before that), I see the difference between "us and them," and the fact is, it's glaring. Individualism in America has finally gone over the top. So much of it is so clearly about ME ME ME getting as MUCH as I possibly can. (Even Michelangelo's David, after doing a tour of the US, returned to Europe looking overfed. See photo above!)

For many in the US, education is seen only as a means to that end. To hell with social awareness, to hell with ensuring that society functions to everyone's benefit (which is why the regulatory bodies created by government are so loathesome to so many Americans). To hell with helping out the other(littler) guy (unless I can show off my generosity to my church group or to my friends). To hell with the big picture and the antiquated ideal of making America a place where even the "tired and the poor" can have a good, clean and safe home, top-notch educational opportunities, and affordable health care!

Where this will lead I don't know. But things aren't looking good.

World Without Walls

Many of us tend to inhabit a very narrow slice of real estate and we do not think globally. For those of us living in Singapore, that's very easy to do. We tend to get caught up in our own lives here on the "wired island," we focus on our own work, study, family and friends and we forget about the other six billion plus inhabitants of this planet.

Why is thinking globally important? Well, for starters, just consider the old cliche: no man is an island. We all depend on each other, and in many ways, are affected by the actions of others. The recent H1N1 outbreak and our vulnerability should demonstrate this very clearly. Add to that the fact that Singapore is dependent on Malaysia for its fresh water and food stuffs and on China and a number of ASEAN countries for the bulk of its other raw materials, and then on places like the US and Japan for its export market, and you get the picture. And then of course there's our obvious interconnectedness via the World Wide Web. No island is even really an island in today's world.

There is another reason why thinking globally is important that I'd like you to consider: Doing so for the sake of improving the lives of others, and in that way, enhancing your own humanity. Those readers who are NUS students may wonder how they can do this, but within our "global university" (or so the advertising goes) there really are a number of ways. For one, there are numerous university programs that allow you to visit countries in the region to do volunteer activities. Some of you may have already been on one of these. As an example, at least one of my former students went to Sumatra after the Boxer Day Tsunami and contributed time and energy in that major relief effort. Others have gone on trips to Cambodia, China or Myanmar and participated in community development projects. In a very real sense, your NUS education puts you in a good position to gain the experience and develop the understanding and skills necessary for helping better the lives of the less fortunate among our global neighbors.

For volunteer programs outside Singapore, cleck out these sites: International Student Volunteers, the Habitat for Humanity, and Doctors Without Borders. If you're reading this and you happen to be an NUS student, and you're looking for a way to study abroad, check out this link.

One platform for developing the skills and understanding needed for being a more complete world citizen is the course that I am fortunate to teach: ES2007S, Professional Communication -- Principles and Practice. For those of you soon to be or now enrolled in the course, I welcome you. It really is a world without walls that we're talking about when we start our journey in refining communication skills. But that is a journey whose very first step begins with you acknowledging that there is a heck of a lot more to life than what we see out our own front door.

Smashing Stereotypes

When we hear the phrase mail-order bride, we usually have a negative image in our mind. The article linked here is written by a Ukrainian-American woman and her story smashes the stereotypes and shows what happiness and fulfillment can be achieved through courage and initiative. Dream the dream!