Something I learned from ABC School Discussion
Last Thursday, we had a discussion about things in ABC school. We imagined we were all at a town hall debate, worked in pairs, and had a role play. Felix and I were the teachers of ABC school and we did well. Actually, everyone did a good job that afternoon. And I learned something from our discussion.
First, it’s impossible to make everyone agree. During the role play, we came up with several suggestions. But there wasn’t one suggestion that everyone could agree with. This happens everywhere in our life, from voting for president to deciding our research topics. I did a oral presentation about sheep mentality. People have sheep mentality, but there are always some people different. So a good leader’s job is to make most of fellows agree with him. Luckily, I am not a leader, neither in our group 8 nor in my research group. So I seldom have the difficult time to decide for many people. Most of us are just ordinary persons, so we only choose the most advantaged choice for ourselves.
Second, everyone has difficulties. As the material mentioned, “there was no staff room, and very little resources for the teachers to use”, and “the school premises were very bad.” These made both teachers and students suffer a lot. But the local business association also had difficulties. The main problem was lacking of money. Local business association asked teachers and parents to understand their difficulties, but everyone had difficulties. So it was really hard to make an agreement.
Finally, we must be clear what we want. Teachers as I was, I just wanted my money back. I didn’t want to join the local union. Sometimes when we want to do something, for example, C, there are always some people telling that if you do A, then you can get B, if you get B, you may get C. But we must know exactly what we want, and not be manipulated by others.