Pinch and Ouch

That was the name of a text book aimed at teaching English to Japanese students. We were a group of inexperienced academics and our mission was to teach English in a summer program but we didn't know our sushi from Saigon. We didn't know anything. This was at a small college some twenty years ago. A senior administrator thought the summer language gig was a cash cow and this same fellow didn't particularly care that we were incompetent. Incompetent? No problem. We were only teaching language. 

In general terms incompetence is like water weeds: it's all over the place and it produces like crazy. And of course one gets tangled in it. Soon you have weeds up to your neck. Eventually you're breathing through a straw. 

But it was day one and I wasn't yet mindful of disaster. I was like a cabin boy on the Titanic who enjoyed his new uniform. 

So I made jokes. "Pinch and Ouch," I said, "Shouldn't that be Twist and Shout?" Since no one laughed I said, "How about Shop Til You Drop?" 

But everyone at the table understood our collective incompetence and no one thought there was anything funny about it. One woman reprimanded the man next to her for snapping his chewing gum. We were off to a promising start.

The book was largely worthless because it was designed for picnic ants. No human being above the age of three weeks could possibly find the exercises engaging. Some of us recognized this fact right away and we made private vows to abandon the damned thing and go it alone in the classroom. Others would stick to the book as if they were at bible camp. 

Our students were Japanese women–young women between the ages of 16-19. None of them spoke any English. We were assured of this. We were also told that they would be the most serious students we'd ever seen. 

I don't know whether my cavalier belief that everything would be okay was a result of my graduate work in poetry writing or not, but I decided that the only way to teach was to go into the classroom and talk, draw pictures, ask them questions, talk and talk, ask and ask–keep moving, persist in lingo, and smile like mad. I knew I'd never look at the book. Meantime I saw the bible camp instructors sweating and fretting like virgin lion tamers. They were sad and frightened and they gave off the stink of failure. I stopped going to the planning sessions. There was nothing for it but to drink coffee and jump into the fray.

Here's how it went:

 

The Japanese women were all lively, spirited, and ready for good humor.

They understood far more English than the administrators had let on.

They loved singing Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up" and taking turns doing the signature: "A Hey, Hey, Hey Hey!"

They were happy to play at conversation as long as it was in some way culturally relevant and yes, silly.

I couldn't get them to shut up.

Meanwhile the bible teachers looked ashen. Their copies of "Pinch and Ouch" were damp with tears. 

Here's more of how it went:

The "Pinch and Ouch" teachers didn't like me because they could hear laughter coming from my classroom. They told one another that I obviously lacked intellectual rigor.

That's how it is with language. Rigor is in the speaking and not always in the book.

 

S.K.