The title from this post comes from a fairly racist sing song school rhyme that non-asian American children sing while bowing and squinting their eyes.

Of course the Chinese School that I am teaching at has a lot of laughing and a lot of fun. It also has a few non-Chinese looking  students. And I believe from talking to them that some of them are actuall not chinese. I say this because I do not look Chinese, but I actually am. But the phrase popped into my head after writing this post so I made it the title.

Interest piqued? Read on.

This summer I am teaching Kung Fu as a sort of volunteer thing for my Kung Fu School, Woo Ching White Crane. We are located on 90 Tyler street. The volunteer work  though actually occurs across the street at 87 Tyler Street, Kwong Kow Chinese School.

When teaching a group of kids Kung Fu I might earn more about real life Kung Fu than my students.

This is not to say that the Kung Fu I teach them can’t be used in real life. The moves can be used to defend oneself, get stronger, maintain health, etc….. if you actually practice them and understand the whole isometric, getting down in a stance, chi gung stuff necessary t develop power. Well I guess you could still use the moves to fight or hurt someone without all that if they don’t incapacitate you first. But the “good” kids, who practice, don’t get into  lot of physical conflicts and probably this trend will continue as they get older. The “bad” kids, you run around during the class jumping off the walls and hitting each other do get into a lot of physical conflicts, in class, in the hall way, on the stairs,and this trend will also probably continue as they get older. Often times, their fighting Kung Fu is actually better than the good kids who just follow along picking up the image of the technique without understanding the fighting principles. The bad kids learn from fighting while the moves are imprinted in their mind.  I know this because during free time, these kids come after me yelling the names of the moves I taughtthe and using them better in the play fighting situation, than during the actual class.
Of course a kid that fights and practices, or practices and understands how to fight will be better, but in a class of little kids, this is unlikely.

So it seems the bad kids are actually picking up more kung fu, even though they are disrupting class.

But here is something that will carry over more to the office, or everyday “fighting” in society. That is, getting what you want. What you want could be money, housing, attention a promotion, a job, whatever it is.

What kids want is play time. (well some of the weird kids actually want to practice Kung Fu and meditate. These weird kids will perhaps become the actual Modern Kung Fu Masters like me.)

But most normal children , even if they want to practice, want to play.

So the good kids (usually girls) stand in line obey my orders etc. And there reward for being such a good class, is that they get more Kung Fu, i.e., more drills, more forms. and a longer class. This means, less play time.

The rowdier kids (usually boys, but sometimes also introverted girls) will simply refuse to line up, refuse to do kung fu, and so they play while everyone else works. At some point they are so rowdy and so disruptive that I would give up and give everyone free time. I realized that I was rewarding bad behavior. It was because of them that the good kids were freed from the slavery of drills.
Meanwhile where the good kids got ten minutes of free time, the bad kids basically had done whatever they wanted or the entire class.

This is why recently I offered ten minutes of free time at the end of class to those that were good. But that the bad kids would have to sit and watch everyone else play. This is still a better deal for the bad kid because he or she would then get 50 minutes of free time and 10 minutes of “punishment” which would consist of doing nothing. But doing nothing is often what these kids want in the first place.

Regardless it worked better than my previous model. But today. I had a class that was so bad, that I could not justify giving free time. Furthermore, the bad kids were better at memorizing the form than the good kids, because a lot of the good kids were new. So Instead of fee time I broke down the form slowly for everyone, giving each student the details of the technique to make sure everything was correct.
At the end of the day, instead of free time, they had still received a special Kung Fu lesson. So in a way, they were still rewarded for heir bad behavior, and  had a ball misbehaving during the drills.

My point is, a lot of education in general, especially Chinese school, emphasizes getting in line, discipline, bowing, memorizing characters, etc.

Now having this discipline should lead you on the right path early in life because being a “bad” kid might land you in jail or something depriving you of all the opportunities a “good” kid has.

But once you get to a certain level, it is the bad behavior that is rewarded. Speaking out and being rowdy, will get yo what you want in America and relatively free societies much more than keeping your eyes to the ground and becoming invisible will.
So am I teaching these kids the wrong things?

Ultimately all the bad kids do need to learn to be good. But I am becoming increasingly more aware of the importance of the good kids need to learn to be… well… bad.