.jpg)
This incident happened during one of the recent afternoon lectures, which I attended three weeks ago. During the first half of the lecture, a test was given and for the second half of the lecture, it was used as an open discussion of the test question during which answers were given.
There were many who raised hands and verbally presented their queries towards certain questions and the discussion thus became spontaneous.
Then, one foreign student whom I presumed to have come from India or Sri Lanka, raised his hand and began to voice his views on a question.
As he spoke with a very strong Indian accent, many could not understand what he was trying to convey and soon, there were giggles throughout the lecture hall. The professor requested for the Indian student to repeat what he said again as I presumed she too could not understand the student’s queries completely. He tried repeating again, this time slower but his voice was drowned by the sniggers and giggles of the students in the lecture students. There were even some students who tried mimicking his strong Indian accented English and many burst out laughing upon hearing that.
The Indian student became very frustrated and slumped back to his seat, looking very hurt. The professor saw what had happened and told him to look for her after the lecture has ended and then, she continued the lecture.
I was seated at a considerable distance away from him but I could see the disappointment and how hurt he was through his body language. In my opinion, he probably felt very hurt when the students around him were laughing and making fun of his accent and no one near him tried to help by conveying his views towards the professor.
I was taken aback by how insensitive and disrespectful some of the students could be and the irony was this incident took place in a culturally diverse country where being cultural sensitive had being taught since primary school. Further more, what I am most afraid of is that these students might have caused the Indian student to be reluctant of speaking in public confidently again due to this discouraging experience.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
You have presented this scenario very clearly and concisely, Hannah. Yes, the students giggling were being disrespectful, and the one who actually did the mocking was being discriminatory. These behaviors undercut the educational process.
Could the teacher have handled this situation differently? What might you have done had you been in charge?
Dear Hannah,
This incident is quite sad and like you said it would have affected the morale of that Indian boy to speak confidently in future.
Like Prof Blackstone suggested I think the lecturer could have taken a suitable approach in making the situation less intimidating. He should have spoken up against the mocking attitude of the students.
If I was the lecturer I would have made the students feel ashamed of their act by bring an example to place them in the shoes of the bullied boy. I would also talk to that boy personally and try to bring up his morale.
Cheers..:)
Hi Hannah, I think the scenario you brough up is very relevant and, sad to say, rather commonly observed in Singapore. I remember that only quite recently there were complaints by students about the accent of lecturers in a particular university too. I think the students are very disrespectful and my personal opinion is that the lecturer should really have taken the situation in hand and told the students off. I wonder though, whether the students will be magnanimous enough to admit that they are at fault and feel ashamed at their behavior, or if doing so will simply turn them against foreign students to a greater extent.
HEY, i experienced such problem when i took a module on South Asia studies .
I practically had problem understanding all the lecturers and tutors. That was an exposure module and there were a few different lecturer who were from South Asia. I had to adapt to different accent every lecture. Not only that, i had a very outspoken tutorial mate who never fails to voice his views in class. He was not local and i really had problem understanding his language.
This is quite irritating because i was practically sitting in for a one hour tutorial not understanding anything.
I guess it was quite senseless for them to make a joke out if this. This reflects how ignorant they are.
Brad, i definitely agree with you that the behaviour from the those students were uncalled for and it only showed that the education process on teaching cultural sensitivity had not been very efficient =/
In my opinion, I think the teacher could have spoken out for the foreign student. If I were the teacher, I would tell those students who were making those unkind remarks off. I would explain that it is very rude for anyone to do such a thing and I would ask them to put themselves in the shoes of the foreign student.
I would then look for the foreign student after the lecture and hopefully try to talk to him and encouraged him not to lose confidence in himself.
After hearing from you guyes, I realised this was a very common problem that we all faced - language barriers.
I think we have to learn to accomodate and be more sensitive. Even if we do not understand, at the very least maybe we can seek for clarification (:
Thanks, Hannah, for your response. I appreciate the interaction here!
By the way, I have had problems accessing Yuklum's blog site. Could you check and see if you can access it, and if you do, please tell her.
Thank you very much!
Hi Brad.
I checked and I could access yuklum's blog website(:
Nonetheless, I will highlight the difficulty that you faced in accessing her blog to her(:
my heart goes out to that indian boy. why did lecturer not do anything? i'm sure he heard the giggles considering the fact that there were giggles throughout the lecture hall. was the lecturer local?i am really appalled at how those other students reacted. Aren't we supposed to be mature adults already? what happened to the national education lessons that we were made to go through during our secondary, JC years?
Post a Comment