This holiday season was the worst I have seen in many years for this sort of thing. It is not just one place. It was all over Kunming. I had three kids in McD's try. Perhaps a simple sign at the Cafes in Chinese to please respect the customers privacy for English practice homework. Please ask politely. This gives both the customer and the establishment a way to nicely say no thank you or please do not do this if they wish. I do feel sorry for both the parents and the kids.
I would like to see a reply from the schools who did this.
I stick by my comments earlier that why do these profitable training places not hire teachers to talk with the kids to really teach them how to communicate.
It's ok for me most of the time unless I'm busy, in which case i tell them so.
Mind you, coming up to me nearing the end of Sal's happy hour may not result in the fluid, enunciated or understandable English they are looking for.
@jopasny most of my speech was off topic, i must apologize again about it. I was not talking about those kids so much, and more about the standar conversation with chinese people.
Fair enough. I liked the point about try and speak the local language, then switch if it's clear you can't communicate. It's a nice way to give us a chance.
Maybe is because of my background that i know what it takes to include someone in the local language. Not an easy job.
My place in earth is nowadays in a diglossia situation.
I have worked with kids and with people that is being trained to work with kids (in Europe), and to those people learning how to treat kids are told to speak to them in the local language trying to go behind the skin color.
It is a way of giving what we have to the visitors or exptas or whatever. And somehow you preserve the local costums.
And somehow what does kids do at those places go against all values that try to integrate foreigners. No education(no personal blame on that, but a reality) and no respect to the foreign community. At the same time, not a bid deal either. There can be many other worse stuff to do. But just saying my opinion.
At least is what i believe.
@Inthelivingfor: OK, I'll buy a certain lack of "respect for the foreign community" and that this might be improved, but it's important not to expect such a great deal of 'respect' from people who, for the most part, are only very rarely in a position to understand much about the foreign community and have little reason to interact with it - whereas there seem to be an awful lot of members of 'the foreign community' who don't try very hard to understand and respect Chinese habits/culture etc., when it would seem that this is something that is ethically imperative - i.e., we are not talking about an equal tit-for-tat situation here. It's not necessary to like everything you see, but it's dumb not to make an effort to do so, given that the possibilities we have to do so are great and the possibilities for the average Chinese person to do so are limited and are not terribly important for anybody's personal day-to-day life.
Sorry - I wrote 'dumb not to make an effort do so' above - I meant to write 'dumb not to make a serious effort to understand it'.
People say they are being approached by those kids every single weekend while eating at Sals, and yet complain about not being integrated by the locals. I mean, that place doesn't even have a single Chinese dish on their menu.
Plus those kids also go to places other than WASPs gathering spots. Indians, South East Asians and Blacks also get approached out there, and you don't see them whining and crying about being victims of racial profiling from little kids.
As I've mentioned, I really don't feel terribly annoyed - only slightly so, sometimes - by this behavior - but one wonders why, with all the English Corners in play, that the teachers/parents/etc. don't concentrate their activities there? After all, any non-Chinese who goes to an English Corner can reasonably be expected to be willing to talk to others there in English. On the other hand, of course, most of the English corners seem to be full of college students, which would make it hard for small kids to get anybody's attention - so why not a language corner specifically for elementary school kids + foreigners of whatever age? I'd think foreigners with kids of their own might be well advised to have their kids participate, especially those who are not in school here and/or have just arrived, and it would be downright stupid for the foreigners not to give their kids the best opportunity they will ever have as people of any age to become really fluent in a second language. Hey, maybe even some of the foreign-run cafes etc. could institute such a thing occasionally, requirement being perhaps only that participants have to buy/eat something (ice cream, whatever).
