Teaching Five-Year-Olds to Say “Fox” Is Harder Than You’d Think
Let me explain.
I once taught a class of five-year-olds in Beijing at a little academy on the fourth floor of a mall where every wall was glass, everything else was plastic, and everyone was an asshole. They made me wear a rainbow-trimmed polo that looked like the staff uniform at a pedophile convention.
One day, we were learning how to say ‘fox’. I asked the class:
“What’s this?”
“Fucks!” They said.
“No, fox. F-AW-X.”
“Fucks!” They said again
I took it down to an individual level. I asked one after another until all but a little girl named Strawberry had stopped saying ‘fucks’.
Strawberry just kept going, saying it quieter, weaker, sadder, until tears were coming down her face — even after I’d started saying, “it’s okay, it’s okay, you’ll get it next time,” she kept sobbing, “fucks…fucks….fucks…” until one of the other students got up and hit her in the face with his chair.
So I said, “WHAT THE FUCK!”
And undid all the hard-earned progress I’d just made.
I had one of the students run out to tell an administrator. A bulky kid named Dragon grabbed the chair-hitter around the…
