On October 25, 2009, this Blog was moved to:  
http://learningchina.wordpress.com/

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I read 'any damn fool can be a parent' in an e-mail recently, and it made me think that North America is not a comfortable place to be if you become a geezer. Geezer is the endearing term my seventeen-year-old daughter calls me.

When I was a kid, youngsters were to be seen and not heard. We treated our elders with respect.After the birth of Disneyland, fast food, MTV, the Internet and iPod, something valuable caught a cancer that spread through much of American culture. That something was called 'respect'.

"Hey, old man, you cannot stop us. You can’t take our picture because it’s dark.” Those were the words I heard after dark one night during the summer of 2008 from a pack of kids taunting me as they raced in and out of our steep driveway on their bicycles.

I finally called the police, and the next day walked the neighborhood door to door seeking support to stop the harassment that had gone on for two years—mostly during the summers when school was out.

When I talked to the mother of one of these kids, she asked, "What was your reason for not letting them play on your driveway?"

Do I need a reason?

Since then, this mother doesn't talk to me or acknowledge that I am alive if we pass each other on the street. After all, I ratted out her precious, perfect child and called the police about his pack of unruly friends. In addition, one of the other children that wanted to play in our driveway argued with me after I politely asked them to go somewhere else. Of course, I've heard the, "kids will be kids" crap as a teacher. However, I do not except that excuse for rudeness and unruly behavior.

My wife and I value our privacy. That's why we bought a house at the end of a cul-de-sac. We also don't like the liability of kids using our steep driveway for cheap thrills since we live in a litigation nation where everything you worked hard for can vanish in a court of law.

I am sixty-three. I served in the United States Marines and fought in Vietnam. For more than four decades, I have lived with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I spent close to a decade attending universities to first earn an Associate-of-Science degree and next a BA in journalism. The remainder of those ten odd years was spent at night in a variety of universities earning an MFA in writing. I spent my weekdays working as an English teacher. For a few years, I even taught journalism working some days from six in the morning until midnight.

I also held a number of odd jobs like being a maitre d’ for a Southern California nightclub called the Red Onion or as a supervisor for Pacific Motor Trucking. I worked for forty-five years starting at fifteen washing dishes nights and ended a thirty-year career at sixty as an overworked and underpaid, 'often verbally abused' teacher in California's public schools.

In 2007, a teen with his supposed girlfriend, both strangers, wanted to rent a room for an hour or two at a motel. We had just pulled into that motel's parking lot in Southern California after driving several hundred miles. We heard the motel manager say, "No way! The boy turned to me as I was getting out of the car, and he said, “Hey, old man, can you give us a ride to the next motel. They will not rent us a room here.

Today, it seems as if older people are to be invisible and silent while handing over everything they worked hard for to youngsters that expect to do or get whatever they want. In North America, we have spawned a generation of narcissists.

There are other countries where children are still taught to be respectful and expect to work. China is one of those countries. More than twenty-four hundred years ago, Confucius dedicated his life to the moral training of his culture. He lived during the Warring States period before China was unified. Living with all of that violence and death, he dreamed of a land where people could live happily and harmoniously together. Only in this sense can one understand the tremendous emphasis placed on filial piety, which is regarded as the 'first of all virtues'.

Confucius said, “The reason why the gentleman teaches filial piety is not because it is to be seen in the home and everyday life. He teaches filial piety in order that man may respect all those who are fathers in the world. He teaches brotherliness in the younger brother, in order that man may respect all those who are elder brothers in the world. He teaches the duty of the subject, in order that man may respect all who are rulers in the world.… Those who love their parents dare not show hatred to others. Those who respect their parents dare not show rudeness to others.”… “Filial piety is the basis of virtue, and the origin of culture.…” (My Country and My People. by Lin Yutang. Holcyon House, New York. 1938. Pg. 179)

I am married to a Chinese woman who was born in Shanghia, China. She suffered with the rest of China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She moved to the United States in the 1980s and is now a U.S. citizen. If you marry a Chinese woman, you marry her family. I know first-hand that filial piety is alive and well in China. Contrary to popular Western opinion, the Communists did not get rid of it. When I travel to China, my white hair is a ticket to respect that was earned over a long period.

In China, I don't hear, "Hey, old man."

 Of course, there are always exceptions. Even in China, there will be the occasional rude individual. The thing is, I haven't seen or heard one yet, and I have visited China often since 1999. We have a three bedroom, two bath flat in Shanghai.

On the other hand, I did have a disrespectful American born Asian student once during the thirty years I was a teacher. I also had a small number of hard-working, respectful students from all ethnic groups—even those that were American born with American born parents, but those types of kids seem to be a dying breed.

My best students were usually immigrants that came to the United States after having lived in their birth country for several of their early years. In addition, I had one American born student enter high school as a freshman after having been home taught for eight years by his Caucasian, conservative Christian parents. He was a great person—polite and he worked hard. He never said, "Hey, old man." That young man earned my respect.