The class monitor

Echo and Arabella were chatting during my office hours, just practicing their English and letting the conversation flow loosely. Somehow the subject of "class monitor" came up, the designated person who acts both as teacher's assistant in the classroom and house mom in the dormitory.

Being a class monitor, by the way, is an intense responsibility. A "class" of students in a Chinese university is like a class in my junior high, where the same body of students goes from math class, to history class and so on. In my high school, it was different: completely different students populated my math class and history class, and certainly that was the case in my college classes. But here in China, university students live together as a "class" (body of students) in the same dormitory; they take all their courses together, semester after semester for eight semesters; and they are looked after by the same monitor. The monitor is kind of a mom or pop in both administrative ways and personal ways--and keeps the class on track.

How are these monitors chosen, I wondered aloud? Most of my monitors have been fabulous--smart, savvy, usually sensitive leaders. The tiniest little monitor can shout out orders and everybody falls in line. They're given authority and they use it, but usually in very responsible ways. Students seem to just accept their authority--and their help. And monitors, in turn, seem to accept the privileges that go with the position and the faint promise of more good favors down the road. So, how are they chosen? Grades, my students think. They're not sure--it's not clear. Teachers choose them. Do they need to be Party members? Well, maybe not at first, but most are invited to be members. After all, the really best students tend to be invited to be Party members. Echo and Arabella thought it worked like this: The monitors are usually invited to take the class that prepares them for the exam that must be taken before applying to be a Party member.  That led to a whole 'nother conversation, but it cycled back to monitors.

How are monitors chosen in my country, Echo and Arabella wondered?  Well, we don't have class monitors in the US, at least not on a university level. But from what I can tell, both countries do have little models of their respective governments embedded in the school system. In most US high schools, there's a student council, president, other officers, and so on, and the council members are elected. Likewise, to some degree, in most US universities. Democracy of sorts, never pure.

And here the monitor system links to the larger Chinese government, and indeed the monitors are being groomed for it. But it's not so much communism I see at play as it is paternalism. (In fact, I see very little communism in the Chinese government.) If anything, it seems more Confucian than communist--with "harmony" in the collective body maintained through a prescribed system of superiors and subordinates. I see paternalism and the family metaphor everywhere. There is an authority figure responsible for monitoring and protecting a large group, that authority figure is chosen in ways that are not entirely transparent, there is extensive monitoring--and also protecting, and the larger group fairly obediently accepts the authority of that figure. Or so it seems to me.

At its best, this paternalism works for the common good and fosters a stable and harmonious family; at its worst, it is autocratic, patriarchal, and self-serving, creating a dysfunctional family. It's a paternalism that seems to maximize order and efficiency but possibly by keeping the larger population in a somewhat childlike state of dependency. I see paternalism everywhere--in the government, in households, in the university, in organizations, and even in the social life of the classroom. Generally, it's the more benign kind of paternalism and it often works, but there is still widespread passivity in the face of authority. Some might say that passivity in the general population might be better understood as a practical acceptance of the trade-offs needed for stability and order, rather than childlike dependency. The net effect, though, is the same: deferring to the authority for decision making and not questioning the decisions.

Echo and Arabella said nothing about paternalism per se--rather they ranged all over the map in their opinions about this and that--but as I listened to them, these thoughts ran through my mind.

And it's a curious thing in a university. One thing about paternalism--and the stability and order it fosters--is this: it may stifle creativity and independent thinking which, some might say, are at the heart of academic research. Questioning is at the heart of learning. In China, every department is governed not only by deans, but also by party secretaries. (I have fabulous deans--smart, progressive, visionary.) However, as far as I can tell neither the deans nor the faculty enjoy a Western standard of "academic freedom," not that the ideal of independent research is unsullied in the West--the reality is far from perfect. And several friends who are Chinese academics have tried to set me straight on what "peer review" means in China. Whatever it is, it might be different from that in the West--although, again, "peer review" in the West often falls short of the ideal of independent review.

The glue in the family system in China seems to be "guanxi"--connections, relationships, special favors. But those relationships exist in a system monitored by authorities whose rulings largely go unquestioned.

The Chinese system of monitoring and protecting is a paternalism with which I'm not entirely comfortable (not that the US is innocent of excessive monitoring in the name of protectionism). But if my smart, savvy class monitors are the future of China, I do have hope.