flogging the rocking horse

I'd put up with his foot-swinging. With his kicking his shoe across the floor, with his sliding off the chair.

I'd turned my back when he'd dropped his pencil case for the ninth time and thrown the flashcards at the door instead of handing them to me.

It's when I point to the colour black - after twenty-nine minutes of drilling and chanting and games and Find-Me-A - that I nearly lose it.

"Bla-nana!" he slobbers. Triumphant grin.

We hadn't even covered fruits in this lesson.

Mike was lucky that day. Had I another five minutes, I'd have spent them washing his blood off my hands. Instead, I calmly left the room and went to my next lesson.

A few months ago, Mike's stunning display of ignorance would have been the final blow. Sent me to the window ledge of a fifteen-story building. Or the bottle. Anything to redeem my apparent utter failure to elicit a simple "It's black."

Experience [read: apathy] has mollified me.

I've since learned that for every nine kids who pick up "It's a GREY elephant!" within minutes and bounce out of class with a book full of Happy Points, there's invariably a tenth who will stare vacantly.... blink slowly.... and, eventually, painfully, produce a goldfish-like 'o'.

Or, a blanana.

Some I can't blame. It's the weekend; the kids are at school because Mama and Baba have [besides fat wallets] dreams of little Johnny becoming CEO or a bank manager or the next Bill Gates. China's job market is fiercely competitive; extra tuition is sometimes just one of many desperate attempts to help their little ray of sunshine climb to the head of the food chain. Meanwhile, Little Johnny would rather be out roller-blading or squashing ants with his [less well-off] mates in the park.

Some kids, of course, are just plain thick.

Sunday, 6.25pm. Five minutes left of my twelfth - and last - class for the weekend. I've been teaching since 8am. I'm tired. The kids are tired. The room is stifling. We're learning about the weather.

It's Harry's turn to be in the Hot Seat. The word on the board behind him is 'sunny'. The rest of the class has to mime the word. He has to guess it. It's a game we've played many times.

Kids are pointing at the sun beating down outside. Kids are drawing circles in the air. Kids are fanning themselves and gesturing at an imaginary sky.

Harry blinks slowly.

"Winter."

Rules are forgotten. Kids are leaping out of their chairs. Frantic pointing, yelling, fanning, gesturing. Hot! It's so hot! Summer! Today! Outside!

Harry opens his mouth again.

"Snowing."

I think it was a hyperventilating Tom Three who eventually screamed it in his ear. I don't know. I just know that by the time the poor kid mumbled 'sunny', my last shred of sanity had left the room and was dropping ice cubes into a tumbler.

I care. I do. But sometimes I think the parents of kids like Mike and Harry would have been better off investing their two thousand kuai in the kid's retirement fund. Or a new car.

Or another school.

[five weeks to go]