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Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Sympathy for the Devil
Who would have thought that a serial killer could
evoke sympathy from the peers of his victims?
In one of my English classes, I was teaching the
graduate students vocabulary words for personalities. I asked each student to
use one sample word in a sentence. Most students had no trouble coming up with
something like "To get good grades you must be hard-working," or "Our teachers
are very strict." One student, however, was having a problem making a sentence
using the word "sensitive."
I suggested that she try to think of someone she knew who was sensitive, and base a sentence on that. This helped - she said almost immediately "I think Ma Jiajue is very sensitive." This would not have been the first word that came to my mind to describe a student who hammered four of his classmates to death, and after his capture, expressed regret that he was not able to do in a fifth.
But there is a surprising sympathy among students for someone they see as the kid who cracked under pressure. Every student feels overworked and undervalued. To get to college in China, students have to have been working and studying at the peak of their capacity pretty much since the day they entered school. Then they get here, and find out that they need to work even harder. Adding insult to injury, when they graduate, they probably won't even be able to find a job.
Nobody approves of what Ma Jiajue did, but everyone seems to understand it. And there's a certain feeling that "There but for the grace of god..."
I suggested that she try to think of someone she knew who was sensitive, and base a sentence on that. This helped - she said almost immediately "I think Ma Jiajue is very sensitive." This would not have been the first word that came to my mind to describe a student who hammered four of his classmates to death, and after his capture, expressed regret that he was not able to do in a fifth.
But there is a surprising sympathy among students for someone they see as the kid who cracked under pressure. Every student feels overworked and undervalued. To get to college in China, students have to have been working and studying at the peak of their capacity pretty much since the day they entered school. Then they get here, and find out that they need to work even harder. Adding insult to injury, when they graduate, they probably won't even be able to find a job.
Nobody approves of what Ma Jiajue did, but everyone seems to understand it. And there's a certain feeling that "There but for the grace of god..."
Posted: Mon - March 22, 2004 at 03:53 AM