Letters: Tolerance begins at homev

Regarding Matthew Magill's letter (Letters, Oct. 19, page 8) remarking on the pre-emptive distinctions Taiwanese draw between "foreign" and "local" when deciding who in this country gets to teach English and who doesn't, it would seem that recruiting practices here reflect how people are taught to think about foreigners.

From an early age, parents teach children that "foreigners" are a very separate category of people. Little realizing the eventual effects of their sweeping, wrong, even hurtful generalizations, parents, well-intentioned as I'm sure most of them must be, persist in reinforcing behaviors that all but ensure these recruiting practices will continue for a long time.

Let just share some experiences typical of a "foreigner's" day in Taiwan. Buying a loaf of bread at a bakery, before the cashier smiles and says "hello," before she tells me the price, before she rings up my purchase, she asks: "What country are you from?"

I walk past a group of toddlers playing. Upon noticing me they immediately halt all activity and look at each other. One says to the others in a hushed tone: "Waiguoren."

On the train platform a young child bleats "Adoua" just before his mother slaps him, realizing only then this "homespeak" should be stifled in public.

A mother behind me in the supermarket lineup explains to her daughter that I'm that breed known as waiguoren, who do things differently from zhongguoren -- I'm just waiting to pay like everyone else.

A cashier sees my face and doesn't try to speak Mandarin -- she just points to the cash register hoping I can at least read numbers.

A man giving directions responds unrelentingly in broken English to my well-phrased Mandarin, even though he doesn't know what language I speak or where I'm from.

The point is, it is questionable whether the practice of hiring on the basis of "foreign" versus "local," "Chinese," "Asian" and so on, can be effectively addressed at the level of academic institutions. Ideas of "us" and "them" are so deeply ingrained that the popular ideal of guojihua (internationalization) is patently out of reach.

Not until "they" are perceived as normal, not special, not better or worse, not prejudged, not strange and certainly not freakish can "we" (the people of Taiwan) achieve mutual understanding. This means feeling at ease, not pressured to behave unusually toward "foreigners," not needing to use the word "foreigner" unless one is a customs agent, addressing "foreigners" in Mandarin (or Taiwanese) first and then English only as a last resort and assuming people from other societies have the ability to appreciate -- and feel at ease with -- the local culture.

But normalizing behavior toward people from other societies is a change that needs to begin in the home and in the schools at the most elementary levels. Until that happens, there will be no worthwhile guojihua and current recruiting practices will definitely continue in Taiwan's academic institutions.

Martin de Jonge

Fulong, Taipei County