I learned a lot in Kindergarten

I'm not sure how wide spread this was in the news but John Walton died in a plane crash the other day.

This actually managed to coincide with a class I'm doing tomorrow on an article entitled "WalMart - Strategies for Market Dominance". Not the Koreans but this other guy I give private lessons to. I promise you I didn't plan it that way, it just worked out like that.

My student also wants me to give him a 10 minute run down on the issues in America and Americans and Bush. I got online to try to find some non-biased information on that subject but ran across this website instead:

http://home.capecod.net/~tpanitz/ejoke/j10.html

I can't really talk about this subject without bringing my own opinions into the matter, but I've already told him that.

In our last class we talked about the differences between Chinese and Western employees. How the Chinese always need one strong leader to lead them. We were studying an article released by BAH on the Chinese organizational DNA in corporations. How companies run better in China with one strong leader, but once that leader leaves or dies they all fall apart. The guy I teach agreed with that completely.

He then asked me about the corporate make up in America and I started telling him about teamwork and stuff. When he asked me about what defines co-operation I started talking about listening to others opinions, not rejecting other ideas, working together for a final solution, and all that jazz.

He replied that co-operation could never exist in China. The Chinese don't listen to each others opinions, they reject other peoples ideas right away, and they never work together. And he was born and raised in China. They don't even like themselves.

His final question was how we could manage co-operation in the west. I told him we were raised to work together in groups, share our toys when we were young, say please and thank you, not cut in line, etc, etc.

He couldn't believe it.

I'm not making any of this up.

So. Onto WalMart and Christian fundamentalists tomorrow. Can't wait.