On TOEIC and Embracing the Void

This passage comes from a TOEIC prep book I used in a lesson yesterday.  I found myself fighting back vomit as I maintained a requisite, grinning, foreign visage of utter seriousness:

A really good city must have all of the necessary facilities for its citizens.  There must be government offices, which people use to register automobiles, pay taxes, and so on.  There must also be plenty of financial institutions like banks, loan offices, and insurance companies.  Shopping is vital to peoples's lifestyles, so there must be lots of places like shopping malls, clothing shops, and grocery stores where people can buy things.  Citizens also need to enjoy their lives by, for example, seeing a game at a sports stadium, watching a performance at a theater, seeing a movie with friends, or dining at a nice restaurant.

After teaching that class, I blasted Marilyn Manson on my iPod on the way home.  This passage disgusts me for a wide variety of reasons.  The first is that it uses almost all the words and phrases which are unique to Engrish and which I wish my students would stop using altogether.  I imagine George Orwell must be rolling in his grave - not only because this passage traffics in poor and tired English of primarily Latin origin but because it reads like fascist propaganda.  I would actually skip all the bullshit and simplify it as follows:

Tired statist trope. Tired capitalist trope.  Tired consumerist trope.  Tired propagandist trope.

The irony is that this TOEIC passage of piss-poor, predictable prose represents the putative pinnacle of proficiency.  It has convinced me that unchecked cynicism is the key to excelling on the TOEIC test, and I plan on instructing my students accordingly.  

As it already is, TOEIC is a poor standard of English proficiency.  TOEIC tests hearing - not listening: students basically write what they hear without being evaluated for comprehension (how could they be, on a multiple-choice, standardized test with no feedback?)  A high TOEIC score directly correlates with (1.) the ability to recognize the patterns of Roman letters particular to English and (2.) the ability to recognize and simplify bullshit and sloppiness of thought. These two correlations probably go a long way towards explaining why doctors and other scientifically-minded individuals always seem to score relatively high on the TOEIC exam.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I teach at the local magnet school.  The other day I was having lunch with the principal, and he took the opportunity to aggressively criticize my work.  He told me that 80% of the students studied English independently outside of school, so whatever collective ability level I was gauging via direct feedback from the students must be ignored, and I must stick to the textbook curriculum of teaching the pronunciation of basic nouns devoid of context.  The principal continued to tell me that the English I used in class was too fast and too difficult for the students to understand.  I needed to speak slower and more simply so the students could understand me.

When the principal finished his lunch, the other teachers rushed to his place like Brandt from Big Lebowski; six or seven teachers simultaneously fell over themselves to take away his empty tray and clean it for him.  After his tray was gone, he dismissed them all with a wave of his hand. 

I considered his criticism that my English was "too difficult" and "too fast" - or "too natural" if you will: perhaps I needed to more especially subvert my entire culture to the unique demands of the Japanese entitled bureaucratic classes.  But, try as I may to appease these Japanese wolves, I just don't know any countries where they speak "slow, simple English".  I don't know any other country besides Japan where the natives so struggle with English and still insist they are experts on the topic.  

On the contrary, I think one of the most important lessons for students to learn is that they can never understand everything.  If I had my way to plan a lesson for forty students totally free of consequences and practical, bottom line concerns, I would just read Jabberwocky or have the students use "banana" for every word.  That way, the students would start paying attention to situations and develop the kind of common sense that defies linguistic ability instead of the forever omphaloskepsis of deskbound, square learning and why is "two" spelled with a 'w'?  The goal should be to become comfortable with helplessness.

For now, I guess the cynical part of me can understand the incentives and motivations behind a system that creates morons so it can test the ability of those created morons to unmoronify themselves.  The sublime absurdity of the Japanese school system never ceases to amaze me.