by Bob Flaws

Teaching is its own profession, and the main job of a teacher is to communicate a certain body of information to students as clearly and as efficaciously as possible. Regardless of a teacher's other qualifications, if they cannot communicate effectively with their target audience, they are not a good teacher. This issue has plagued our profession for years. For all too long, our schools have assumed that the best teachers are those who know the medicine the best. Hence, they have tended to rely heavily on native Chinese speakers -- doctors of Chinese medicine trained, for the most part, in the People's Republic of China. Frequently, these teachers have great credentials in terms of their knowledge of and ability to practice acupuncture/Chinese medicine. These teachers learned the medicine in their own language, are able to source the primary literature in their own language, and have lots and lots of clinical experience. However, in my experience, it is a recurrent complaint among Western students that these Asian teachers are not effective communicators. This is because they lack both the language and teaching skills which are key to communicating with their target audience.

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Understanding and practicing Chinese medicine rely on a very exacting technical terminology of approximately 10,000 individual terms. While native Chinese speaking teachers may know these terms well enough in Chinese, few have the linguistic skills to translate these terms into technically accurate English. Instead, coming from a society which values consensus over almost everything else, such teachers tend use the technically imprecise terminology created 30 years ago by accident and ignorance which has become the lingua franca in our schools. This is despite the fact that an etymologically correct, linguistically sound technical English terminology does exist in the form of Nigel Wiseman and Feng Ye Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. Because the terms in this dictionary assume a Masters or even Doctoral level of English, most native Chinese speakers find this terminology difficult to understand. Hence it's easier to use the ersatz terminology they find already in place, regardless that the use of this imprecise and incomplete terminology is one of the main causes for failure of our students to 1) really grasp the logic of this medicine and 2) put that logic into practice in the clinic. In my experience teaching Chinese medicine over the last 20 years, it takes a relatively high level of English to effectively communicate Chinese medicine in the West.

In addition to lack of English language proficiency, including an understanding of some of the basic principles of the profession of translation, most native Chinese speaking teachers teach the way they were taught in the PRC. While that style of teaching may work in that setting, it does not work in the West. Western students do not want to be read to by a teacher who is sitting down at a desk. Our students expect a certain level of public speaking skills, the skills of a truly professional teacher. They also expect a certain give and take via discussion that is commonly lacking in classes taught by native Chinese speakers. In addition, our students are adult learners, and I have never met a native Chinese speaking teacher of Chinese medicine in the West who had any training in adult educational theory or practice.

There is a saying that, if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Thus, if our schools continue to rely on native Chinese speakers to form the core of their faculties, we as a profession will continue to have the same educational problems that have been endemic for decades. Instead, the schools need to pro-actively develop a cadre of professional native English speaking teachers who do truly understand this medicine and understand the profession of teaching adults. In terms of truly understanding this medicine, I believe that means that our faculty must personally read at least modern Chinese. Otherwise, it is hard for me to see how such a faculty could truly understand Chinese medicine the way native Chinese speakers understand it. In terms of understanding the profession of teaching itself, our schools need to demand from and also help train their faculty in public speaking skills and adult education. If our classroom teachers had adequate language and educational skills, then I believe it would be fine for clinical supervisors to be non-native English speakers.

In my experience, it is not that hard to teach Chinese medicine to Westerners really, really well. However, schools cannot hire just anyone and think that those persons have the multiple skill sets to be effective communicators to our students. It doesn't matter how erudite and experienced a teacher may be if he or she cannot communicate that knowledge fully and accurately to their students. In other words, the teacher does not need to be the world's greatest expert in Chinese medicine. Rather, they need to be a great communicator of Chinese medicine to Western students. When a person is in front of a class, their profession at that moment is not a practitioner of Chinese medicine, it is a teacher of Chinese medicine, and knowledge of one skill-set does not immediately confer expertise in the other. I believe our students are paying way too much for their educations not to have truly professional teachers.

Copyright Blue Poppy Press, 2009. All rights reserved.