The teacher I admire, Zhang Baotong

When I was studying English at Shaanxi Normal University, a foreign teacher named David Taylor taught us English literature. Of all the courses, English Literature is the one we value the most and love the most. Maybe it's because most of the English teachers in the class are from middle school, and they are relatively lacking in listening and speaking, so everyone prefers to take classes with foreign teachers. David Taylor is a Canadian, who has taught in Japan, the United States, Turkey, and Canada, and has studied English literature in a profound manner. He liked to ask us questions and asked us to ask him questions, just like all the other foreign teachers. However, we only like to answer questions, but we are not used to asking questions. So, every time we see David Taylor shrug his shoulders in disappointment, we feel embarrassed. So, before each of his classes, we have to take a lot of time to prepare for some questions that he can talk about and answer.

Because of the harmony and cooperation between teaching and learning, our relationship with David Taylor has also become close. After class, we gathered around him to practice conversation with him. But he was very selective about the content of his conversations, and if he was talking about academic aspects such as English literature, he would talk to us like a lecture. But if it was the superficial everyday gossip with him, he would answer and turn away. But we have already grasped this characteristic of him, and we have talked with him about English and American literature, history, and education, and so on, and he has not been able to get a reply.

Our mutual understanding and friendly cooperation have been maintained, but when it came time to review, we found that David Taylor might give us problems in the mid-term exam. Because the scope of his review for us was to read through the original English works of dozens of literary works, including the Bible, Moby Dick, Griffo's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and the poetry collections of Shelley, Byron, and Shakespeare. It was as if we were going to turn us into scholars like him, but we didn't know that most of us were secondary school teachers, and in addition to attending classes, we had a heavy daily teaching task, so how could we have so much time to read the original literature? In order to make David Taylor's men merciful, we threw a grand party for him Chinese New Year's Eve Christmas, and gave him many gifts. David Taylor is over 50 years old and celibate, and it is very grateful to see us hold such a grand gala for him.

At this point, we all thought that he would definitely open up and show mercy during the exam. However, this is not the case, and he gives us five questions such as these: such as briefly describing the historical background of the writing of "Griffo's Travels" and "Robinson Crusoe", trying to discuss the different writing characteristics of the two works and giving examples, and expounding the characteristics of the works of five contemporaneous English poets, such as Shelley and Byron, with examples. It can be said that answering each question is like writing a paper. However, we do not yet have the level and ability to answer these questions in English. Therefore, as soon as we got the question, we were immediately stunned, and we all declared to the invigilator that the question was too difficult. The invigilator saw that we couldn't put pen to paper, so he asked the leader. Of course, the leader didn't want us all to fail the exam, so he deliberately relaxed the invigilation. So, we hurriedly took out the prepared things and answered them as we looked.

When David Taylor discovered that we had cheated while revising the paper, he was furious and indignant when he saw us. We explained to him that if we failed the exam, we would not be able to complete the course, and we asked him to understand. But he said that he would give each of us a good score, but that the exam must not be cheated, and that it was a deception and mockery of him, and repeatedly asked the school to reorganize the exam for us. The school, of course, will not agree. In a fit of rage, David Taylor left school to teach at a university in the South. When we heard the news, we all felt very sad and guilty. This guilt still reverberates in my heart from time to time, making me appreciate the profound influence and strength of being a human teacher in my memories of his eloquence and integrity.