political correctness.

so yesterday i experienced a pretty salient culture shock. i gave a quiz to my course 12 students, and in one of the questions they had to write a want ad modeling the example want ad they had been provided. most of them were your typical subjects (graphic designer wanted, chef wanted, and so on), a few were rather witty (asian model wanted for photoshoot), and then i came across one that shocked me: sex shop worker wanted. mind you, this is a quiz at a professional english institute and is administered to adults and children, so there is NOTHING on the paper to warrant nor encourage an ad having anything to do with sex, let alone sex shop workers who need to have proficiency in "how the sex toys work". if i were taking a spanish course at a professional spanish institute in the us i would never EVER even think about writing something so outwardly inappropriate during a quiz, and i am a rather outwardly inappropriate person in my personal life. i was so shocked by this that i had to ask one of the TSs (trouble shooters...people who you talk to when you need advice on procedure or how to handle a student or where to order in food from...pretty much anything you can think of) if this was out of line and how i should handle the situation. and you know what he did? he laughed and told me that not only was it not a big deal, it just wasnt a deal.

i was in shock. i couldnt believe that in a seemingly private and reserved culture a sex shop worker want ad on a tame quiz was appropriate. i asked other teachers, and the difference was the female teachers told me it was rather inappropriate (esp because this student was male) and that he was just probably trying to get my attention, and the male teachers didnt even flinch. i never in my life considered myself a prude, or even politically correct, but here im the prude of prudes. i gave my class a little political correctness lesson today to just warn them that in the us you could never get away with talking about topics such as sex and drugs in such an explicit way in an environment such as the colombo. i dont know if they understood me, but i feel better getting that out of the way.

as for the student, i can never look him in the eye again. ever.