1 April 2005 (21 Adar II 5765)
My typology of teachers à la Jewish sages of the Tannaic period. He who teaches an easy subject in an easy-to-understand manner and a difficult subject in a difficult-to-understand manner - a mediocre teacher. He who teaches an easy subject in a difficult-to-understand manner and a difficult subject in a difficult-to-understand manner - a bad teacher. He who teaches an easy subject in an easy-to-understand manner and a difficult subject in an easy-to-understand manner - a good teacher. He who teaches an easy subject in a difficult-to-understand manner and a difficult subject in an easy-to-understand manner - a crazy teacher.
Although I am still far from being a good teacher, I somehow had an illusion that I had been making a slow but steady progress toward this ideal, but recently I find to my regret that actually I am also regressing. During the eleven years of my teaching before coming to Israel last October I had been teaching more or less the same subjects in Japan, so I simply managed to "tame" them and had the above illusion. A truly good teacher would be able to teach a difficult subject that he has never taught in an easy-to-understand manner. Apparently this is not the case with me, at least at the present stage. Although all the subjects I teach in this academic year are more or less what I really specialize in, I have never taught them before as university courses. I have to confess that from time to time I find it difficult to make certain difficult materials palatable to some of my students who have little or no background knowledge about them. Then I am reminded of my first years as an inexperienced teacher.
The above typology is probably applicable to lecturers (e.g., in conferences), too. There is, however, one notable difference between teachers and lecturers. The latter can generally decide or choose whatever and whenever they want to talk about. On the other hand, the former are expected to teach on a regular basis what is required of them, hence not always familiar to them academically. It seems therefore an intellectual and pedagogic feat to keep a course one teaches for the first time both palatable and interesting all year round with no fiascoes.
Generally speaking, Israeli students seem to be less tolerant of these fiascoes by their teachers than their Japanese counterparts. In such cases some of them dare to read things not related to the lesson right before the eyes of their teacher; they simply do not seem to know that from the podium one can see things differently and more clearly. Of course, I have no right to blame them since I behaved as they do when I was a student. Being a teacher myself now, I can be more considerate of people who give lessons or talks, even if they are difficult to understand or boring. To engage in some other intellectual (or nonintellectual) activity while pretending to listen to them is the cruelest, hence last thing I would dare to do now.
8 April 2005 (28 Adar II 5765)
An old friend of mine who is visiting Israel from the middle of March until the end of April has been staying at my place since the end of last month. The last time I shared the same apartment for more than a week was about 15 years ago, when I was still a doctoral student here in Jerusalem and lived in a student dormitory. I cannot imagine how I managed to live as long as two years with total strangers (I had four roommates) not only in the same apartment but only in the same room, though we eventually made friends with each other, I was invited to the wedding of two of them, and I am still in touch with one of them. My house guest is not a total stranger, and we are supposed to know each other quite well, but it is not always easy nevertheless as I feared.
What can be causes of conflict in sharing a room, apartment or house with someone else, whether a spouse, a friend or just a stranger, are not big issues such as differences of world views or political opinions but small things like different daily habits that can be either cultural or individual. We may be aware that the former are possible causes of interpersonal conflict, but we seldom think of the latter as such until we find ourselves under such circumstances. Only then do we start to realize that what we thought was self-evident is not so self-evident to everyone. Some of these habits, such as wasting electricity with no purpose, may be negative in absolute terms, hence be blameworthy, but in many cases we are talking about simple differences of habits that have been formed gradually in our childhood, mostly under the influence of our parents, other family members and often the society where we happen to live.
Many of our daily habits are so deeply internalized, hence automatic that we will probably be unable and/or unready to moderate them partly or wholly for the convenience of someone else except under very special circumstances, i.e., shared life with a spouse (or a lover), but defintely not with someone else. Ironically, thanks to some occasional conflicts with my house guest, I am discovering what I have taken for granted in my automatic or semiautomatic behaviors and am wondering which of them I am ready to change if I am to share a life with someone I can love.
15 April 2005 (6 Nisan 5765)
Having switched back and forth between Japan and Israel, which are probably cultural antipodes in many respects, I think I can probably adjust myself to cultural differences in a new society more quickly and smoothly now than before. There is, however, one thing to which I will never be able to get accustomed if it is too different from what I have absorbed in Japanese society: sense of temporal order.
Strict punctuality is not a high social value in Israel as a whole as in Japan though there are individual and communal differences. I am aware that there are countries that are far worse in terms of punctuality in the world, especially among developed countries, but such awareness cannot be a consolation; it does not always help me cope with people here who do not value punctuality so greatly or at all.
Another manifestation of sense of temporal order is the responsibility to keep appointments. I think that breaking or canceling appointments, especially at the last moment, is nothing but robbing others of their time. This can be a grave social crime in Japan and can even jeopardize your status at social and/or individual levels, but not many people seem to give a serious thought to it in Israel.
I am not saying that punctuality and keeping appointments are intrinsically better; they are probably more like cultural differences. I do not know either if they make a society and people who live there happier, but I do know that they are prerequisites for a developed society. Societies as a whole will not be able to change their sense of temporal order so drastically, especially in a short time, so those that do not attach much social value to temporal order will probably remain underdeveloped.
Individuals will normally be unable to change their sense of temporal order either and suddenly become more/less punctual than before. It is almost our second nature as some other habits like the taste we develop through the foods we eat in our childhood. I fear therefore that it will be rather difficult, if not totally impossible, for two people who do not share more or less the same sense of temporal order to keep a full symbiotic relationship.
22 April 2005 (13 Nisan 5765)
I believe that there are, or must be, absolute values that are shared by the majority of human beings beyond individual and cultural differences and/or contribute to our interpersonal harmony and social advancement. I have never doubted that being responsible for one's own words is one of them and failing to live up to one's promises on a regular basis is the shortest way to lose the trust of one's friends and colleagues, so I have been rather careful in making promises.
Unfortunately, however, I realize these days that this naive belief of mine is an illusion and there are people who do not seem to share this value for reasons unknown to me, whether individual or cultural. I have been trying in vain to explain to them the implications of what I consider lack of verbal responsibility, but since they see nothing wrong with it, they are not convinced.
One of its implications in interpersonal relationship is that since we can never be sure whether these people will carry out what they promised, we can never plan anything and have to be constantly alert lest they may cancel their promises at the last moment, often sacrificing things we can otherwise do. A more grave implication is that not only what they promise but also whatever they say at all is never fully trustworthy. Where there is no trust, there is no respect. Where there is no respect, there is no coexistence.
29 April 2005 (20 Nisan 5765)
Those languages that were considered "universal" in the history of humankind, either in their respective areas of influence or throughout the world, acquired their privileged status not because of some arbitrary decision but for political, economic and cultural reasons. English, which is the de facto universal language now, is no exception. It owes its special status in various areas of international communication not to its intrinsic structure but mainly to the former British Empire and the United States. Whether we like it or not, this is a fact of life, and if we are to be realistic, we have to accept it.
The selection of universal units, however, can be arbitrary. The metric system is a case in point. It is really ironic that the United States, which is the self-proclaimed setter of universal standards and the main source of influence on the present status of English, is one of the few countries in the world that have failed to adopt the metric system. Those developers in the open source movement, most of whom are in the United States, advocate universal standards, but few of them even seem to give a thought to the fact that they use a non-metric system almost exclusively. Because many of the products made for the domestic market in the United States are exported abroad, we often encounter their non-metric system still used there. I am not ready to accept it unlike English.
Languages and units have one thing in common. If we are to replace one system with another, we have to do so overnight by enforcing it by law. This is, for example, what Japan did to replace its time-honored system with the metric system. The US government, on the other hand, was too "democratic"; it relied too much on voluntariness of its citizens. I hear that US scientists suffer from this political mistake as they can think in the metric system intuitively. The generation in the period of transition will inevitably have to suffer, but someone has to pay the price. The sooner, the better, in my opinion. As long as US advocates of English and open source software continue to use a parochial non-metric system, I can only take their claims with a grain of salt.