A nest of global "little birds"

 　　The international class

　　Capuano is just two blocks past the house where we live, and it takes 6 minutes to walk. This is where J went to school. He is almost 6 years old and attends K grade (equivalent to our preschool) at this school, all for free. This school is a model school in the small town of Somerville, with brand-new facilities. The school has an open-air playground that is open to the public free of charge throughout the year. Although it takes me 40 minutes to walk to Harvard every day, J must go to this school, because it is one of the few schools with ESL (English as Second Language) international classes, so it is suitable for us.

　　Enrollment in international classes is very simple. As long as you submit your child's birth certificate to the education committee of the small town to effectively state the age of the child, and fill in the "home language" column on the form other than English, you can go to the ESL class. Note: ID is not required to attend school! Therefore, quite a few of the parents of the children receiving free education in the United States in this school are actually "smugglers", or the children themselves are so-called "black households". The American government is very lenient when it comes to the education of future generations. 

　　When school started in September, there were 24 students aged 5-6 like him in J's class. The children come from all over the world, most of them are "ancestors" in Latin America, and most of them speak Spanish; but some were born in the United States and are fluent in English, just because they don't speak English at home, and they have to go to this class to learn. The homeroom teacher, Ms. Kamel, is in her twenties, fat, and a third-generation French-British mixed-race immigrant; the life teacher Cabrera is from Guatemala and mainly speaks Spanish, which is convenient for taking care of those Latin American children.

　　Among the 24 children, there are three Chinese: J followed me on a one-year visit to the United States, and the other two Chinese girls, Xinyi and Yuying, are both Cantonese immigrants who just came to the United States. Like their parents, they do not know a single word of English. In the first days, J and the two of them became a closed clique. Kamel "complained" that the three of them neither listened to the teacher nor played with other children. Of course, this is because none of them understand English, so they erected a "natural barrier" with other people in Chinese. I went back and talked to J, and I told him he had to get out of closed cliques if he wanted to make friends with other people. J was very embarrassed, he said he didn't know how to say it. I told him to go to the boys he likes next time during free time and say to them: "Can I play with you?" (Can I play with you?)

　　After school the next day, J was very excited , he used this trick to have new playmates that day: Niklas and Mohamed. Nicholas is from Argentina, with lovely curly black hair and a quirky spirit. Mohammad was born in the United States to Egyptian parents. Both of them are fluent in English, but because one speaks Spanish and the other speaks Arabic at home, they, like J, entered the international class.

　　The three boys quickly became good friends, their J English improved a lot, and they communicated more and more with their classmates. Every day after school at 2:30, he was reluctant to part with his friends. One day Niklas' father said that if J wanted to go to their house with Muhammad. Of course J would! We took Nicholas' father's car to an ordinary apartment house not far from my house. Entering the door, one floor, two bedrooms and one living room are about 100 square meters, clean and spacious, but the strong Asian style and several Buddhist wood and stone sculptures made me a little bit out of place in time and space. After chatting, I found out that Nicholas’s parents are both professional Argentine tango dancers. Now they are in the United States all year round, but they often perform and travel around the world, and they came to Shanghai once. Most of the statues at home are from Southeast Asia, and they like Asian art and religion very much. Niklas's beautiful mother told me that her parents were all devout Catholics, but neither they nor Niklas were limited to a certain religion. She said that they might not be atheists, but pantheists. I really like religions from all over the world, including mystical Buddhism. I was a little surprised and puzzled.

　　As the friendship between these three children deepened, I talked more with their parents. At breakfast time every day, parents can send their children to the restaurant and watch them leave after eating. Mohammad's mother was around my age, plump and always wore the abaya and traditional turban. Her English is not particularly fluent, but she can barely communicate. After communicating with her, I learned that Muhammad's father opened a pizzeria on our street, and the business was mediocre. She also has two daughters, both born in the United States, in elementary school. Muhammad is very naughty and self-willed. He always asks his mother to buy him American video games. He doesn't follow the Muslim prayer rules and is not interested in speaking Arabic. The woman who went to university in Egypt is very distressed that her three children are no longer interested in Arabic culture. She plans to take them back to Egypt for education in a year. However, she said that the basic education in Egypt also has problems such as excessive course load, dereliction of duty and corruption of educators, small classes, and children struggling to make up lessons, so she has not decided whether to go back or not.

　　Of course, there are also children from all over the world with different personalities in this class: Lily is from Germany, she is very shy and does not speak English, so she hardly speaks a word at school; Active and mischievous, he was often punished—that is, the teacher "deprived" him of 20 minutes of outdoor playtime—but it didn't seem to be doing much; the light-haired Cobain was very handsome, and his father was a construction worker. Bai Hui’s overalls drove a small truck pulling tools, put down Cobain, and rushed to the construction site; Isabella is from Brazil, can speak fluent English, Spanish and Portuguese, and is the most beautiful girl in the class. She especially likes Barbie. However, J is totally ungrateful for her "favor" from the bottom of his heart, and he seems a little unfriendly; Christopher is brown-skinned, a bit out of gregarious, loves to sue, and was disciplined by J on the first day of school for queuing up for "gasser" " Yi Punch cried and told Kamel, so J was also disciplined by the teacher, and the "beams" formed by the two of them didn't change much until we left the United States...

　　Located in Summer, Massachusetts, in the eastern United States This preschool in the small town of Vail is really the epitome of globalization: Argentinian boys with Buddha statues at home, Egyptian boys who refuse to speak Arabic, Brazilian girls who like Barbie, Cantonese girls who haven’t learned a word of English... Just imagine The future of these 6 year olds! In the first half of the 20th century, the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore once imagined that in the future, "the world will meet in a bird's nest". Today, this "bird's nest" is becoming more and more integrated and difficult to classify.

　　J is also "globalized". In the United States, under the influence of Argentine boys, he fell in love with a Lego puzzle toy with Japanese ninja warriors as the main plot, and brought it back to China. His biggest change is that now he will no longer be surprised to see any foreigners with any skin color or appearance in the community.

　　"International Conflict"

　　J started "International Conflict" on his first day of school in the United States. When school was over, Miss Kamel, the class teacher, told me that J beat Christopher to tears today, but she didn't pay attention to what happened, and J couldn't speak English. All Christopher said was that J beat him up. I promised her to go home and find out about the situation.

　　In fact, on the way home, J couldn't wait. He proudly said that the boy Christopher was very unmannered when he was queuing today, and he added the girl's Ser, "I went over and pulled his sleeve to make him come back, but he punched me. Mom, do you know?" J smiled He continued, "I dodged his fist, then punched him, he got hit, and then he cried for nothing!" Looking at his unashamed complacency, I knew I have to make some sense: "There are things you shouldn't use your fists, you should try to use words first - oh, yes, you can't speak. Um - er - then - then you should ask the teacher for help - yes Yes, you wouldn’t say it either...then at least you shouldn’t care, he didn’t join your team!” “But, Mom, shouldn’t I help others? Shouldn’t I care when I see others doing something wrong?” This …@#￥&… I think I should explain the situation to the teacher first.

　　The next morning, I explained to Kamel what had happened yesterday. After hearing this, Kamel lowered his body and said to J in slow and simple English that when encountering a problem, he should do three things: one is stop (stop), the other is think (think about it), and the third is to find a way (Find a way to solve it). I hastened to translate for J, and then expressed to Kamel that I could take J to apologize to Christopher. Kamel shook his head again and again, "No, no, he should try to solve problems by himself, resolve conflicts by himself, say sorry by himself, and get out of trouble by himself. This is the important part of school life, which is to learn socialization." I was a little ashamed, She felt that what she said made sense, and secretly blamed myself for the Chinese paternalistic thinking, thinking and doing everything for the children.

　　A few days later, after school, J would play for a while as usual in the small playground next to the school. The field is full of children, and the parents in twos and threes on the edge of the field stand far away. This is really different from the situation in China. I remember the most typical one in China. Three children were playing football in the square of my community, but there were six people running on the field—including three yelling "slow down!" ", "Don't fall", "Don't kick others" parents. In the United States, children are not afraid of falling not only because there are plastic surfaces in playgrounds, but also because they have the idea of ​​letting children "solve problems by themselves", right?

　　J had a great time. He was playing ball with Xiaohu. After a while, I saw Rumi, a dark-skinned Jamaican boy who was two classes younger than him (about two years younger), approached him. He probably wanted to play together, but A dispute soon ensued: Rumi started grabbing the ball when he couldn't get it, but J refused to give it out of protection of his personal belongings. In the end, the ball ran away, and J and Rumi fell to the ground and writhed together. My Chinese paternalistic impulse is to jump up and shout J "Don't hit my brother, give the ball to my brother!" But I suddenly noticed that Rumi's mother not far away saw it clearly, but she didn't move, her expression was relaxed, She didn't feel in the slightest that it was her duty or responsibility to rush forward to stop the conflict. I remembered Kamel's teachings and decided to wait and see what happened.

　　J originally had a psychological advantage: he is tall and big, a head taller than Rumi, and because he has watched a lot of animations such as robot warriors, he has always set himself as a master with extraordinary skills, and he can perform many handsome challenging poses—— Too bad I never really tried it. The opportunity came. I saw that J seemed to be at home, first showing a contemptuous smile and an awe-inspiring expression of "world peace, who else but me", and then bluffed a few showmanship in the animation. Rumi wasn't so verbose, he hit his chest when he went up. He doesn't have an advantage in size, but he has a flexible pace and a hard hit. The situation was stalemate for a while, J and Rumi took turns to gain the upper hand, and soon Rumi knocked down and pinned J. In the end it was the relaxed Rumi who got tired of the pressure and went straight off to slide. J got up from the ground, came to me angrily (rather than frustrated) and said, "Xiaohu is so embarrassing, he should have come and kicked Rumi's ass just now. Xiaohu grabbed his arm and asked me to beat him, so he won. Is it?" I laughed and said, "It's not fair, two fight one!" "Does a fight need to be fair?" "Of course, fairness is very important!" I saw J touching his ears, and when he looked carefully, he was even hanged. : There is some blood under the left earlobe. It seems that this "international conflict" ended with J's complete defeat. This "international conflict" made J understand that all he knows is martial arts. On the way home, he told me that he wanted to really learn martial arts!