It's easy to understand why people in large systems do the things they do.
Because the systems are composed of so many working parts, a tiny error somewhere can eventually lead to a cascade of catastrophe.
Or at least that's what the fear is.
As a result, most of the people working within these systems are terrified that they are going to get punished for causing a malfunction, so they opt for a "better safe than sorry", "have all my bases covered" approach to everything.
This results in blanket policies, reactive strategies, and a general unwillingness to rock the boat, making changes only if absolutely necessary and only after mind-numbingly long periods of time.
Bureaucracy, red tape, infuriatingly inflexible gatekeepers, we've all met them.
And hate them.
And yet, they aren't there by accident. They are there by design.
Which means that they can also be designed away.
Hence the immense importance of thought leadership, safe spaces, and granting autonomy.
My Struggle With Mandarin Chinese May Have Been Due To The Education System.
Like a lot of my peers, I struggled with Mandarin.
We were taught to repeatedly copy characters and constantly tested on them. The hope was that they will somehow be drilled into our memories.
I recall consistently failing these "listen-then-write" (ting1 xie3) tests, because I had no idea what the spoken words looked like as characters.
Similarly, when I looked at a book or newspaper (these were particularly difficult), many of the characters didn't invoke "sounds" in my head.
Hence, I couldn't read them.
There was a now-obvious disconnect between the spoken and written characters.
Growing up in an English-speaking environment, I hardly heard Mandarin being spoken.
And being so poor at Mandarin, all the while being chided for being bad at it, caused me to hate the language.
One of the major deciding factors for my entering a polytechnic instead of a junior college was to avoid ever having to read another Mandarin character.
In contrast, I love the English language. So much so, I studied for and attained a Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) so I can help others to learn it.
I started reading (English books) around the same time my elder brother (who is 2 years older) did, and I have shelves of books, most of which I've finished reading multiple times.
And, considering my penchant for picking up words and tones in other languages, something went horribly wrong with my education in Mandarin.
In an attempt to start rectifying this and overcoming my fear of it, I've started to watch Chinese drama series and I've recently bought a book in Mandarin. My first one in over a decade!
It has pinyin over the words, but hey, it's a start. And I plan to read a little of it every day.
Wish me luck!
