When I was living in China, I learned to make things hyper-explicit because often they were being read by people whose command of English kept them from picking up what I thought were obvious signals.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of clear communication, especially in a multicultural context where language barriers exist.
James Fallows reflects on his experience living in China, highlighting the need for hyper-explicit communication when speaking or writing in English to individuals who may not fully grasp the language. This underscores the idea that assumptions about shared understanding can lead to miscommunication, particularly when cultural and linguistic differences are present. By making messages clearer, one can ensure better comprehension and avoid misunderstandings.
In practice
In a multicultural team meeting, I used this quote to stress the importance of clear communication.
For the record, I am sticking with my claim that the simultaneous degradation of air quality, water quality, water supply, food safety, soil quality, and other environment-related variables is the main challenge to China's continued development.
Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.
It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.
What is learned without pleasure is forgotten without remorse.
The adolescent must never be treated as a child, for that is a stage of life that he has surpassed. It is better to treat an adolescent as if he had greater value than he actually shows than as if he had less and let him feel that his merits and self-respect are disregarded.
I was 17 the first time I set foot in a classroom, but 10 years later, I would graduate from Cambridge with a Ph.D. 'Educated' is the story of how I came by my education. It is also the story of how I lost my family.
Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators.
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