Blue scarves extra

October 19, 2011 5:25 AM

Shame on you! Wear the green scarf! Do not put the green scarf in your schoolbag. Don't back down! Proudly wear the red scarf!
posted by twoleftfeet (65 comments total)

I think dunce caps would be much more effective.
posted by HuronBob at 5:32 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

After reading through the first link, the words 'scarf' and 'scarves' are starting to look funny.
posted by saturday_morning at 5:33 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

After reading the last link, the word woggle still looks funny.
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:36 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

The school decided to make children whose schoolwork and general behavior were not yet good enough to wear green scarves instead of the red scarf of the Chinese Young Pioneers.

I unfortunately know enough about Chinese parenting methods to suggest here in all seriousness that being required to wear a green scarf is a huge improvement over the ordinary discipline Chinese parents mete out on their underperforming children.
posted by three blind mice at 5:37 AM on October 19, 2011

Today, I learned the word woggle. Thank you!
posted by Wolfdog at 5:39 AM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

woggle

That is the best word since snood.
posted by saturday_morning at 5:39 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Does sound suspiciously like the result of some womble/fraggle hanky panky, though.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:40 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Green scarf kids get pixelated faces too.
posted by R. Mutt at 5:43 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

The picture in the second link, with only the faces of the Green Scarf-ed children blurred out is truly sad.
posted by Rock Steady at 5:44 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

What's all this woggle nonsense? Snaps are way easier. (Also, what the heck, Brownies? Back in my day, they used a cursive font. On the socks, too!)
posted by phunniemee at 5:46 AM on October 19, 2011

oh, who gives a shit, except the parents, i suppose, who believe their children to be miniature adults. in a canadian primary school, i was among a portion of my class that tested positive for head lice. the school nurse shaved our heads, rubbed them with blue ointment and put bonnets on us. yes, we took the bonnets off as soon as we stepped out of the schoolhouse, but we were then blue headed bald kids. when we got home we washed off the blue shit and became just bald kids. the bonnet and ointment were required until the lice were gone. in the case of the chinese kids, the green scarf is required until the poor study habits and bad behaviour are gone. and the whining, too, i would hope.
posted by kitchenrat at 5:47 AM on October 19, 2011

Well, as long as they don't have to wear green hats*, they should be fine.

*戴绿帽 = (to) wear a green hat. Meaning: to be a cuckold.
posted by flippant at 5:49 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A.
posted by Fizz at 5:51 AM on October 19, 2011 [8 favorites]

when we got home

we washed off the blue shit

and became just bald kids
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:52 AM on October 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

(to) wear a green hat. Meaning: to be a cuckold.

Can someone explain this for me?
posted by twoleftfeet at 5:53 AM on October 19, 2011

They tried launching a Young Pioneeers program in the US but the tails on their uniforms' Davy Crockett hats kept getting turned around, blocking their vision.
posted by Mike D at 6:00 AM on October 19, 2011

Can someone explain this for me?

Wiki says:

In Chinese, using the term "戴绿帽子" （wearing the green hat), which comes from men in the Spring and Autumn period apparently wearing a green cloth on their head when earning a living by offering their wife or daughter.

posted by pracowity at 6:03 AM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

which comes from men in the Spring and Autumn period apparently wearing a green cloth on their head when earning a living by offering their wife or daughter.

Can someone explain this for me?
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:06 AM on October 19, 2011 [7 favorites]

Now the red-scarved Pioneers
Had necks with red scarves
The other Pioneers
Had green upon thars
posted by chococat at 6:06 AM on October 19, 2011 [5 favorites]

Can someone explain this for me?

Version I heard was that in the Ming (?) dynasty, musicians and tumblers etc. wore a green headscarf. As the profession was seen as lowly and on a par/mixed up with prostitution, so the men who wore them's wives would likely be on the game. Then extended to cuckoldery.
Various other versions too.

On preview, almost like pracowity says I suppose.
posted by Abiezer at 6:07 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

This only works as long as the kids care. Once the kids decide that wearing a green scarf is cool and only teacher-lickin, book-blind, farmer boys wear red, then this method of shaming will be useless.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:08 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

three blind mice: "The school decided to make children whose schoolwork and general behavior were not yet good enough to wear green scarves instead of the red scarf of the Chinese Young Pioneers.

I unfortunately know enough about Chinese parenting methods to suggest here in all seriousness that being required to wear a green scarf is a huge improvement over the ordinary discipline Chinese parents mete out on their underperforming children."

What makes you think it ends with a green scarf?
posted by Splunge at 6:14 AM on October 19, 2011

This only works as long as the kids care.

The plural of anecdote is not data, and this was a couple of decades ago, but when I was in elementary school in Beijing, we cared. A whole lot. Not caring wasn't even in the realm of imagination.

Hell, when I first came to the US, I was confused that terms like "teacher's pet" and "tattle-tale" were derogatory.
posted by kmz at 6:15 AM on October 19, 2011 [10 favorites]

Reminds me of one of Matt Groening's Life in Hell comics where he recalls first grade.

"Students, the class has been divided into three reading groups. The gold and silver groups will stay here. The brown group will go to a special room in the basement."
posted by mreleganza at 6:18 AM on October 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

I usually try to follow up on interesting links for a post, but I didn't do it this time for this provocative paragraph from the second link:

The incident has provoked a firestorm of online debate. An online poll about wearing green scarves shows that 98% of netizens believed that wearing green scarves would hurt the students' self-esteem and have a negative influence on the psychological wellbeing of the students.

Anybody?
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:23 AM on October 19, 2011

You know, heaping shame on kids really does work for some portion of kids. And for the rest it doesn't work at all and makes everything light years worse.

I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying, I promise I'm trying to spell correctly and write sentences that make sense and remember things and be on time for things...

But of course as secret life of gravy says, if you can't achieve what the acceptable good people would like you to, you can always switch teams and shift your goals to something more achievable like "being bad" or "being awesome at sucking at everything".

Boom, negative identify shifted to positive idenity. I'm not a failure, I'm an expert in failure. Which was naturally my deliberate goal all along.......

But yeah, then you have to be ready for pretty intense lash backs from the authority/society if you refuse to feel shame in their presence. So you gotta team up and look out for each other and get tough. When the schools/parents etc can't use physical punishment they just have to work on you till they break you down, "You're the biggest failure that can exist, you're weak. You could do excellent if you tried and clearly you are failing to try."

Clearly I refuse to continue to bust my ass trying to achieve mediocre performance over and over and over again and be told I'm not trying hard enough over and over and over again. You want to see what failure to try looks like mother fuckers? Zeros. That's what it looks like. Yes I'm already aware of my future career in food service, I'm pretty sure I don't need any more medicinal healing shame, but I'm sure you've got more ready for me.

But from my very small experience with friends who've lived in China and the little bit of reading I've done, it does sound like in China, they don't let groups of kids team up and refuse to feel shame. My impression is they are willing to do whatever it takes, to make sure the underperformers feel shame. But of course having watched those vidoes of kids training for the olympics in China I might have gotten the wrong impression of the school system.
posted by xarnop at 6:23 AM on October 19, 2011 [4 favorites]

Today, I learned the word woggle. Thank you!

Today you also outed yourself as having never been a boyscout or girl guide.

Today I also outed myself as most likely once a boyscout or girl guide.
posted by -harlequin- at 6:25 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I grew up in a conservative Lutheran sect. We were not allowed to join the Boy Scouts, as they were too secular -- we might be taken to some other church or pray in a non-approved way! Anyway, the Synod had its own youth camping and outdoors group. Called the Pioneers. And, yes, we wore red neckerchiefs.

Man, did I get in trouble when I pointed out that the Soviets and the Red Chinese did exactly the same thing! On the other hand, I had received a dishonorable discharge from the 3rd Grade at my Synod-run grade school, so I supposed that sort of bad bad badness was expected from me.

Wearing a green neckerchief was not an option. Probably would have been too Catholic.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:26 AM on October 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

I usually try to follow up on interesting links for a post, but I didn't do it this time for this provocative paragraph from the second link:
The incident has provoked a firestorm of online debate. An online poll about wearing green scarves shows that 98% of netizens believed that wearing green scarves would hurt the students' self-esteem and have a negative influence on the psychological wellbeing of the students.
Anybody?

Might be this poll on Weibo (Chinese microblogging site in case you didn't know; this is one of today's trending topics), though can't see results myself as am last person in the country without an account; perhaps someone else will check.
posted by Abiezer at 6:28 AM on October 19, 2011

Though on reflection that has the harm to self-esteem option but nothing that could be construed as 'psychological well-being' (unless it's a very free translation of 歧视 I suppose)
posted by Abiezer at 6:31 AM on October 19, 2011

Look, when the green-wearing kids get their asses kicked by the purple-wearing Drazi, don't say I didn't warn you.
posted by stevis23 at 6:33 AM on October 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

> Green scarves used to be used as encouragement in some primary schools in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, but the practice was stopped because they could not be considered as another form of the red scarf.

I was saying that for years, but would anybody listen?
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:35 AM on October 19, 2011

Just watching the news here, this is the topic, and by looks of things the policy has already been scrapped and now we're at the apportioning blame stage.
posted by Abiezer at 6:47 AM on October 19, 2011

Chococat beat me to it, there's certainly a lesson one teaches from Dr. Seuss' Sneetches.
posted by samsara at 6:49 AM on October 19, 2011

Ah but ARE the star bellies really equal to those with none upon thars? Is the engineer really the equal to the food service employee or babysitter, or cashier? After all, perhaps those without stars were simply not trying hard enough to manifest stars and deserve to live in worse conditions and overall have much less than those with stars upon thars.

And if we invent the "star giving machine", the ability to give equal abilities to all, how will we decide who gets to live in poverty? After all, some people need to live in service of the upper classes, right? We have to identify them somehow and school performance sounds fair, but really even if everyone is trying as hard as they can, some will be at the bottom no matter what is done. And that percent will always be the ones with no stars who failed and deserve to live in service of the rest and be given much smaller portions of everything because after all, they are less valuable.

At least here in the US, we seem to be pretty certain of that.
posted by xarnop at 6:57 AM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Today you also outed yourself as having never been a boyscout or girl guide.
I was a 4Her. I don't know about woggles but I would happily pit my knowledge of Toggenburgs against yours.
posted by Wolfdog at 7:02 AM on October 19, 2011

Oh come on, everyone knows those green-scarf kids are a rotten bunch anyway. They cheat at Quidditch and their parents are all Death Eaters.
posted by Metroid Baby at 7:22 AM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Should I get my spouse a woggle for her snood?
posted by flabdablet at 7:25 AM on October 19, 2011

kitchenrat,

Where the hell in Canada did you go to school? The nineteenth century?
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:26 AM on October 19, 2011 [10 favorites]

After all, perhaps those without stars were simply not trying hard enough to manifest stars and deserve to live in worse conditions and overall have much less than those with stars upon thars.

Considering the recent loss of jessamyn's star, I think this comment is needlessly hurtful and injurious to site moral. You must wear a green scarf on the Blue as pennance!
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:30 AM on October 19, 2011

Should I get my spouse a woggle for her snood?

Metafilter spouse or regular spouse?
posted by echo target at 7:57 AM on October 19, 2011

Might be this poll on Weibo (Chinese microblogging site in case you didn't know; this is one of today's trending topics), though can't see results myself as am last person in the country without an account; perhaps someone else will check.

Well, 4 out of the 5 options are all against the policy with different levels of indignation (discriminations against students, bad for self-esteem, give the teachers green scarves, tragedy of Chinese education), so it's pretty obvious for anyone (except for 2%, apparently), that this was a horrible policy.

Orientalism aside, odinsdream's link tells us that something of very similar scope, intent and effect was going on at a school in the USA. That being said, it's telling that this story is so huge in China at the moment (considering it was only at one experimental school); there certainly are issues that make a story like this resonate with Chinese people.

Teachers and their balls have come a long way since the cultural revolution, I say.
posted by Aiwen at 8:15 AM on October 19, 2011

"After all, perhaps those without stars were simply not trying hard enough to manifest stars and deserve to live in worse conditions and overall have much less than those with stars upon thars."

Lost a star? I didn't know about this. In the event it's not clear, in theory I believe we're all equal. But exactly what "equal" means is difficult to pin down. Are we all equally worthy of food, shelter, clothing, accessories, luxury items regardless of what we contribute?

Are we worth the amount of EFFORT that we put forth, or are we worth the amount that the product/service we are able to contribute is worth? And what of people who are trying their best but are only able to offer labor that is not worth enough to pay bills or obtain adequate food let alone any luxury items or recreational social activities that cost money?

Do they deserve that condition, or is it simply a lamentable state of affairs that is necessary because society must be constructed this way?

If you want to measure performance, no matter how much effort is put forth, you will always have a bottom percent; people who are less capable in various areas than others. In theory this will result in specialization and everyone will find a nitch where they can outperfrom others and thus be worthy of housing, food, and luxury items and services and activities. In practice not everyone can outperform others in the area they are the best at. If you have certain number of people who are creative and hardworking, you can sort them by who is the most creative and who is the most hard working if you want. But among those two groups there will still be people who are the best and the worst at being creative or being hardworking. How bad should the conditions be for the people at the bottom?

Considering there will always be a bottom percent of performance no matter you define good permormance and no matter how hard everyone tries?

How much shame for poor performance should be heaped on those at the bottom? How much judgement that they are less than everyone else should be heaped on them? What if some portion of those at the bottom ARE trying their best? Do they ever get a break from trying trying trying trying trying and never being as capable as everyone else? Do they ever get to stop shaming themselves for their performance and just like themselves as they are?

Never! Ouch ouch my insides hurt.
posted by xarnop at 8:16 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

there's certainly a lesson one teaches from Dr. Seuss' Sneetches

Which is that the richest 1% of the population siphons all of the wealth out of the community by promoting division and infighting among the lower classes. #OccupyWhoville
posted by burnmp3s at 8:42 AM on October 19, 2011 [7 favorites]

kmz: "The plural of anecdote is not data, and this was a couple of decades ago, but when I was in elementary school in Beijing, we cared. A whole lot. Not caring wasn't even in the realm of imagination.

Oh my god, yeah. There were only a couple of waves of application to get these red scarves per year, and it was the Biggest Deal Ever if you got approved for a red scarf on the first wave. In first grade only a handful of students got approved on the first try, and it was a total source of pride for those involved. By the start of second grade only a handful of students wouldn't have their red scarves, and these students were universally seen as bad influences that you avoided whenever possible, unless you were the class president, in which case you would do your best to be magnanimous and help them along in their quest to become better students/citizens/whatever. Yep, at age 7 or 8..

Plus there's the annual "Triple-Good-Student" award, which, now that I think about it, sounds rather sinister in an Orwellian sort of way. Recognizes one or two students per class who had good grades, demonstrated good citizenship, and did well in sports. Nominated by and voted on by the rest of the class of 60-something students, no less.

(This was the mid-90s. From what I hear from my relatives, not much has changed.)
posted by Phire at 9:01 AM on October 19, 2011 [3 favorites]

Today, I learned the word woggle. Thank you!

Today you also outed yourself as having never been a boyscout or girl guide.

I was an Eagle Scout, and I've never heard that term. We called them neckerchief slides, I think.
posted by gurple at 9:32 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

I thought the choice of green was interesting, given how colors can be very symbolic. Being forced to wear green of all colors - the defining color of the reviled Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in Taiwan - must be extra humiliating...
posted by gemmy at 9:53 AM on October 19, 2011

Genji:

Were you Wisconsin, because my super conserative religious branch actively is taking over the boy scouts, and boy howdy did we give a fuck about badges and scarves and woggles--as a little dispraxic beaver i could not get the scarf attached correctly, even with an ensapped woggle.

Not quite the same thing, but the beavers had this set of tails that you would attach to the hats, and the level of the tail was corresponding to ability, skill (and frankly popularity), it was the proudest moment of my life when I got the white tail with the lightening stripe, the highest of the beaver levels.

I wish that I was a little 6 yr old hipster, who didn't give a flying fuck about stars or tails or badges, but it's the rat and the cocaine, isnt it?
posted by PinkMoose at 10:00 AM on October 19, 2011

It's probably because I have a daughter who just started school this year, and I'm worrying about the old-school shaming mentality that seems to stick around with some of the older teachers at my daughter's school, but this broke my heart a bit to think about kids not being motivated to better performance, but feeling like total crap in front of their peers.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:02 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

pinkmoose:
but it's the rat and the cocaine, isnt it?

whut?
posted by rude.boy at 10:17 AM on October 19, 2011

whut?

Skinnerian operant conditioning? Seems perfectly cromulent to me.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 10:35 AM on October 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Um, didn't we already try this with the brown eye/blue eye groups? Yuck.
posted by 200burritos at 10:37 AM on October 19, 2011

*of course, their group assignments were arbitrary and not based on performance. Still...
posted by 200burritos at 10:37 AM on October 19, 2011

Solution: buy a red scarf and wear both the red scarf and the required green scarf to school.
posted by Redfield at 11:19 AM on October 19, 2011

Solution: buy a navy blue scarf with little white polka-dots. Wear it knotted to the side with a v-neck sweater and a panama hat. Drape your school jacket over your shoulders and be ten times more fabulous than any pioneer.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:32 AM on October 19, 2011 [7 favorites]

Solution: buy a navy blue scarf with little white polka-dots. Wear it knotted to the side with a v-neck sweater and a panama hat. Drape your school jacket over your shoulders and be ten times more fabulous than any pioneer.

I have this image in my mind of a really boss 8-year-old Chinese kid just swaggering into class dressed like this. Thank you.
posted by vogon_poet at 12:24 PM on October 19, 2011 [2 favorites]

Nobody else is disturbed by the scarf practice to begin with? Having children fight in school for acceptance to be a young party soldier? Anybody?
posted by Navelgazer at 12:46 PM on October 19, 2011

Shhh. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
posted by Phire at 1:13 PM on October 19, 2011

No sneetch ever earned (or failed to earn) his or her star (or absence of a star) from an institution. Bad analogy.
posted by rahnefan at 1:16 PM on October 19, 2011

I'm glad they scrapped the policy. The poor kids who don't do well by graduation have the rest of their lives to live in shame and squalor. Let them have a happy childhood at least.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:54 PM on October 19, 2011

Solution: buy a navy blue scarf with little white polka-dots.

NO WAIT navy with tiny white anchors, for a nautically sassy look.
posted by elizardbits at 3:46 PM on October 19, 2011

A small remote school on a Pacific island that I visited a couple of years ago had a policy that for bad behaviour in class, children were sent to sit outside in the playground for half an hour. I COULD NOT IMAGINE how that worked. When I was a kid, being sent into the playground would have been a reward. Everyone would have wanted to be "punished". And it wasn't a matter of loneliness - usually the punishment was for talking in class or fighting, so it was multiple kids sent outside at one time. Kids who were friends.

After a few days I figured it out. The school was within sight of most houses. When kids came home at the end of the day, parents knew if they had been sent outside. Those kids were beaten until they couldn't walk.

I suspect something similar makes the green scarf-red scarf thing work too.
posted by lollusc at 5:12 PM on October 19, 2011

You go in that team
I go on this team
Divide everything
A flag or a number
Make 'em opposites
So there's a reason
Stigmatisation
Ok now we can fight
posted by kcds at 9:48 AM on October 20, 2011

The blurb of Sneetches doesn't mention woggles on the snoods of spouses, not even once.
posted by flabdablet at 10:50 PM on October 22, 2011

No sneetch ever earned (or failed to earn) his or her star (or absence of a star) from an institution. Bad analogy.

Nor do Chinese students have long noses and yellow fur. Where the analogy does work is on the symbolism of something that is either proudly worn or worn out of shame, and the discrimination that directly follows. You can take the analogy as far as you want. In the late 1960's there were classroom experiments that addressed racial discrimination by splitting up students based on eye-color (a trait that can't be helped...see Jane Elliott) and in the 70's armband color (something similar to the scarf..see Weiner and Wright). The students would then be lead to believe that dark eyed students were smarter than blue eyed. Or that orange armband students were the lowest class of student, were unclean, and were not as smart. In many cases, these experiments stimulated prejudice and discrimination among what were once peers. This scarf idea, while well meaning, is likely provoking the same.
posted by samsara at 5:40 AM on October 24, 2011