Always Continue Learning

Sometimes I think Chinese people don't want to continue learning. At my school there are Chinese tutors and English teachers. I think before and after almost every class I learn at least one thing from the other foreign teachers. Today my new word was "sachet" meaning a packet. Apparently it's a British word but as an American I had never heard of it before. Aside from these thousands of new words that I learn from the British and Australians working here I also learn more about business as I have to teach business classes about things like "blue chips" and other such things that as a student in the US I never had to deal with. Plus the people in the foreign office are constantly looking at the news and spreading it around the office from one newspaper or another. But the Chinese staff is completely different. I've sat in on multiple of their classes and never once have I been asked to check their pronunciation or their definition of a word if they're slightly puzzled about it. Even if I do call them over to tell them one thing or another it's not then broadcast to the class (as one might think it would be). They keep the thought to themselves. I was just sitting in on a class and the teacher told one student that author could be used for anything, plays, operas, paintings, anything. Understanding Chinese I knew that what she was saying was not right, as we don't use the word "author" for everything. So after a couple minutes I called her over to tell her but she never told the student. In fact there is only one Chinese tutor who ever asks us about how to say things or the meaning of things. Why is this? In class I most readily admit that if a student is asking me a question that is too technical about grammar they should be asking their Chinese teacher, not me. Cause all of the Chinese teachers have to learn everything about grammar that a native English speaker doesn't learn. Why do the Chinese teachers keep to themselves while the foreign teachers are constantly learning? One hypothesis of my own is that it's cause of the way they learn in school, they are FORCED to learn things in school. So who in their right mind would want to continue learning after school. Thousands of Chinese people don't like to read anything more than a newspaper, forget a book. (Fortunately my husband is a bit different only because he didn't graduate from high school, so he still enjoys reading and teaching himself. Seems a bit backwards to me.) The other thing is they have so much "face". I hate this idea, if they were to ask us about their work then they would "lose face". Which is total bull. Basically face is like embarrasment a little, when they lose face they get embarrassed and others may think differently or worse of them. But I think the idea of face gets way too much weight, embarrassment is a very little version of this huge idea.