When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991, the communications trade union for which I then worked received several
delegations from the emergent nations and we ran courses for them on how market
economies operated and how free collective bargaining was conducted. As is my
practice when lecturing to foreign audiences, I had my visual aids translated
into the vernacular, so I used overhead slides in Russian, although of course I
spoke in English and had an interpreter.
I cannot read the cyrillic alphabet
and know very little Russian, so I just worked through my slides in order.
However, there came a point when I could tell from the statistical data on the
latest slide that, for the previous ten minutes, I had been speaking to the
wrong slide. British students would have pointed this out in seconds, but none
of the Russians had said a word.
I was perplexed and asked why nobody
had told me that I had been speaking to the wrong slide. Eventually one brave
soul volunteered an answer and the interpreter translated: “In our country, no
one challenges the teacher”.
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