A little praise goes a long way ... it did for me, Jack Ma tells China’s teachers
Look for the strength in every child, billionaire says as he relates experiences from his student days
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma Yun urged teachers to find the strength in each child as his charitable foundation recognised the efforts of rural educators on Monday.
Drawing on his own experience, Ma, a former English teacher and the founder of Alibaba Group, which owns the South China Morning Post, said a teacher’s encouragement could play a decisive role in a child’s future.
“I was not interested in most subjects in primary and middle school, except English,” he said at the foundation’s annual awards ceremony in Sanya, Hainan province.
“My English teacher said to me, ‘Ma Yun, your English pronunciation is pretty good.’ This sentence gave me a lot of confidence and ushered me through the door of learning English.”
Ma said his first chemistry teacher at middle school was a serious man and always criticised him no matter what he did. “So I just gave up learning this subject,” he said, as he extended what was initially scheduled to be a 10-minute session into more than an hour.