Notes

Chinese Education: Students, Teachers, and Methodology
With my interest and background in education, my teaching in China placed me in a unique position to do firsthand observation of Chinese education at all levels, which was one of the primary purposes of my original sabbatical request and my subsequent trips there. We visited several elementary, middle, and high schools, along with several community colleges; furthermore, I had the chance of teaching at all university grade levels. I found learn that education has very different, a lot more deterministic consequences for Chinese students than it can for American students.

Look at it this way. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, China has one-fifth of the world's population: one atlanta divorce attorneys five people on Earth is Chinese. Further complicating the problems of this massive populace may be the distribution of the people. China has roughly exactly the same land mass because the United States. However, a good part of that area is uninhabitable or sparsely populated: the Gobi Desert is non-arable and the Himalayas and the Himalayan plateau regions are actually largely useless; the eastern half of the nation is where the majority of individuals are clustered, with a good deal of the population concentrated around the large cities located in that area of the country's land mass. In addition, seventy-five to eighty percent of the people remain agrarian. Such disparate distribution and density of the population certainly makes feeding, housing, looking after, and educating the citizens a continuing challenge, with education being truly a key focus.

Every school day in China, over 300 million students study in Chinese classrooms... more than the complete population of America. Indeed, one of my Chinese colleagues once related to me an enlightening analogy. Education in China, he illustrated, can be compared to a wide, packed highway leading to a narrow bridge. The farther along the road one goes, the narrower it gets. Many students get forced out into endless side streets all along the way. And at the end of this crowded road lies an extremely narrow bridge called "post secondary study." If one does not cross that bridge, full participation and success in the Chinese economy is incredibly limited. And because very few people can ever cross that bridge successfully, entry into post-secondary study is extremely competitive.

All Chinese citizens are guaranteed a basic ninth-grade education and increased literacy in the country is probably the primary goals of the government. However, given the enormous number of students to be educated, those aims are difficult to achieve. Average class sizes range from forty to eighty, according to the specialization of the institution, and can number even more if the circumstances demand. The better schools have smaller classes (no more than forty students) therefore the teacher can do a more satisfactory job. However, fifty to sixty students is the norm. From kindergarten on, regimentation is the rule of your day. Students are required to listen and take down notes. The teacher traditionally has supreme authority and asking questions or commenting on course content in the classroom is considered to be an affront to the teacher and is thus forbidden. Teacher aides, tutors, or parental help in the classroom are unheard of. Rote memorization remains the dominant methodology and students learn early on that silence and copious note taking will be the only keys to success. The students themselves spend most of their day in the classroom-usually from eight to ten hours-and the remainder of their time is specialized in homework and any extra tutoring or other supplemental courses that the parents are able. At all levels of schooling, test outcomes determine the caliber and quality of school the students can attend, so continual study for capstone examinations (national exams at the completion of fourth, sixth, eight, tenth, and twelfth grades) do much in determining the direction and quality of the students' lives. A number of the university students I talked to admitted that the rigorous demands placed on them by their teachers and parents left them with little if any childhood, a disorder they vowed they might never impart on their own children.

The Chinese post-secondary education system is vastly not the same as the America system. The semesters are twenty-one weeks long. Chinese college students often attend classes Monday through Friday along with extra classes, tutoring, and/or study sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Entrance into Chinese universites and colleges is fairly difficult and depends upon the infamous national Gaokao placement exam. No more than 10 to 20 percent of high school graduates go on to technical colleges or universities and the exam results determine not only which universities they are able to attend, but additionally what majors they are able to study. Once accepted by a university, the students undertake their course of studies in cadres of thirty-five to forty. Each cohort takes exactly the same classes and the members share the same, gender separate dormitories, with eight visitors to a small, confined room. Often their shower and toilet facilities come in a separate building. Among the students from each cohort is appointed to be the class monitor, and he or she becomes tasked with assuring that all classroom and dormitory activities take place with as few problems as you possibly can. To be selected class monitor is indeed an honor. The students within each cohort and dorm room form close bonds and interact for the good of the complete. Interesting enough, most of the students I have talked with say there's little collaborative or interactive learning that goes on in the classroom. The totality of the Chinese education system serves to severely restrict creativity and individuality in students. Just like the public education system, the college classroom experience involves listening, memorization, and continuous preparation for entrance exams and placements tests. However, the tests college students take are cumulative and can determine the employment they will acquire after graduation, and thus their future standard of living. The competitive nature of the Chinese education system has produced students who, for the most part, are very earnest, obedient, and intensely hardworking, yet who severely lack initiative.

I taught Chinese college students from all grade levels and their abilities and eagerness to understand continually impressed me. Unlike in the us, issues with attendance and preparedness never interfered with classroom instruction, which made my teaching experience most enjoyable. And nearly to an individual, the students continually exuded a childlike air about them... a certain navet... a sense of innocence to the means of the planet... indeed, they lacked the hardness within so many of the students I cope with in my American classroom. The students who I worked with were highly motivated to accomplish their best because they almost universally felt compelled to achieve success at any cost; doing so is their duty to not only society, but moreover to their family. Parents often sacrifice a great deal in the education of their child, who comes to feel deeply obligated to settle them for the education he or she has received. A lot of my students said a similar thing: "I must get a good job and make much money therefore i can look after my parents. They will have worked so hard and spent so much money on my education." The Chinese still place great emphasis on family... the ancient Confucian notion of Parental Piety... and on subservience to the society all together... the collectivism so sharply contrary to the individualist worldview of Westerners.

Every once and a while, one is given an epiphany, a moment of insight, if you will, that provides more information than volumes of books ever can. The first of my educational moments of enlightenment came when we visited several classrooms at a middle school. After the last class of the school day, I noticed most of the students were busy cleaning the windows in the classrooms, washing the blackboards, mopping the floors, and even cleaning the bathrooms. I asked the teacher giving us the tour of the institution concerning this and her reply was, "These activities are portion of the students' education." Schools haven't any janitorial force; all the cleanup work is delegated to the students. "If the students have the effect of the condition of the classrooms and the school," she continued, "they will put much more effort into and value upon their education. This is much part of our Socialist tradition... of Chairman Mao's ideas of loving labor."

The next insight came during the second month I was at Northeastern University. On a cold Sunday evening in February a sudden snow storm dropped several inches of snow on Shenyang. Very early another morning, as I left our apartment building and began to make my way to my high grade, I noticed students all around the campus-by the thousands-industriously shoveling snow from the sidewalks and streets and chipping away at the patches of ice that had formed near door stoops and on steps. They had apparently been at their tasks since daybreak. I possibly could only look on, perplexed, uncertain of what I was experiencing. When I met my first class, which coincidentally was a cross-cultural communications course, I took several minutes to explain my fascination with their activities. These were more than pleased to explain the mechanics and the goal of the activity.

"It really is our duty!" explained Albert proudly (Chinese students learning English usually assume an English name).

"Shoveling snow is section of our education."

"Yes, no-one should slip on the ice and be injured," chimed in Tiffany, whose muffler remained just underneath her lips in the cold classroom.

"How is the work determined?" I asked, still trying to keep the conversation going.

"Each class is given an assigned area. If the area isn't done satisfactorily, the responsible class will be punished," answered Gerald.

"What happens if someone is lazy and doesn't desire to go out in to the cold and sleeps in?" I continued.

"That person will be scorned and also ridiculed by his fellow classmates... will be considered as a person who is unreliable... who can't be trusted," said Gail.

Intrigued by the ingenuousness of these answers, I tried to get as much information when i could. "And I saw girls shoveling and chipping in the same way hard as the boys. Why is this?"

Connie, who was always timid in class, finally found her voice. "Chairman Mao did much for establishing the equality of women to men. He maintained that women need to stand with men in society, not in it."

Perhaps with a little chagrin, I concluded the conversation with a tale about what my students would probably tell me to do with the shovel if I commanded them to go out and remove snow from our college's sidewalks... a tale no-one really understood. But I had found a "teachable moment"... or rather a "learnable moment"... an instance where the students and I could actually look beyond ourselves and jointly comment on the world all around us. And not just had I found out more info about my environment, I was starting to find those rare moments of teaching when I learned much more than I could ever impart.

I had two such other sudden leaps of understanding just this past year when I visited Shenyang. In my several trips there I had never had the occasion to go in the fall, so because we went during September and October on that visit I could observe two very remarkable occurrences. The first was on September 10th, which I didn't realize was National Day of the Teacher, a nationwide visit to which students around the country show their appreciation for their teachers by presenting them with gifts of cards and flowers. We knew the day was a holiday for teachers, but we were incredibly surprised when two of our students appeared at our door with two large arrangements of flowers... a token they said of the gratitude all of our students had for us being their teachers. Traditionally, the relationship of the teacher to the student has almost mirrored that of the main one between parent and child, a concept that comes from the time of Confucius (Kongfuzi).

This insight was followed up shortly thereafter with another, when I was visiting the Foreign Studies College at Northeastern University, just after the beginning of the semester in September. From several blocks away I heard a chorus of hundreds of voices singing a martial anthem. As I walked onto the large concrete square while watching twelve-story Administration Building, I saw arrayed there at the very least two thousand students dressed up in the drab green of military uniforms. get more info were marching, some were standing in large cadres on the building steps, and other were engaged in military hand-to-hand combat tactics, all under the direction of regular Chinese Army instructors. Later I found find out that all college freshmen, at every college and university round the country, are required to get a full three weeks of military training before they even begin their classes. A few of the teachers I talked to explained how that requirement was purposeful in assisting the students prepare for the rigors of college life and studies; others said it had come out of the Tiananmen Square incident and have been implemented to avoid university students from participating in anti-government organizing and activities. Again, the differences between your students of China and those of America are often stark.

But the restlessness and impatience of youth is universal. In China the imposition of Western influences, brought about by the rise of capitalism and the driving force of commercialism and advertising, movies and videos, the Internet along with other glimpses of outside cultures, have generated a rising sense of not dissent, but perhaps discontent... maybe uneasiness with the status quo. The Chinese youth of today are not the same as that of twenty or even ten years ago, which groundswell is most likely most noticeable in education. Though still hard-working and conscientious, contemporary students are progressively coming to expect more than just a passive exchange of information and knowledge during the course of their learning; they're, I think, gradually requesting a more participatory role within their education, which might, ultimately, spill over into the broader social and political realms.

This dependence on change in educational methodology is exerting growing strain on the teaching profession in China to change. The Chinese teachers and professors I caused were equally industrious and wanting to help and learn. And though what is an abstract remains the biggest market of authority in the classroom, they are continually asked for much and given little in return; they for the most part are underpaid, creating a fraction of their American counterparts, while doing more with less. And they sense the limitations of their traditional ways of teaching... those that have been ingrained in to the culture since the time of Kongfuzi. With the brand new generation of students coming into their classrooms, the old methods prove to not be working so well. The twenty-first century is requiring people who can perform more tha just memorize; instead, abstract thinkers are going to be needed and the teachers and professors want to the West, strangely enough, to provide them with the teaching tools to accomplish this goal. And just as with their students, when exposed to new and different means of teaching, such as collaborative learning and independent thought, Chinese teachers are slowly finding out that melding innovation with tradition brings success.

At the risk of over generalization, I could say that the students, and certainly the faculty members, are really different from those I've grown accustomed to in America. Because education is not a right, but rather a privilege in China, both groups generally take their studies, educational mission, and teaching responsibilities quite seriously. Due to this fact, I submit that both American and Chinese cultures and educational systems can learn a good deal from each other.

Note: The aforementioned article has been excerpted from the photo narrative entitled An American Academic in Li Bai's Court: China Photos and Reflection, created and compiled by John H. Paddison. Copyright 2010, Paddison-Orvik Publishing.

Copyright 2011 Paddison-Orvik Publishing.

John H. Paddison is Professor Emeritus at Central Arizona College. He taught there and at several other colleges and universities after receiving his PhD from the University of Arizona. Paddison's writing career started with numerous non-fiction publications in the training field and contains since branched out to the fiction genre with the publication of his literary novel The Brothers' Keepers. Upcoming publications include a photo narrative of his travel experiences in China, entitled An American Academic in Li Bai's Court: China Photos and Reflections, and a novella entitled The Neighborhood. For more information, or even to post comments on these works, please head to: [http://www.reflectionsofchina.com].
My Website: https://pastelink.net/ui97w6ll