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 among the primary purposes of my original sabbatical request and my subsequent trips there. We visited a variety of elementary, middle, and high schools, along with several community colleges; in addition, I had the chance of teaching at all university grade levels. I came to learn that education has very different, a lot more deterministic consequences for Chinese students than it does for American students.

Look at it in this manner. With a population of over 1.3 billion people, China has one-fifth of the world's population: one in every five people on the planet 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 as the United States. However, an excellent part of that area is uninhabitable or sparsely populated: the Gobi Desert is non-arable and the Himalayas and the Himalayan plateau regions have proven to be largely useless; the eastern half of the nation is where in fact the majority of the people are clustered, with a good deal of the population concentrated in and around the large cities situated in that part of the country's land mass. In addition, seventy-five to eighty percent of individuals are still agrarian. Such disparate distribution and density of the populace certainly makes feeding, housing, caring for, and educating the citizens a continuing challenge, with education being a key focus.

Every school day in China, over 300 million students study in Chinese classrooms... a lot more than the entire population of America. Indeed, among my Chinese colleagues once linked 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 by the end of this crowded road lies an extremely narrow bridge called "post secondary study." If one will not cross that bridge, full participation and success in the Chinese economy is extremely limited. And because hardly any people can ever cross that bridge successfully, entry into post-secondary study is extremely competitive.

All Chinese citizens are guaranteed a simple ninth-grade education and increased literacy in the nation is among the primary goals of the government. However, given the enormous amount of students to be educated, those aims are difficult to achieve. Average class sizes range from forty to eighty, with regards to the specialization of the institution, and can number a lot more if the circumstances demand. The higher schools have smaller classes (only forty students) so the teacher can do a more satisfactory job. However, fifty to sixty students is the norm. From kindergarten on, regimentation may be the rule of the 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 known as 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 rest of their own time is devoted to homework and any additional tutoring or other supplemental courses that the parents are able. At all degrees of schooling, test results determine the caliber and quality of school the students should be able to 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 few of the university students I talked to admitted that the rigorous demands positioned on them by their teachers and parents left them with little or no childhood, a condition they vowed they would 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 and also 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. Only about website to 20 percent of high school graduates continue to technical colleges or universities and the exam results determine not merely 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 people 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 function as class monitor, and she or he 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 definitely 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've 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 faculty classroom experience involves listening, memorization, and continuous preparation for entrance exams and placements tests. However, the tests university students take are cumulative and can determine the employment they will acquire after graduation, and thus their future quality of life. The competitive nature of the Chinese education system has produced students who, generally, 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, problems 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 particular navet... a sense of innocence to the ways of the planet... indeed, they lacked the hardness present in so lots of the students I deal with in my own American classroom. The students who I worked with were highly motivated to accomplish their best since they almost universally felt compelled to have success at any cost; doing this is their duty to not only society, but moreover to their family. Parents often sacrifice a good deal in the education of these child, who involves feel deeply obligated to repay them for the training she or he has received. Many of my students said the same thing: "I must get yourself a good job and make much money so I can care for my parents. They have worked so difficult 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 unlike the individualist worldview of Westerners.

Every once and a while, one is given an epiphany, an instant of insight, if you will, that provides more information than volumes of books ever can. The first of my educational moments of enlightenment came whenever we visited several classrooms at a middle school. After the last class of the school day, I noticed many 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 school concerning this and her reply was, "These activities are section of the students' education." Schools have no janitorial force; all of the cleanup work is delegated to the students. "If the students have the effect of the health of the classrooms and the school," she continued, "they'll put a lot more effort into and value upon their education. This is much a 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 the next morning, as I left our apartment building and began to make my way to my first class, I noticed students all over 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, not sure 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 curiosity about their activities. These were more than happy to explain the mechanics and the purpose 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 may be the work determined?" I asked, still attempting to keep the conversation going.

"Each class is given an assigned area. If the area is not 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 even ridiculed by his fellow classmates... will undoubtedly be considered as somebody who is unreliable... who can not be trusted," said Gail.

Intrigued by the ingenuousness of their answers, I tried to get as much information as I could. "And I saw girls shoveling and chipping just as hard because the boys. How come this?"

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

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

I had two such other sudden leaps of understanding just recently when I visited Shenyang. In my own 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, that i didn't realize was National Day of the Teacher, a nationwide visit to which students around the country show their appreciation because of their teachers by presenting them with gifts of cards and flowers. We knew your 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 all of us being their teachers. Traditionally, the partnership of the teacher to the student has almost mirrored that of the one between parent and child, a thought 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 a huge selection of voices singing a martial anthem. As I walked onto the large concrete square in front of the twelve-story Administration Building, I saw arrayed there at least two thousand students dressed up in the drab green of military uniforms. Some were marching, some were standing in large cadres on the building steps, along with 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 receive a full three weeks of military training before they even begin their classes. A number 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 prevent university students from engaging 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 and 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 and 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 their learning; they are, I think, gradually requesting a far more participatory role in their education, which might, ultimately, spill over in to the broader social and political realms.

This dependence on change in educational methodology is exerting growing pressure on the teaching profession in China to change. The Chinese teachers and professors I caused were equally industrious and eager to help and learn. And even though the teacher remains the biggest market of authority in the classroom, they are continually asked for much and given little in exchange; they generally are underpaid, making a fraction of their American counterparts, while doing more with less. Plus they sense the limitations of their traditional methods of teaching... those that have been ingrained in to the culture since the time of Kongfuzi. With the brand new generation of students getting into their classrooms, the old methods persuade not be working so well. The twenty-first century is requiring people who can do more tha just memorize; instead, abstract thinkers will be needed and the teachers and professors are looking to the West, strangely enough, to provide them with the teaching tools to accomplish this goal. And just like their students, when subjected to new and different ways of teaching, such as collaborative learning and independent thought, Chinese teachers are slowly learning that melding innovation with tradition brings success.

At the risk of over generalization, I can say that the students, and certainly the faculty members, are extremely different from those I've grown accustomed to in the us. Because education isn't a right, but rather a privilege in China, both groups for the most part take their studies, educational mission, and teaching responsibilities quite seriously. As a result, I submit that both the American and Chinese cultures and educational systems can learn a good deal from each other.

Note: The above article has been excerpted from the photo narrative entitled An American Academic in Li Bai's Court: China Photos and Reflection, created and written 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].
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