That Great Chinese Education System

[Hannah Bell]

The latest insult to American education just arrived this week in the form of a NY Times piece describing how those Shanghai schools are so successful because of their classroom discipline, thereby managing to conflate bad teaching, institutionalized fear of public shaming, and educational rigidity with good classroom management.

Based on what I saw while teaching several years ago at the high school level in a major, wealthy Chinese city near Shanghai, here is what typical Chinese education was really like, at its near-best, at the high school level:

-- Every classroom was a bare, cinder-block-walled enclosure, no heat in the winter, no cooling in the early summer, virtually nothing decorating the walls. Students spent their entire school day in the same room – teachers came to them.

-- Every classroom held 48 – 50 students, lined up in traditional, ramrod-straight rows. Textbooks and workbooks for students’ full set of the day’s classes were piled on and under their desks – no one had a locker.

-- Teachers lectured from a dais at the front of the room. Students sat quietly at their desks and listened, took notes, occasionally recited in unison or responded, standing, to a direct question from the teacher. Questions from students were a rarity.

-- Many, if not most, lectures were straight from students’ texts, sometimes nothing more than
teachers simply reading from the textbook.

-- Teachers appeared at students’ classrooms just before lessons began, departing back to their subject area offices immediately upon finishing their lessons. Casual student-teacher interaction was minimal at best. Teachers spent much of their office time (they only taught two class periods per day) playing video games and reading the daily newspaper.

-- Copying of assignments was rampant – and tolerated. As, all too often, was cheating on exams. Scores counted more than how they were achieved.

-- I saw no evidence of what in the U.S. we would call “student projects.” Classroom activity appeared to be the same lecture and recitation style every day.

-- Students were actively discouraged from asking questions. I was told on more than one occasion that students’ parents could actually be called into the school so that a teacher could complain that the child was disrupting lessons because he/she was asking too many questions.

-- Schools had no clubs or activities and minimal if any organized sports teams. One school where I worked claimed to have two or three interscholastic sports teams, but only for boys.

-- Students typically took seven or eight classes each semester, leaving no time for activities even outside of school.

-- Never once among the hundreds of students I saw and taught did I see a student with a physical handicap or a visible learning disability. I don’t know where those students were, or if they were even still permitted to attend school by high school age, but if so, there was no inclusion.

-- Physical education consisted mostly of lining students up in straight rows and performing low-impact calisthenics and movement.

-- The last semester of senior year is dedicated nearly exclusively to preparation for the gaokou, the national, three-day-long, college entrance examination.

-- Schools were evaluated, and principals and teachers rewarded, according to their students’ standardized exam results.

-- Teachers earn extra income from tutoring. They are allowed to accept money from their own students (or gifts from those students’ parents), a sure-fire disincentive to effective teaching in the classroom setting.

-- There was no parent involvement in the schools whatsoever. Parents visited a school for only one of two reasons: to be roundly chastised for their child’s behavior/performance, or to present a gift for extra tutoring services rendered.

I could go on, but this should be more than enough to convey the message: Do we REALLY want our education system to be like China’s?

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/01/be-like-shanghai-sorry-mike.html


I'll add two comments:

1. And that's the *good* education. Rural education is reportedly several magnitudes worse. Education is mandatory & free only until the equivalent of 9th grade. A rather significant % of rural students don't even go that far.

2. The large classrooms, lecture method, absence of disabled students, reading from textbooks & rudimentary facilities (e.g. no heat in the classrooms during the winter) were all typical of what I saw during three years in a public high school in Osaka Japan as well.

Such methods only work if the students come from home already trained to accept them & study despite them. The schools are not the reason a large percent of students will *not* sit quietly for such methods is not the fault of teachers.

Nor do I expect that the President would tolerate this style of high school for his own children. Few ruling class parents would.

[Starry Messenger]

1. k&r

[Angry Dragon]

2. Your last line says it all about the path that education in this country

is going........
At least a two tier education system is what they want and working towards

[parkia00]

3. And the result speaks for itself.

Schools in China are like high volume manufacturing lines. It's the same in Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore. They are very result oriented. There is so much competition amongst the students that they are forced to excel or be left behind. Personality traits or personal uniqueness are not a priority. Laugh at them or criticize them all you want. They are churning out hundreds of thousands of scientist, engineers, economists, researchers and other teachers. I went to an agriculture university in China with a friend to visit his family members who were professors there. They had dorms for the students and gave free housing to the teachers. The place had a population of over 50,000 students and was a small city next to a fresh water lake. Anything you wanted to know about agriculture or animal rearing was available. Food crops to commercial crops. Both locals and international students were there. It was an eye opener.

[Hannah Bell]

6. gee, it sounds like pullman, washington. big freaking deal.

an agricultural college. how advanced those chinese are.

[HEyHEY]

8. And any Chinese person will complain that they have no innovation cause of this

I once asked a Chinese co-worker to use his imagination, and he said to me, "How do I do that?"

I'm not kidding. The ability to memorize is not the same as the ability to think. I should ad that Korea and Japan are not like China as much as you think. While they are disciplined, they also encourage innovation.

[Brickbat]

4. But they test so AMAZINGLY AWESOME!

Therefore, IT'S AWESOME!

Why anyone would want to emulate this system is completely beyond me. The fact that so many "innovators" and "consultants" seriously consider such things makes me furious.

[parkia00]

5. Cause maybe....

if employees are interested in hiring an engineer they are interested in the applicants knowledge and understanding in their field of engineering rather than the applicants knowledge of playing the violin or some other skill that is non relevant to their work in which they are being employed for?

[HEyHEY]

7. Great, they can learn that in university