Job Discussion Forums

[MW]

Share your opinion on this subject?

Unlike most western institutions of higher education where students are, by definition, there to learn; in China, college students are treated as `experts` in what makes a good teacher and in what curriculum and teaching methodology will best suit their needs. It has even been suggested that expatriate English teachers �would do well to let themselves be taught by their students ... what learners consider most important, or what learners prize - or despise. ... What expatriate teachers consider to be important may not be considered so by Chinese learners� (Ming-sheng Li (1999). This attitude is not limited to expatriate teachers alone, but threads throughout higher education in China. As yet we have failed to discover how middle school graduates become so expert in teaching methodology and style within the mere months between middle school graduation and college admission. It is likewise unknown by what process they lose this �expertise� if they embark upon their own teaching careers, which requires a two-year apprenticeship. We ask, how can one judge what they themselves are not able to do?

Students play a major role in the evaluation of teacher competence and methodology. Students collectively, through the weekly class monitor reports, and individually through teacher evaluations at term end, give their �expert� opinion on how well the teacher taught the material and whether or not the teacher met their expectations. These evaluations are critical in administrative decisions to retain, terminate or promote teachers. The student�s evaluations are also pivotal in administrative decisions whether, or in what amount, to give the teacher a term-end bonus payment.

Quite literally, students may hold a teacher�s professional life or death in their hands, as well as their economic prosperity. This student influence compels teachers to forgo a difficult and challenging curriculum, to reduce academic standards, and to engage in little more than a popularity contest to ensure their very survival as a teacher. Teachers thus forgo discipline, challenging homework, and challenging testing. �According to regulations, students have to score their professor�s performance at the end of the school term. Professors who score poorly may have their bonus withheld. This system not only encourages students who cheat, but professors who are reluctant to offend them.� (www.china.org.cn, (6/3/02).

Student influence has also forced teachers to adopt a grading system of �A�, �B� and �C� with only an occasional �D� and almost never an �F.� Situations where administrators have administratively changed an �F� grade to a passing �D� grade, over the opposition of the teacher, are not uncommon. Once admitted to college, a student will receive their graduation diploma, so long as they are still breathing at graduation time. (Skolnick, Andrew A., (1966) �Goldfish Out Of Water: Teaching Science Writing at a Shanghai University�, ScienceWriters: The Newsletter of the National Association of Science Writers; Qiang/Wolff, (3/03) (in peer review), �Chinese University Diploma: Can its International Image be Improved?�.

Students may go so far as to choose to boycott a particular class because the teacher gives too much homework, or requires too much class participation, (which from a student perspective may mean loss of face by articulating their answers in poor English), or gave low grades on the mid-term examination. The administration, faced with such a class boycott, may simply replace the teacher in mid-term without even consulting the teacher. The errant students are not disciplined while the teacher is penalized for actually attempting to provide a quality education. Teaching is reduced to a popularity contest. The popular survive while the unpopular may not.

Beijing University, a top tier University, has adopted new disciplinary rules in recognition that students use their influence to plead with, threaten or even bribe a professor to obtain preferential treatment. (China Daily, (6/28/02 )

However, as these phenomena remain so common in Chinese higher education, it is not a reason why the academic, moral, or administrative standards of a 3rd tier college should be any lower than those elsewhere. A 3rd tier college should not use these as reasons for delivering anything less than a first class education to its students.

The current student evaluation system amounts to little less than spying and encourages vindictiveness. Student feedback in China is reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution thinking about checking on educated people (i). While student evaluations are valuable and constitute a necessary part of improving teaching quality; there has to be verification of student comments, by an independent faculty member, before students� opinions are used for promotion, retention, or bonuses.

Students have a disproportionate influence and reduction of the emphasis and credibility attached to the student�s evaluations would, we believe, benefit all universities and colleges in China by providing an environment conducive to increasing the level of scholarship.

(i) The attack on the Three Family Village quickly moved from the papers to the schools. Students were encouraged to pen their own excoriations of the traitors, as one newspaper put it, opening "Fire at the Anti-Party Black Line!" Pupils made posters vilifying the scoundrels' names and plastered them over every available wall. Thus they carried out their duty to "hold high the great banner of Mao Tse-tung thought!" The banner of Mao's thought soon wrapped itself around the necks of more than just the Three Family Village. Schoolchildren were encouraged to find other literary works rotting with revisionism and antirevolutionary notions. The children leapt avidly to their homework assignment. But they became even more enthusiastic a few months later when a new directive came from above: ferret out bourgeois tendencies and reactionary revisionism among your teachers. The new task was one to which any youngster could apply himself with gusto. That teacher who gave you a poor mark on your last paper? He's a bourgeois revisionist! Humiliate him. The pedagogue who bawled you out for being late for class? A capitalist rotter! Make her feel your wrath. Revenge had nothing to do with it. This was simply an issue of ideological purity. Students examined everything their teachers had ever written. In the subtlest turns of innocent phrasing, they uncovered the signs of reactionary villainy. At first, they simply tacked up posters reviling the teachers as monsters and demons. Then all classes were suspended so that pupils could work on sniffing out traitors full-time. Instructors who had fought faithfully with Mao's revolutionary forces were suddenly reviled. Others who considered themselves zealots of Maoist thought were pilloried as loathsome rightists. (Howard Bloom, 'THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION' a chapter from The Lucifer Principle)

[Roger]

A timely reminder to many newcomers to China! Nothing but facts!
You wrote this probably as a parallel thread to the one on Ming sheng's dissertation.
To me, the discovery that students were spying and reporting on me came as a shock many years earlier, and so far I have been wondering why nobody ever brought this up on this forum!
And since our teaching methodologies must by necessity differ from the common Chinese ones we are a lot more vulnerable to vindictiveness and unfair criticism.

The whole is rather reminiscent of the so-called "great (sic) proletarian revolution".

It explains why we have to put up with so much mediocrity.
A simple solution would be to staff English departments at top-tier colleges and universities entirely by expats, and by sticking strictly to objective, fair exams that are held by teachers from another school that don't know your students personally.

There is an american-run campus affiliated with South China University that is doing just that. For students, it is total immersion in Western life while being in their own country. The govbernment has so far refrained from interfering with that college, a most encouraging sign!

[MW]

Roger -

Tell me how I can send you the entire article if you are interested.

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade MW,
Bravo! Once again you have rallied in the face of certain defeat. Although Roger has certainly posted many times on this board your eruditions are more succinct and insightful. I am sure you will be a leader here in China in the ESL Industry. Please keep up your steady amount of postings. It is tiring to keep up but I know that only by following all of your threads that I will become a more knowledgeable person in the ESL Industry in China.
I wish you health and happiness and a long career here in China. Comrade, may I offer a suggestion. Maybe you should design a web-site where all your ideas will have more proper forum for display. I would set it as my homepage. Think about it as your dedication is inspiring. May you live 10,000 years comrade MW
DRAGON

[yaco]

Dear MW

How did you obtain my email address ?

After reading your 20 page dissertation about the state of the ESL industry in China, at least I never have to read your posts again.

Bravo Roger - You are spot on about employing more expats in Management positions in English Departments in China !!!!!!!

[MW]

Yaco -

Now I am confused ----

How did I get your email address? You gave it to me of course!

Are you OK?

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade,
Yes, attack those who try and thwart your message. They must be purged from this forum. Long life to Comrade MW 10,000 years
DRAGON

[yaco]

Dear MW

I merely wish to teach you good manners !

If you wish to send me a private message that is acceptable.

You may then request that I receive a copy of your 20 page dissertation, but you do not send this without my permission.

[MW]

If you do not want telephone calls you do not publish your telephone number in a telephone book.

If you do not want emails you do not publish your email address on the internet.

You published your email address and then claim that anyone who wants to send you an email must first PM and ask permission? I do not think you have anything to teach me.

Thanks anyway.

[Dragon]

Dear Comrade MW,
Yes you are once a again so astute in you email knowledge and phone number publishing. My god I still cannot beleive it has been only a few days since you came to this forum yet you have been in this great country of china since 1978. The masses of students praise you for giving up your life overseas and so do we in the ESL Industry.
Live forever MW
DRAGON

[yaco]

Dear MW

You do not send unsolicited spam emails to people without their permission !!!!!!!

I rewceive many PM's from this forum but not 20 page disserations on the state of the Chinese ESL industry.