Job Discussion Forums

[Old Dog]

I gnash my teeth.

[Talkdoc]

Related, explain to me the psychoeducational wisdom in making university students take 25% more classes each semester for three years so that by the end of their junior year, they have completed all of the required credits to graduate but may not graduate until the end of the fourth year (although they still have to pay a reduced tuition and dormitory fee even if they choose to return to their home towns to work). This makes absolutely no sense to me unless the point is that it is cheaper to pay teachers overtime than it is to provide less classes for four continuous years (but I'd have to do the math on that one).

Old Dog - I think recruits in a Marine boot camp have more discretionary time than your students do.

In addition to having to take 12 to 17 classes per semester, my university has now instituted a mandatory "study hall" which is held seven days a week from 7:40 pm to 9:30 pm. Every student is assigned to a classroom, proper use of time is monitored and attendance is taken. A student missing one session without permission has his or her name placed on a "wall of shame." Any student who misses three study halls is expelled.

I just don't get it.

Doc

[latefordinner]

OD:

[Zero Hero]

Questions I would ask are, what are they supposed to do if they are not at school, where are they supposed to go, and who is supposed to look after them?

Besides, you can't expect to brainwash an entire generation with only a few hours a day of instruction. Twelve hours a day is much better for these purposes.

[rickinbeijing]

Old Dog,

You may be old, but apparently can be taught "new tricks" unlike that teacher you describe. Progressive educational wisdom is indeed sorely lacking in mainland Chinese schools. John Dewey, who lectured on the merits of experiential learning at Peking University in the early 1920's, must be rolling in his grave.

What I find so disquieting about these arbitrary if not capricious rules of student conduct is they are based more on whim than solid classroom observation (re: action research). Might it be possible that students who are inclined to play ping-pong are disengaged from the traditional attention to examinations? The cause-effect relationship, as you imply, is tenuous at best.

Chinese education is still stricken by the Confucian notion that quantity makes quality: relentless study and drill will bring about thorough learning. It is, of course, a notion that needs to be buried deep under a manure pit.

My students are enslaved in classroom instruction until 5:30 p.m. six nights a week and for what end? By mid-afternoon, the vast majority have tuned out. One begins to think the practice is either punitive or, I fear, a simple matter of convience for parents who typically work until this time themselves and would rather not have little Johnny running around on his own. And this ridiculous control, as TalkDoc describes, extends into college, where undergrads are monitored like children.

Latefordinner's post reminds me of what prompted Robin Williams' character in Dead Poet's Society to take his stifled youth out onto the football field. Were I to do the same I would be castigated and branded as something akin to a capitalist roader during the Cultural Revolution.

Carpe Diem!!

[millie]

Now come on, Old Dog,

On another thread you had come to some view that young pups cavorting about your town in their glad rags and c0cking their legs wherever they please may not be quite de rigueur.

Fair enough.

However, you can’t nibble at the bone while still simultaneously using it as a tool of (elderly) female subjugation.

Now, you inveigh at some local old biddy simply because she wants to put your lazy whelps to productive work, more often than not.

In these younger and more youthful days (almost within the glimmer of my memories - you too, Old Dog may recall ) if you don’t give these young pups a full days toil, they will soon be using the bone for intrusive purposes on those nether regions best left unknown.

M

[Old Dog]

I've dribbled soup on my tie.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Relevant article BELOW...Years ago...What happened to the Reforms? The folks at the TOP are NOT ignorant about pedagogy. Problem is, for the HSs...it's "teach for the test." The high pressure for the university entrance exam is related to the limited number of universities, yes? But...if there are more universities...and not enough jobs for the graduate, that can be a revolutionary situation. (As I write this, I'm listening to the movie Dr. Zhigavo...)


China Introduces New Curricula into High Schools

China has introduced new curricula in its senior middle schools this autumn in an effort to step up educational reform. The new courses have been adopted in high schools in ten provinces and municipalities on a trial basis, according to the Ministry of Education. The new curricula features updated science and technology information as well as more selective courses, and it encourages class discussion and debate. The reform aims to improve students' creativity, independence and imagination, according to ministry officials, adding that it will help Chinese students learn things that are not explained by the textbooks.

For 20 years the challenging college entrance examinations have driven students to memorize their textbooks word for word, depriving them of flexibility in the way they think, according to educational experts. Students have complained that they have had no time to read what they like or to express what they really think. Many of them have said they know little about what really happens outside of shool. The Ministry of Education began to develop new curricula for high school students in 1996. (People�s Daily 10/19/2000)

[bendan]

[Roger]

School life is similar to the life of a convict in a reform-through-labour camp (in Russian: a gulag). I have just completed a book on CHinese gulags and come across a chapter that explained why some one third of inmates died like flies:

They were given around 800 to 1200 calories a day, depending on various circumstances (including availability of greens which included grass in lieu of veggies that the poor soil could no longer produce...).
Then it was decided that people were dieing because THEY ATE TOO MUCH FOOD, i.e. greens!
Their rations were cut!

The death rate didn't diminish as planned, so a new culprit had to be found (and those responsible for finding those culprits were the leaders of each camp who feared a knockback from other authorities placed higher than themselves): it was decided that SALT was to blame.
Forthwith their daily grass gruel came with zero salt! The taste was so horrible people had difficulties eating it even though they were emaciated, overworked and hungry.
In the camp was a sort of tuck shop; it suddenly started doing a roaring business by selling SOY SAUCE, which, as you know, contains a lot of salt. The tuck shop was independent of the camp, so the PSB (in charge of the camp) could not legally stop sales of soy sauce...
But salt was eventually too "expensive" and it was replaced by minerals, later by MSG (which many of you hate in instant noodles).
Throughout these dietary changes the death rates varied very little.

What might surprise westerners the most was that inmates hardly ever rebelled against their camp's dictatorship. They resorted to hoarding grass, roots, leaves, bugs - and when found out would meekly submit to a round of punishment (reduced food supply and solitary incarceration).

Maybe this sort of mindset is still vivid in CHina...

[rickinbeijing]

Interesting historical account, Roger, and no doubt true but teachers and students who were not ALIVE at that time would not know about it since their school textbooks would omit such a clear indictment of the present regime.

Therefore, any correlation in thinking between the mindset that permitted that to happen and what is happening at Old Dog's school and elsewhere is tenuous at best. One needs to look deeper--and further in the past--for the social origins of this mindset.

Sidebar: one should not pair the word "vivid" with mindset. If it's a mindset, it's ever-present. But then, perhaps, this language usage is standard in South Africa from whence you've come.

[rickinbeijing]

CMM,

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not an apologist for the CCP since your own curriculum practices from what you describe are consistent with progressive pedagogy. So I won't go there. I'm familiar with that MOE directive which, like most such pronouncements from the Commie government, must be taken with more than a grain of salt. It's mainly for public consumption to give the appearance of active curricular reform. In fact, very little is done in terms of policy implementation as there is little consequence for not doing so.

How do I know, you might ask? I am currently the sole foreign editor of the revised senior middle school English curriculum, work which I do gratis to assist a former Chinese colleague. While this curriculum framework is in of itself genuinely progressive it remains to be seen whether it is actually implemented/enforced. Curiously, many of the mandates announced at the time of the article you cite are again being announced in this new curriculum. One has to wonder why that would be necessary.

bendan,

As most of us know here, what you have observed about middle schools is quite accurate. The simple fact that there are far more students who wish to enroll in universities than there are seats at them continues to give life to the exam-driven curriculum.

Experimentation in course design and adoption is arduous even in most Western universities and therefore, by contrast, more difficult than walking the Long March in China. Many departments, notably English, have NO elective (re: optional) courses on offer. Students cannot determine their courseload from semester to semester nor, in most instances, the sequence of their courses. Most cannot take courses outside their own departments.

This shouldn't surprise one: these things require organization and coordination, something most Chinese campus adminstrators possessing of a languishing socialist mindset cannot navigate. If you've ever tried to buy a return train ticket from the city where you at present, I'm sure you get my meaning.

[Bet]

I do believe it is simply about control. The obedience must be unquestioning and mindless, remember. The teacher is asserting her power, possibly in response to pressure from "above".

[Old Dog]

Lest anyone think that this school is a repressive institution unrepresentative of China, let me add the following:

The school is a key national high school. It and its related Junior Middle School are top of the pecking order in this area. In one, the "pass mark" in the Jnr. Grade 3 exam to enter here is set so as to take the cream of the students from the area. In the other, the queue to gain a place via its competitive entrance exam is long indeed.

The High School has a long history of outstanding success in the National Examination. It is trusted by parents - but, in turn, it trusts the prejudices of parents in relation to the sort of regime they think is best to allow success in the National Exam.

In recent years, enrolment increases in the High School have seen the arrival of students of modest capacity and the village preference of teachers is to seek success for them via hours and hours of drilling via "exercises". Maybe this is the way to success in Chinese examinations for students of this type. The sad thing is that this dreadful regime is applied also to classes of the most outstanding students. The two most prestigious schools in this area, Suzhou Middle School and Nanjing Foreign Language Middle School, adopt much more liberal and enligtened regimes with outstanding success. Though their methods are not secret, sadly they are not borrowed for application to the brightest classes here.

What happens here happens in most Chinese schools. Sometimes what happens here could well appear to be enlightened if compared to what I know of what goes on in some North Jiangsu and Hubei schools. In those poorer parts, there's absolute desperation to succeed and that desperation produces outrageous distortions of "humanity" and good sense.

I write of things here only because I know of them and I know of them because I'm part of the furniture and hear things. As Chinese schools go, this is a very good one - or rather these are. But I do wish they would place a greater emphasis on the psychology of learning and human social development.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

I taught at 2 govt. Teacher Training Institutes--in Shanghai/Pudong and in Zhejiang. As with our students, some sat in the front rows, and many sat in the back rows. There was an undercurrent of cynicism; "We've got to teach for the test, and the parents are on our backs, so what can we do?"

As we've seen in our school, many folks have been psychically scarred by teaching. BUT...lest we forget...consider the education systems in our native lands.