Education in China

This is our last blog from our trip.  This one will be in relation to the school we taught at and education in general in China.  We certainly don’t know everything there is to know regarding education in China, but we did spend 6 weeks there observing, teaching, talking to some people who were very candid with us regarding education there and reading some information from a book called “Catching Up or Leading the Way.”  It was written by a man who was born, raised and educated in China.  He now teaches at Michigan State and his two children have been born, raised and educated in the USA. He claims our system is better and has many good points to back this up.

Some of the things in the blog have been mentioned before, but much of this is new.  We didn’t want to send too much information on this topic while we were in China.  We don’t think that we were monitored or watched, but we didn’t want to be critical over the Internet and cause some problems while we were there.  The people there were very nice to us and seemed eager to learn from us.  Whether they can or will follow through with some things that were suggested, remains to be seen.

China’s educational system is heavily based on testing.  This is true on all levels: elementary, secondary and university level. It is also heavily based on rote memory.  The subjects that are most important are: math, science, Chinese and English.  The other subjects (social studies, music, art, phy ed, etc.) are taught, but not part of the 12^th grade exam (gaokao).  Writing is NOT emphasized. We were told that very little writing is done until grad school.  There is presently a big scandal in China regarding people whose doctoral dissertations were not written by the people themselves.  They apparently hired people to write it for them. Don’s students (juniors in college) had very poor writing skills in English and he was told by a Chinese professor that if they could have written the assigned paper in Chinese, it still would have been poorly written. (Also the majority of the papers was copied and pasted from the Internet.)

As we mentioned earlier, class sizes are large (even 40-70 on the elementary level). Teachers shout out information and students shout it back.  It is common to hear young students repeat what they hear adults say (as they are taught in school). K-12 schools are rated as very good to very poor schools and this is reflected in their name.  For example, the best school in the community in which we lived is titled Gaoxin #1, the second best is Gaoxin #2.  It often costs under-the-table money to get into a “very good” school.

Original thought and creativity are not part of the curriculum.  Some of this may be political but this is the way Chinese (and most of Asia, for that matter) education has been for centuries. They invented the civil service exam centuries ago, which was based on stating facts and filling in blanks (again memorization) from famous Chinese quotations. Don had a difficult time getting them to make choices or give opinions during class “discussion.”  Relating facts was what they were more comfortable doing.

Doing well on the gaokao (high school final exam) is extremely important.  This determines whether you can get into a public (their best) university  and which one. Some students are told NOT to take the exam (to prevent their high school from having a lower test score average). Poor test scores are the student’s fault, NOT the teacher’s fault. Cheating on the exam has been documented, and there are very severe penalties for cheating (banned from public colleges).  Private universities are for profit and will accept anyone who has the money (around $2,000 per year for all expenses at our university). Some students are bright, hard working and interested in learning. But some of them commented to us, that many at the university are NOT hard working, good students. Because they pay extra money to go to school they expect to pass and (we were told by other foreign teachers) they do, regardless of how they do in class.  Don failed approximately 40 of his 245 students for very low test scores (20-30%) and plagiarizing their required paper.  We’ll probably never know if they really did fail the class.  The test he gave was one he would give his high school juniors, of which maybe 1 or 2 would score that low (out of 125 students). The great majority of the students who failed only came to the final exam (not the other 3 or 4 classes).

The biggest problem that the Chinese see with their own educational system is that they rely too much on rote memory and testing. (This is true of most, if not all of the Asian nations – high test scores, little practicality when it comes to actually working and producing.)  They know that they need problem-solvers and creative thinking people to succeed in the 21^st century.  Economically they get by now with copying our products and using their cheap labor to undersell us and the rest of the world. This already is ending as other nations pay their workers even less. They send a large minority of their brightest to USA and other foreign universities to get better training. Some of their top national graduates can’t perform on the job, as they only know how to memorize and test well (well documented in the book “Catching Up or Leading the Way”).  They also have a high suicide rate because of the testing pressures. China is trying to incorporate more “Western” style teaching (thus hiring teachers like us).  But they have a tradition of thousands of years of memorizing and testing to judge educational success.  This makes the transition tough. Their main current solution is to send many of their best overseas for university and graduate work, as previously mentioned.

Of course this is ironic as many in this nation want us to test of children as never before and judge their school solely on these test scores.  Be careful what you wish for. We can adjust to that, but will that make us more competitive in the 21^st century where problem solving and creative thinking will be more important than spitting out facts?  Back in the 50s (Sputnik) people blasted our educational system and predicted disaster.  (We should copy the Soviet system; they obviously know how to do it better.)  How did those Soviets do, by the way??  Every decade people have blasted our system (certainly not perfect), but we still have the best overall economy and most creative people.

Copy the Asian or European systems?? – End secondary school at 2:00 pm – give 3-4 hours of homework every night (Chinese elementary school day ends at 6 PM with homework.), no special ed in schools, no special help in the schools (only privately available at your expense at home),  no extra curriculars in school, tell 20% of the students at the end of 8^th grade they’re done with school based on their test scores and train them for low paying service jobs, tell another 30% that they can’t go to university at the end of 10^th grade (based on test scores), but that they can go to technical college, then the other 50% have one test that determines if and what university that they can go to. If they fail, it is their fault, not their teacher’s fault or school’s fault. Do you see us going to this model in the near future??  Yet, this is what we are being compared with!! – Is this even comparing oranges to tangerines??  Sorry, but I could even go on longer.  Read the book “Catching Up or Leading the Way” to get a real good comparison of the systems.



Building #1 with Media Rooms (gray partially due to air pollution; building in which we both taught our classes)

One of Don's classes; 18/31 showed up for first class; notice jackets because it's cold & notice cracks in wall because of poor workmanship



Bobbi with some of the enthusiastic and friendly faculty who were her "students"

Trash in classroom because students are responsible for cleaning and only do so special occasions; wasn't cleaned for at least 3 months

Classroom graffiti; students didn't show much respect for the classroom

Student dorms with "green" dryers in full use; most rooms had 8 students living in them with 4 sets of bunkbeds and not much open floor space 

Phy Ed class on sports field (artificial surface); most phy ed was dancing & various exercises rather than game-playing

 

Last Week in Xi'an

This is our last full week in Xi'an. It was a very nice weather week with temps in the 70s both Wednesday and Thursday. Even the classrooms were decent temperature. We saw many people without coats for the very first time.

Today Don finished teaching and testing in his classes. With many students (about 1/3) not attending class often or at all until test day (!!), the scores on their test were not very good. For the great majority of the students attending class, note-taking meant copying down the Power Point outline and no additional notes or comments. So even many of those students didn't do well. He also gave them a short research paper to do on factors in the American economy. Most thought that meant: Internet, copy, paste. Thus, those scores were not very good either. They were also embarrassed when confronted about their plagiarism. Writing skills are not emphasized until their senior year of college (these are juniors) and not really emphasized until grad school. A little different than the USA. His mentor here was fine with what he did and said that Chinese students have to learn more about thinking and writing skills.

Bobbi also finished her mentoring and working with the Chinese teachers and students. A couple gave her parting gifts and there were many photos taken to remember their English teacher. It's hard to see people so hungry for information when it's SO available to so many others in the world. The classroom was a very rewarding experience.

Saturday night Kristi, Romee, DT and Kelly all arrive here from the US. We will spend two days here, then 3 in Beijing and 2 in Hong Kong/Macau. After that restful week, we will all head back to the US on or about April 10 and we're looking forward to seeing you! Thanks for staying in touch throughout the 10 weeks of our adventure. We really appreciated the news from home and support of friendships.

Driving Tips; Out & About

We have learned 2 things re: transportation tips that you might want to try right away. People here drive their motorcycles without the lights on (day and night) to save gas!! With gas prices going up, I'm sure the police in the US would understand if you get pulled over for doing that. And, many cars have red ribbons tied to their exhaust or car frame to ward off evil spirits. Haven't seen any evil spirits, so it must be working.

Tuesday Bobbi was able to visit a huge truck manufacturing plant to try to set up the tour for Moraine Park teachers coming here in the summer. The name of the company is Shaanxi Automobile Group. They make semi truck tractors, tour buses & some military trucks. They made 100,000 trucks last year and 90,000 stayed here in China. The rest were shipped to at least 20 different countries. The man who showed us around is a former student of an administrator who now works at this univ. The tour-giver is quite high in the company, managing the engineering & research depts. They have 1200 engineers, some from the US. Hopefully one US engineer will be able to meet with our faculty this summer to give them a better explanation of the operation. It's very neat, very clean and very lean. Their business model reminded me of WalMart: spartan offices, few if any perks and EVERYone wearing the same blue jacket. I was very pleased to FINALLY get to visit a mfg site. It's been a source of contention between this univ & me since I arrived.

400 Trucks Built/Day; 20,000 Employees; Biggest Factory in China's 5 Northwestern Provinces

Most of the week was teaching and doing nothing special. Heat has been off in the classrooms & apartments since March 15. Because people like to leave windows open in the classroom buildings, the room temps are in the 50s (we guess) for over a week now with the cold, cool week & night-time temps hovering above freezing. Don taught with four layers on and many students kept their gloves on during the entire two-hour morning classes. About 5-8 of his students in each class have never shown up. (Remember the night-mare of taking an exam after forgetting to go to class?) We have been told by other teachers that they will show up on the last day, take the test and expect to pass, maybe even asking if they're going to pass before taking the exam or submitting Don's required short paper. Since they pay extra tuition to come to this private school, that is (supposedly) the main criteria for passing. We may never know.

Some of Bobbi's English Teachers

One of Don's Classes

Cleaning Crew Anywhere?

Saturday was very nice and we went to another park (lake, paddle boats, walking paths, games, etc). As soon as we walked in the park we were like rock stars. Very young kids ran up to us to practice saying "Hello." Older kids asked to have their picture taken with us. After about 10 minutes things settled down. But later on we were sitting on a rock people-watching and we heard, "Bobbi, Bobbi, is that you?" It was one of her students who again wanted a picture taken with us. An hour later we were in the Old Walled City area and we heard "Bobbi, Bobbi, is that you?" A young lady from our campus saw us. Being a celebrity can be tough.  (See pix from other posting:  Xi'an.)

We ate dinner at a dumplings restaurant (no English on the menu to help us out; tour books need to indicate this). We were able to convince them that two 18-course dumpling dinners were too much for us so they let us split one and we still walked away quite full - but with enough room for dessert & WiFi @ Starbucks.

At night we attended the Tang Dynasty Cultural Show at a "Las Vegas" style theater. Actually the theater, performance, music, costumes, etc., were all quite good & we enjoyed the show. So Saturday was a full day.

Sunday Don is going to work out with the local rugby group (and try not to get hurt) and we will walk to a restaurant for dinner later, as it is a another really nice day. We'll try a Thai restaurant in a grocery store complex. They were doing some construction work there the first time we walked through & the smells drove Don out. Hopefully that's done & we can enjoy the dinner. Bobbi has a lot of requests for topics to be covered in the last classes this week, so some homework for that & Lakeland are in the picture after a power walk on the very nice rubberized track on campus.

We're really looking forward to having our 4 kids here next weekend. My students love seeing family pix and may want to tag along Sunday & Monday so they can meet them, too. I'm not sure if there will be anything to write about 'til then & after the kids get here, we hope to be too busy to write much until we're home. Thanks for reading our ramblings - and all the reply msgs. Internet sure makes being away from home a lot easier than when we taught in Estonia.

Quiet Week

Not too much excitement this week. We both had classes this week and that was what we did (school and preparation) most of the week. The weather was quite cool early in the week, with a slow warm-up to about 60 degrees both Thursday and Friday.

Wednesday a teacher from Canada offered us to join him to go to a Muslim restaurant very close to campus. The restaurant is about the size of 3 dorm rooms (counting the kitchen). It had 8 tables we believe. After the shouts of "Death to America" and "Long Live the Ayatollah," things settled down and we could eat. (Just kidding of course.) They were all very nice. Our meals were a mixture of noodles, potatoes, a little beef and lots of spices. We also had a bottle of Fanta orange. The meal was $1.25 and the soda was 10 cents. Watching them make the noodles on the spot was also entertaining. It was another experience.

The next night we owed a guy from Illinois a meal, so we said, "Where ever you want to go." We ended up at the same place. After chants of "Death to..." just kidding again. We tried the same meal, this time with rice instead of noodles. Not as spicy, so Don liked it better. Bobbi & the guy split a bitter melon dish that tasted like squash.

Saturday was a cool, wet day. The usual group (foreign teachers) trip to the "Western" supermarket (Metro) was in the morning. We then walked to a local outdoor market to get some flowers for our place, the lady next door's birthday and for a party Bobbi was going to that night.

That night Bobbi went to her girls' nite out party. Guests were from USA (Bobbi), France, England and China. It was fun with the British host telling us this was the first time she's ever hosted a party. I didn't realize it was for supper so we'd already had spaghetti here. I nibbled a bit & we watched, "When Harry Met Sally." It was funny but I'm not sure how much the 2 Chinese ladies understood. They laughed a few times so they definitely understood some. It was a dark but very short walk home. Don watched the Super Bowl game from this past year. The Packers won, again !!!

In a little while we'll head out to the Shangri-La to see what they have for brunch or lunch. We hope you're enjoying the weekend and we'll get in touch in a week or when something exciting happens - whichever comes first.

The first attachment is of our 2nd meal @ the Muslim-Chinese restaurant. The 2nd two are of the "noodle guy" making noodles.

Tang Dynasty Parks, Lakes & Paradise

It was just another beautiful day in paradise this weekend, Tang Paradise that is. Both Saturday (especially Saturday) and Sunday were very nice - 65-70 degrees and as sunny as it gets here.

We spent both afternoons at the Tang Paradise parks. They are like the big Milwaukee parks, but geared towards cultural emphasis. There were small lakes, nice walkways, trees (just starting to bud out) and grass. There were also amusement rides, games and food and drink stands. The theme is Chinese history, in particular, the Tang Dynasty.

The park on Sunday had some live performances and another fountain show & was gearing up for summer. There weren't many people there. The $15 admission might be the reason.

Saturday morning was shopping time as most of the foreign teachers head off to a "western" store (on a university bus) to stock up on groceries for the week. It is also a time to catch up on the past week and get to know each other a bit. With us being here only 6 weeks (the rest are full year teachers), we are the non-conformists - and also the only couple.

Sunday night brought in a change of weather (windy and cool), so it was good timing to have the nicest days on the weekend.

Here's a note on the Tang Dynasty from Wikipedia:
The Tang Dynasty (Chinese: 唐朝; pinyin: Táng Cháo; IPA: [tʰɑ̌ŋ tʂʰɑ̌ʊ̯]; Middle Chinese: dhɑng) (June 18, 618–June 4, 907) was an imperial dynasty of China preceded by the Sui Dynasty and followed by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. It was founded by the Li (李) family, who seized power during the decline and collapse of the Sui Empire. The dynasty was interrupted briefly by the Second Zhou Dynasty (October 8, 690–March 3, 705) when Empress Wu Zetian seized the throne, becoming the first and only Chinese empress regnant, ruling in her own right.

The Tang Dynasty, with its capital at Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the most populous city in the world at the time, is generally regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization—equal to, or surpassing that of, the earlier Han Dynasty—a golden age of cosmopolitan culture.

Don: On Sunday we went downtown to first visit the Little Wild Goose Pagoda, which is open until 5:30. But we got there at 4:20 and they don't let anyone in after 4:00 - so a bummer.

Then we walked to the Old City and went to a market just inside the wall. This is the artists' alley. It was very touristy, nice and not too crowded for some reason. We bought some essential souvenirs and that was that.

Next we walked to the Star Ferry Restaurant (modeled after the famous Hong Kong ferry). It was a nice, low key middle range price restaurant. We both had shrimp dumplings and sweet and sour pork (with the bones still in them). None of our fellow foreign teachers chose to join us, so we ate by our lonesomes. The staff there had quite a time keeping orders straight and we had 5 meals and courses offered to us that we didn't order. A young Chinese man next to us laughed with us, and helped move the food to the right table.

After dinner it was dark and we enjoyed the Old City all lit up. The two Towers looked very nice as did many other buildings (see pictures). The Wall is lit up as well along with the New Year's decorations, which are still up. A taxi took us to the Big Wild Goose pagoda park (with the famous fountains) and that was also lit up. (see pictures). Neon lights and other string, flashing lights are common (ala Vegas ??).

Bell Tower @ Night

Today was Monday and back to work. I have two morning classes of about 30 students each. They went fine, though depending on the AV and tech equipment to work (wires not connected to anything are common) is always a concern. They assured me that everything would be working by Wednesday, when I start my 2nd full week.

Today was truly nice - 60 degrees, no wind, very little haze and for the most part, blue skies. We both sat out on our balcony of our villa (what the local teachers called our apartments) and did some reading and school work catching some rays.

Bobbi: My afternoon class was supposed to be delayed 10 minutes because tomorrow is Women's Day. I knew there was a connection there but had to do a little thinking. It seems that the faculty start the celebration a bit early with a rope-pulling contest. Don walked over with me to see it, but nothing was going on so we went inside. Don planned to use MORE paper & make some copies, but the copy machine wasn't working. I went to my classroom thinking that perhaps there was a miscommunication and it would be my Tuesday class that was late. Well, I waited 35 minutes & decided I really didn't know what was going on. I was able to get things ready for Tuesday's class as I waited so the time wasn't lost. I packed up to leave and when I got close to the outside door, I could hear lots of noise & sure enough, the rope-pulling was going on. When I walked outside to watch, one of the teachers I worked with last week came up to chat. She asked if I'm Russian because she thought my face looked Russian. Eventually she had to leave and another teacher chatted with me. Finally, it seemed the contest was done, but there were only 20 minutes left of my 1 hour, 45 minute class. Someone asked me if we were going to have class and I said "yes" and went back to the classroom. By the time everyone got situated, we had about 15 minutes but I did get through one exercise. They were all apologetic but delighted with their rope-pulling prizes and glad to have the first class done. The teachers are very talkative and "participative" to use our educational jargon.

Don had some noodles & shrimp cooked for supper. I thought I bought a mango for dessert but it was some other fruit that Don didn't like. Snickers bars to the rescue. Our lunch today was the best meal yet. We threw all caution to the wind and bought some sliced breakfast ham in a pkg on Saturday. We also found Land o' Lakes Monterrey Jack & Pepper Jack cheeses and Kewpie mayo. I conjured up all my culinary skills and toasted ham & cheese sandwiches for lunch. I thought mine was great. Don thought they were so-so, but I hope to find the packaged ham again. I blanched some cauliflower over the weekend & we had it with some ranch dressing. My first guess on yogurt was a good one so I've stuck with that brand and had that, too. I was full but walked 3 miles on the nice, rubberized track out our door. My next culinary experiment will be mac & cheese. Don doesn't really like it, but he'll come around. We even found ketchup for it! We couldn't find shrimp sauce but found some hot sauce so we're going to pretend it's horseradish & mix it with the ketchup some day soon. Stay tuned.

Betty Crocker

Weather and Work

From Xi'an, China:

We haven't had a lot of excitement lately but there were some new changes in our life this week.

The rain and wind that we had over the weekend and into Monday cleared away much of the smog and haze that we had our first 10 days here. We have seen the sun each day since Tuesday and it has been a little warmer each day (mid 50's now). The last two days were mostly sunny in the morning, but gradually more haze as the day went on. In the past I had seen forecasts of "smokey" and we now know what that meant. The immediate forecast is dry and some sun; how much sun remains to be seen. Because all of China is on one time zone, and we are 700 miles or so west of the east coast, the sun doesn't rise here (now) until around 7:00 and sets around 7:00; not sure what they do re: daylight savings time.

School began in earnest this Wednesday and I have had 4 classes (of 2 hours each). The students' English, as I said earlier is ok, to fair, to poor. Some students take notes in earnest, some just listen in earnest, a few would rather text on their phone and sneak peeks at magazines. If this was Whitefish Bay, I would take away their phone or magazines. But here, they are juniors in college, adults and they can succeed or fail as they want. We'll see how my new 4 groups (Monday and Tuesday) are next week and how my 2nd meeting with my other 4 groups (Wednesday-Friday) go.

Today was a shopping day. We went (again) the the Metro superstore, this time with 5 other foreign teachers. So we got to meet them and chat a little. Two just arrived last weekend and are teaching with a group of students from Illinois and Wisconsin. They teach both Chinese and American students. The other three have taught here the past few years and are back for 2nd semester.

Then this afternoon Bobbi & I walked a mile plus to the "Lotus" superstore and checked it out and bought a few more things. Both Metro and Lotus and the local Vanguard sell everything from food to clothes to electronics (like a Super Wal-mart or Super Target). These stores as well as the local McDonald's, KFCs, Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins and local stores have around 3-5 times more employees than they need. We think that it is a requirement by the government to have all these employees, in order to open up and stay open for business.

Bobbi also had a week of classes. Here is her story. Well, both of my Wednesday classes with the English teachers were fun. What competitive people! I'm teaching them some of our teaching methods so had them out of their seats as much as possible. They are easy to engage, but hard to keep quiet when others are talking - just like students! There was an administrative miscommunication with the Thursday group of teachers. Their teaching schedules got changed so they had to switch to my Monday class. But the Monday class didn't get the word that they were switched to Thursday. I only had 2 teachers show up in my Thursday class and was worried that there was already mutiny afoot. The English Dept. Chair was in my first class & sent a complimentary email on my teaching, so maybe it wasn't mutiny. I'm starting the conversational English sessions with the students next week. They were supposed to be held right after I was done with the teachers, but I was told this week that the students are only available @ the same time as the teachers, so I'll meet with them on Tuesdays & Fridays when I don't meet with the teachers during those 2 hours. I'm disappointed to only meet with the students twice a week, but that's the way it is.

Needless to say, 12 hours of teaching per week is a LIGHT load and disappointing in not having enough to do. I've been asking the other teachers for books to read and scored with a teacher from England today. I nabbed 2 of her books before she had a chance to change her mind. If the weather was better, I could spend more time outside. Patience must be the lesson here.

We'll be half done with our 10 weeks on the road this Monday. It's always mixed emotions when you hit that point. Hopefully we'll be busy & it will go by unnoticed.

Enjoy the weekend!
Don & Bobbi/Berta