I realized that I talk about school here assuming like you
all know how it’s like. But when one of my friends sent me an email not even
knowing what days of the week kids go to school here, I decided to write a bit
about school. So here goes.
School here is Monday through Saturday at noon. I can’t say
for sure that that’s how it is at all schools, but you can assume it’s relatively
similar. Our school holds about 2000+ students all in three different grades
and maybe up to three programs. I teach in the AP program and all kids in this
program plan on going to college in the US.
It’s a special program that they have to test into OR know/be somebody
really important (this is key since some kids do not deserve to be in this
program).
The Campus.
The kids live on campus which has dorms, a cafeteria, a soccer
stadium and basketball courts, a snack shop, a pharmacy and obviously class
rooms. The kids are not allowed to leave this campus EVER. They get
dropped off by their parents Sunday night and get picked up Saturday at noon.
Sounds pretty miserable to me. They are also required to be in the class room
essentially 7am til 10pm. It pretty much sounds like military bootcamp! And the
kicker is that during the summer before school all freshman actually do have
bootcamp! Anyways, the kids also have scheduled times to shower and a mandatory
mid morning exercise routine. O and sometimes the kids order food for delivery.
The crappy restaurants across the street pack up the food and walk it across
the street. The lazy delivery people use their e-bikes to ride across the
street.
The AP program that I am in spends a lot of their time
worrying about the kids TOEFL and SAT scores. In fact, as I’ve ranted about
previously, they like to frequently cancel classes so the kids could spend the
week or two prior to the said exam studying and not worrying about school. Well,
I’ve seen these kids study and their “studying” look an awful lot like playing
computer games. This is where my rant about the kids not caring about their classes
would be, but instead I will just say the following. I think the kids have figured
out that their grades get upwardly adjusted (if you know what I mean) by the office (who is essentially
paid off by their parents) and therefore have no motivation to even pretend to be
engaged in their classes. The smartest kid in my class frequently skips
questions on a test simply because he doesn’t want to do it. This does not
reflect positively on the Chinese education. Other kids are simply struggling because
their English is not good enough so they get lost and behind in class and are
also failing (see note about how to get into school above). Overall, my views
of the Chinese education have totally done a 180. The work ethic everyone raves
about does not exist as far as I know, and the natural smarts in math and sciences
is also not particularly there.
The bare hallways that open directly to the courtyard. Aka no heating.
Further, regarding the more fun social aspects of
highschool, there are none! There are no dances, no lockers, no signs and
posters, the class room walls are pretty much bare, the teachers don’t teach in
innovative ways, no musicals, no school spirit, nothing! When one student asked
for help with her application to some school in California, I realized that she
doesn’t meet the schools requirements because her school does not offer any
type of art, music, drama class that she needed to take to apply to that college.
The arts as we know and have taken for granted back in America, do not exist in
China. Sad. Very Sad.
Bare walls.
Three years worth of stuff piled up. Notice the phrase above the the board...
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