Just before Christmas, I agreed to teach English to a class of 5 to 6 year old Chinese children. What I wasn't told was that the nursery was a two and a half hour drive out of Qingdao, deep into the countryside and the furthest possible nursery to come under Qingdao's jurisdiction.
After a considerable journey along an infinitely straight road straddled by endless rows of bleak, bare trees, we pulled into the car-park of a nondescript single storied building. A door opened, a plump Chinese woman appeared and bundled me into a classroom. Opposite a chalkboard covering an entire wall sat three rows of tables, each surrounded by roughly 15 children, all still enveloped in bright, thick, winter jackets. The room was cold, and decorated by faded paintings. I was immediately conscious of the silence and the 45 pairs of eyes suddenly upon me. For most of these children, I was the first non-Chinese person they had ever seen. I'm not the most foreign looking of foreigners due to my heritage, but I was still different enough for the children from other classes to scramble close to the windows to gape at me.
I was handed a elementary level English book, full of cartoon pandas and tigers speaking English to each other, and instructed to read aloud. I'd read "Hello, I'm Panda," or "How are you?", and would be echoed by 45 voices, except for those who still found me too novel and so just stared with open mouths. The long 'read and repeat' session was followed by playing simon says, where I'd yell 'stand', 'sit', 'big', 'small', 'eyes', 'nose', 'ears', 'mouth' or 'feet'. After the game, the teachers wanted me to try talking to some of the students on a one-to-one basis. A name was called, and a boy at the back of the third row stood up. As clearly and as slowly as possible, I said, "Hello, my name is Holly, what is your name?" He looked at me with blank desperation. I smiled with encouragement, but he remained mute. A teacher behind me stage whispered the translation, and was met with equal failure. The teacher then said his name, and he finally mumbled his own name in echo. He was told to sit down.
Another name was called; a girl in the middle of the third row stood up. I tried again, "Hello, my name is Holly, what is your name?". "What is your name?" was her response. I said with emphasis "My name is Holly, what is your name?". "What is your name?" came back at me. The teacher beside me was mouthing the girl's name, trying to save face. She looked from me to the teacher with a baffled expression until she was told to sit. A girl in the second row was picked, and sticking to the familiar script I recited, "Hello, my name is Holly, what is your name?". "张新雨*," she said wide-eyed. Progress. "Hi, 张新雨. How old are you?" I ventured, but it was clear I'd asked one question too far. She repeated my question back to me while the teachers all made hand gestures for the number six. She sat down. A new name was called, and a boy two seats down jumped to his feet. "Hello, my name is Holly, what i-", "-SIX" he bellowed. He was quickly told to sit.
After several more face-losing tries, the teachers selected a girl at the front of the first row, with pink flowers tied into her pigtails. I had noticed her as the most on the ball during the game of simon says. Unlike the others, she looked excited and pleased to be standing.
"Hello, my name is Holly, what is your name?".
"My name is 刘佳蔚*," she replied beaming.
"Hi, 刘佳蔚. How old are you?"
"I am six years old."
"Wow. Do you like school?"
"Yes. I like English and my friends."
(*created names)
Satisfied that I was now impressed with the standard of English in the class, the teachers now asked me to teach the children to sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas. This entailed me singing the first verse solo to a room of nonplussed children, perhaps more painful was watching their teachers trying to get them to copy me. I know how it feels to be forced into singing a foreign song to which you barely know the tune and even less of the words, trust me, I've been there (Year 7 Mrs Garcia's French class. Such an ordeal. My tactic was to mime). After that abject failure, it was time for photos! I felt I hadn't really achieved anything apart from scaring a few children, but the teachers were grateful nonetheless. It wasn't often a foreigner was willing to travel this far to teach, they said. As a thank you, I was presented with a book of traditional Chinese drawings and a box of special celery.
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After meeting these young children so briefly, I began to wonder what their futures had in store for them. Furthermore, I was curious about the Chinese education system that is laid out in front of them. If I remember correctly, the Chinese education system's top 5% of students outnumber all of the students in America. An education system whose 3rd graders are roughly equivalent to American high schoolers in mathematics and the sciences. But it is also an education system that many are trying to escape from, what laowai Mark Kitto calls a 'test centre' in his
article about his reasons for leaving China after calling it his home for 16 years.
China maintains a state-run system of public education consisting of a mandatory eleven years, with a further four years spent earning an undergraduate degree at university. Compulsory education is divided into 5 years at primary school (ages 6 to 11), 3 years at junior middle school (ages 12-14) and 3 years at senior high school or a vocational school (15-17).
Chinese students sit an exam at the end of junior middle school called the ZhongKao to determine which high school they will attend. Naturally, competition to get into junior middle schools that have a good track record of getting students into top senior high schools is very competitive. So from the age of 12, an examination culture has already set in. Students must leap one difficult hurdle in order to be well placed for the next.
At the end of senior high school, students who wish to apply to University must sit the dreaded GaoKao 高考, the be all and end all of your path to higher education. Chinese Universities do not hold interviews and do not ask for personal statements. Everything depends on these exams. Even your degree choice will be decided by your results. Students do submit a preferred subject, but if, on the day of the exam, they perform better in another subject, they will most likely be funnelled into a degree different to their preference and therefore without any passion. The GaoKao examination's main focus is Mathematics, English and Chinese. Students also select the path of either natural science (biology, chemistry, physics) or social science (geography, history, ideology, political science) for further GaoKao exams. When I spent summer 2011 in a home-stay in Yantai, the family's daughter was a senior high school student. Even though I was there on a summer study course, the daughter spent more time studying than I did. After breakfast she would disappear into her room, emerging only for dinner. Once, I asked her if she was doing homework, she answered that she wasn't doing homework anymore because she had completed it all, she was now studying to get ahead of the course. It really is
study-until-your-nose-bleeds stuff, the pressure on an only child to succeed must be immense. Without social security or benefits, the onus of supporting parents and two sets of grandparents falls on one set of shoulders.
Everyone agrees the GaoKao is difficult, but is it effective in educating China's young people? By educating, I mean allowing students to apply the wealth of knowledge they've accumulated to the wider world, to stand on their own two feet, to make connections between ideas to make something original, to create someone who is confident in their opinion but willing to change when faced with new information, and so on. Ok, it's a lot to ask of any education system to do this, but one can hope. So, the GaoKao can sort those who know the syllabus from those who don't, but everyday I meet people who "studied" English for years to pass the exam, but can't speak a single sentence. They possess an impressive vocabulary earned through years of reciting word lists, but don't understand when English is used in real life. Following the
syllabus with pinpoint precision and obeying orders is the key to success in Chinese schooling. My language partners are always shocked when I tell them I've been studying Chinese for two and a half years, whereas they spent five or six years learning English and can't hold a conversation (this could also be due to the fact that the Chinese believe that their language is impenetrable to foreigners, therefore any level of fluency in Mandarin is amazing).
Even though the GaoKao is a national exam that every student must take, I recently learnt that the goalposts move depending on where you live. China's most prestigious universities are Beijing University and Qinghua University, both situated in Beijing, with other top class universities in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Xian. Which is lucky enough for pupils with a Beijing hukou (a document that sticks with you for life, without it you are not entitled to an education, healthcare, etc), because both universities will accept lower GaoKao grades from Beijing students. So much so that I recently read a Chinese article titled "究竟是北京大学还是“北京人大学"" which translates to "Is Beijing University actually Beijinger's University?". The following is an excerpt:
以去年高考为例，北京只有7.3万考生，北大计划招录人数为614人。而河南、山东、四川、安徽、湖北、河北，六省参加高考的人数是北京的45.5倍，北大在6省计划招生总人数却只有409人，六省加起来远不及一个北京。
Taking last year's GaoKao as an example, there were only 73,000 applicants from Beijing, of these, Beijing University planned to accept 614 students. However, the number of students taking the GaoKao in the six provinces of Henan, Shandong, Szechuan, Anhui, Hubei and Hebei is forty-five times that of Beijing. Of these six provinces, Beijing University only plans to accept a total of 409 students, these six distant provinces combined are not as good as one Beijing.
For a student applying from the countryside or a different province, a higher score than the city-dwelling students is necessary to gain a place. There was me thinking a state-run system of education for all would be equal.
What about life after the GaoKao? Personally speaking, after a term of intense revision, I tend to view my use of time as wasteful compared to how much I can get done when in revision-mode. So, after the burden of the GaoKao, do Chinese students pursue their lives of indefatigable academia into University? Apparently not. From all the Chinese university students I have spoken to, the GaoKao is the hardest thing they probably will ever do. In fact, university is relaxing in comparison. And the system of learning for exams carries on into University education, something students are already used to and comfortable with. For example, one of my language partners studied English as her undergraduate major. Upon hearing this, I wanted to know what she thought of English literature, so I picked literature's most well known figure, Shakespeare, as a point of discussion. She told me she had never actually read any of Shakespeare's works, she had only read commentaries of them recommended by the teacher so the information could be recited back for an exam. I can't think of anything more tragic for an English student. For me, getting to grips with Chinese through its short stories and poems is one of the joys of my degree, there is a joy in reading words for yourself that no commentary can communicate.
Thinking back to that room full of young faces, I can't help but feel sadness when I think of what lies ahead for them. I know no education system is perfect, but I do believe that learning is and can be made fun. Especially where originality and individuality are celebrated, both of which are lacking in the Chinese system that underlines rote learning and removes choice.
