After spending some time here I've changed some of my original opinions. A lot of my original opinions relied on what I was told by others. Things I was told by the school, the teachers, the people from Ciee. But I've started to view things differently.
For one the attitude of the students. Before coming to China I grew up with the American stereotype of the Asia student. Children with Asian parents were always very smart, very diligent and hard working. They always listened to their parents and did what ever they were told. Many of them were played instruments and were good at them. They not only worked hard but were very respectful of their teachers. Sure, not all students were like this but a lot of Asian-Americans followed this stereotype. I always learned (as many other Americans do) that it had to do with the traditional Chinese culture. That education was revered in Chinese culture along with elders. Chinese youths were always to listen to their parents and teachers and had to make them proud. But in China it's nothing like that. Sure traditional Chinese values state that one should respect their parents and there's a lot of pressure on children (especially in those families with only one child) but here kids are just as disobedient and rude as they are in America - if not more.
The High School I've been placed in is the second best in the whole city (it was number one for a long time but then another High School got "foreign experts" and is now above ours). By the way, this is a city of about 3 million people that spans multiple districts. The High School is the sixth best in the province of He Bei - population 72 million. If you ask me, that's pretty good. But you know what? Most of the time I can't get the kids to shut up long enough to learn anything. Sure - they see their classes with foreign experts as not as important as their other classes and they just want to watch movies in my class so they're disappointed when I try to teach them. But still, when I talk to the other teachers they say this behavior is normal.
There's one thing I've figured out about the Chinese way that I was never taught. This is a society of all or nothing. It's seen a lot in the students. There are a few students who are very intelligent and they know it. These students work their asses off and do very well in school then they do very well on the 高考 (the standardized test at the end of their senior year of High School) then they go to a good college and then they get a good job... ect. This is how it's suposed to work. But for those students who don't believe in themselves. For those who have been told they're not that smart- they just give up. It's sad that after teaching for a few weeks I could figure this out. But I talked to the teachers and they reaffirmed what I felt. The bar is set so high in China a lot of students set themselves up to fail.
In my classes I know the kids who are the best at English. They sit their and answer all the questions, they try really hard and they make me happy to teach! But their are maybe 2 or 3 in each class. That means about 50 students out of the 1,000 students that I teach. You think being a teacher in America is hard? It'd challenge you to come here. And the smart kids - the kids who are interested - here are treated the same as they're treated in America - like reject freaks. I think it's worse here. By the time I got to High School I took classes with people who were intelligent and cared because we had a level system in my High School. They have a level system here too... but it's not the same. Students are split up into one of 10 classes. Each class has 50 students and one class room. The kids take all of their classes in the same class room with the same 50 (mostly more) kids. Except PE, music, lab sciences, and computer courses - those are in different rooms. So sure class 1 are the smartest kids in their grade but that doesn't mean they're at the same level in math or science or English as their fellow class mates... If you see where I'm going. I hace a few students in class 10 (the lowest class) who speak English better than kids in class 1. In fact my grade one class 3 class is terrible at English - the whole group. But grade 1 class 6 are pretty good. IT's hard to cater to students' needs when you're given 50 students of completely different levels.
The other issue is that I'm not a teacher I'm a commercial. This is the thing that has upset me the most since coming to China. I was talking with a Chinese man about it yesterday and he very much agreed with my feelings on the subject. The 高考 is what parents and teachers care about, getting a good score on the 高考. We complain about this in America to - that teachers teach to the test instead of teaching kids for the sake of learning. I think in many ways the students are brainwashed. There is no oral English on the 高考 thus my oral English class doesn't matter. In fact being able to speak English isn't something 99% of my students care about. Sure there are some who would like to, some who find English interesting. But educationally they don't care.
In my classes last week I stressed pronunciation with the students (well duh - it's an oral English class). I taught students that you had to put the stress on the right syllable in a word to have the word make sense and put stress on the right words in a sentence to make a sentence make sense. The saddest thing about this is that they'd never learned that in English class before. I had the students read lines to a song one by one (the song was Call Me Maybe) and most every students didn't look at the line till it was their turn, wouldn't even know it was their turn though we were going in order then squint at the board (their eyesight is all horrendous!) and mumble out the sentence word for word emphasizing random words. "so CALL me mayBE"became the refrain of the song.
I told the students over and over that if you speak like they were speaking no English speaker would ever understand them, but they didn't care. Like normal teenagers they cared more about not getting made fun of by their friends for trying so we spent a half an hour going through the lyrics to one song with the students rarely improving (even though - if you know the song - the lyrics are very repetitive). I stopped one of my classes and I told them that's just not how the exercise was going to work. I told them the challenge wasn't being able to read the words - I knew they could read the words. I said to them that I knew most of them had been learning English for a very long time. I then asked a student how old he was when he started learning English. I had to repeat the question three times, I said it in different ways and as slow as I could. He still didn't answer till another student translated the question into Chinese. Want to know the answer? Six... He was six years old when he started to learn English and yet he couldn't understand a simple question posed to him multiple times said at the speed of molasses. I even checked with the teachers in the school to make sure that I didn't have an accent that was difficult to understand and they assured me I didn't. It's just that speaking English doesn't matter to the kids.
I am in the school simply so the school can say that they have me. So they can keep their high rank. So they can ask for more money from their students. So they can get more students to go there. It's sad but it's true. Every time they take a picture of me I think to myself that it'll end up on some advertisement for the school. I know it's a cynical outlook, but the sad truth is that it's true.
As the friends I've met here in China have put it - they just exploit foreigners. And sure - some schools aren't like this school and some of the students really listen when I teach and there are rotten apples everywhere. But what it really comes down to is that all those traditional Chinese values have made schools in China into lucrative businesses. Every parent thinks that their kid deserves the best education, is the smartest kid, and just needs the right education to succeed. So the schools market the best education (on paper) that they can to stay competitive.
Want to learn more about Qinhuangdao? Checkout this website my friends made. (There are even some pictures of me on there!) http://qhdconnect.spruz.com/
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