China’s Education System
The following was written for me by Cherry, to explain a bit about the school system here. I’ve asked for some followup on the more interesting tidbits – such as the “manager students.” I don’t know who they are, but I bet they weren’t popular. (Edited to ad a paragraph on sudden death).
There are more people interested in China’s education with the increasing number of Chinese students studying overseas. Although China used to have famous educators like Confucius who still has a far-reaching influence in today’s world, China’s existing education system incurs (warrants) some criticism.
Overview of China’s education system
In ancient times, without a public education system, Chinese people employed teachers personally, thus education was a luxury that only rich people could afford. In the early 1900’s, China started to set up school system that learned from western countries. Today there is a free primary and middle school system in China. Recently, a system of 3 years kindergarten, 6 years primary school, 3 years middle school, and 3 years high school forms the basic educational infrastructure in China. Within this infrastructure, a 6 years of primary school and 3 years of middle school education are free of charge countrywide (nationwide). In capital cities, children start their school life from kindergarten at age 3 while there are still many children who start from primary school at age 6 in the countryside.
After graduating from middle school, students need to take a high school entrance examination. Students can choose to enter secondary vocational and technical school or high school separately, depending on their scores. In order to enter college, students have to pass a college entrance examination.
In China, a bachelors degree is set up on a four year full-time schedule; a masters degree takes 3 years full-time studying, while normally it only takes 3 years for a doctoral degree (which is shorter than Western universities). The studying time is quite fixed in colleges comparing to their western counterparts’ more flexible timetable. Besides full-time colleges and universities, there are many part time schools in China’s colleges and universities. However, the education quality (quality of education) in part-time schools is much lower than full-time schools. As a result, many recruitment advertisements announce that only a full-time education background is acceptable.
School life
Primary, Secondary, and high School
In China’s schools, there is a monitor and a vice-monitor chosen by the chief teacher or elected by the students in the class. Besides monitors, there are some “management level” students chosen or elected. These students probably have special power in the class, like “super students”. Secondly, a teacher is assigned to be in charge of a class, whom we call the “chief” of the class. The chief is responsible for almost everything in the class, which heavily relates to his or her performance at school. Finally, there are many ways the classes compete with each other at school, like sports competitions，discipline, sanitation, (test) scores, and so forth. In short, we can imagine a normal student’s school life here. Probably, what they did, what they said, what scores they acheived, will all be reported to their parents sooner or later. Furthermore, normal students have to endure a school life watched over by the management level “super students” and their teachers.
College
College students have much more freedom compared to their younger counterparts. The difference between college students in China and their Western counterparts is that there is still a chief who is in charge of the class. Frankly speaking, however,, China’s colleges are not as strict as western colleges. Many colleges have no penalty for students’ absence or late assignments. I remember I often skipped my lectures and some of my classmates had many excuses for their late assignments without any penalty from the lecturers in my college. On the other hand, in Australia, any late assignment meant zero score when I was studying there and the attendance rate was important for undergraduate students there.
Teachers
Education background
In China’s kindergarten and primary school, most teachers graduated from secondary vocational teaching school, a three- or four-year teaching school after middle school. The education they have is equivalent to high school graduation. In order to improve these teachers’ educational level, recent requirements are to study for a bachelor degree in China’s big capital cities, like Beijing and Shanghai. Concerning the real situation, that these teachers can not compete with the high school graduation students in college entrance examinations, they are allowed to enter colleges’ night schools as part-time students. However, it is widely known that most of them just chase a degree rather than academic knowledge. They copy essays; cheat at examinations; even bribe their teachers during their college life. A classic story was told by one of my friends, Owen, a senior manager in a Fortune 500 company. Owen told me that his wife, a primary school linguistic teacher, asked him to complete her exam paper for her English final examination in her college- Zhejiang University, one of China’s top 10 Universities. (He did not know where the exam paper came from. Probably one of his wife’s classmates stole it from their college or bought it from an employee at their college.) When the examination day arrived, she brought the completed exam paper to the classroom. Her classmates (they are primary school teachers too) really appreciated her homework. They copied her paper during the exam. Because so many classmates copied it, finally she could not find the original paper. It must have happened that somebody wrote his or her own name on it and handed it in. She cried and had to sign her name on an unknown paper as her own.
Teachers in middle school and high school are required to have at least a bachelors degree in the major of education. Some of them have masters degrees. However, college lecturers’ education background is verified. Some of them just have bachelor degree, while most of them only have masters degrees. In China, there are still very few lecturers have doctoral degrees in colleges.
Characteristics & teaching methodology
Compared to other teachers, lecturers in college are more flexible and relaxed. Primary, secondary and high school teachers are responsible for not only teaching, but students’ behavior. In order to control their students and compete with other classes at school, Chinese teachers are quite strict and stubborn. They hate any noise and undisciplined behavior happened in their class. Students who question their teachers’ academic knowledge and teaching methodology are not appreciated(!). Moreover, students who have questions out of school (outside of the core curriculum), like life, value, love and so forth are considered an annoyance. Because of heavy teaching tasks (workload), especially because of the pressure regarding performance in the entrance examinations such as high school entrance exams and college entrance exams, teachers have to emphasize academic knowledge that must be tested rather than practicing. (teachers have to focus on material that will be on the exams, rather than a broader range of material.) Two years ago, when I attended a parents’ meeting at my daughter’s primary school, I heard her English teacher talking to some parents and her opinion was quite clear: Language practicing is useless for exams. The reason is simple: English entrance exams in China are focus on true or false options rather than listening, speaking, reading and writing. I was shocked at that time. In today’s Shanghai, the most advanced capital city in China, primary school English teachers still focus on true or false options. It reminded me of a Chinese saying we have known for thousands of years: “Do not listen to anything outside your classroom. The only thing students need to do is focus on their textbooks.”
Moreover, in order to have high scores in entrance exams, teaching methodologies emphasize memorizing and repeated exercises. Students are requested to repeat similar assignments for the main points in their textbooks. Normally, a student is required to complete not only an assignment from the teacher, but several similar additional exercise books bought from bookshops as daily homework.
In order to get into college, most high school students work all day and night during their whole high-school life. There were some news reports of “sudden death” – dropping dead from exhaustion – occurring several times in a high school. The youngsters in this high school get up at 5 o’clock and go to sleep at 12 o’clock every day. They have no holidays, no weekends, no entertainments except assignments and lessons.
Finally, it is common that many teachers, especially public school teachers require presents from students and their parents. On some important festivals, like Teachers’ day, Mid-autumn Festival and the Spring Festival, students and their parents are encouraged to send presents to their teachers though it is illegal in China. Even some college professors cross the line, soliciting sexual favours from female masters and doctoral candidates.
Academic Subjects
Outwardly, academic subjects are quite complete in China’s primary school and middle school. Students have linguistics, mathematics, foreign language (mainly English), history, geographic, politics, physics, chemistry, computer science, biology, arts, music and sports(physical education) lessons. However, linguistics, mathematics, and English are the most important three subjects because these three subjects are the compulsory subjects on the entrance examinations. In China, all the students’ efforts are only for the entrance examinations.. Besides these three subjects, extra-curricular activities such as music or participation in the Math Olympics are encouraged as they can win extra points on college entrance tests. Moreover, because of the additional scores added in entrance examination for minatory nationality people, some Han students change their races for the college entrance competition, though it is illegal in China. Because all examinations in China are limited to paper tests, students invariably emphasize academic knowledge over practical experience. It is quite common that a bachelor of computer science could have outstanding scores in mathematics, physics and software design in college but does not even know how to set up a computer or how to make an Excel spreadsheet or power point presentation.
In conclusion, although education in China has had huge improvements in this century, there are still many problems to be found in today’s China.
It’s way easier to learn English (or any language) by speaking it; then pass the true or false test using your ear, rather than all that crap you memorized. And then you have the added plus of being able to talk to people.
I used to tell this to my students; concentrate on learning Spanish, and you’ll breeze through my class… concentrate on breezing through my class, you’ll neither learn Spanish nor breeze through my class.
The problem is, what if you have no access to a speaker at all? I learned that many Japanese, for example, learn English from a teacher who never says a word in English, merely directs them to the appropriate passages in the book to study. I’m sure the same is true here. Under those circumstances, your options as a motivated student are pretty limited.