High School v.s College

So, in China, high school is really hard.  And I mean really, really hard.  And I am not talking hard in "I took 5 AP classes my senior year of high school" hard. Its more like "I have been taking AP classes since 2nd grade."

Many Chinese students, beginning in early elementary school, start a very difficult curriculum.  They head in to school very early in the morning, get out in the afternoon, and then spend their afternoons studying,.  Families with money will send their child to after school programs, and many will hire private tutors on weekends.

The goal of all this curricular and extracurricular work is to prepare the student for the gaokao, which is like the SAT's on steroids.  Now, I am not 100 percent familiar with the content of the gaokao, but like the SAT's, it is crucial in determining what college you get into.  But unlike America, where you can squeeze your way around a 950 SAT score by being a really good person, doing a lot of extracurricular activities, being an athlete, writing a really good entrance speech, or having golden recommendations  the gaokao is the only thing that determines the school you are allowed to go to.

The score you get on the gaokou determines what schools you can get into.  So, lets pretend this operates on the same score the SAT's does.  If you get a 2400 on the gaokou, you can go to any school in China.  And so you would choose the best school in China.  If you get a 2300 you can go to the 3rd best school, and any school below it; so you would likely choose the 3rd best school to go to.  If you get a 500 on the gaokao, you would likely go to the most prestigious school that accepts that score.  And the prestige of the school you go to, is going to determine your success and career options after graduating from college.  Because if you and the other job candidate both went to school for the same thing, but he went to #1 school in China and you went to the the #763rd school in China, he is going to get the job.   So the gaokao is a big deal, and students, and their parents (and usually the grandparents), spend a lot of time and money to make sure they do well in high school, attend the best high schools, so they can get a good grade on that test and get into a good university.

Conversely, once you get into college, it is supposed to be easy (well, easier).  It's like, "Phew, I just did all this hard work, and now I can relax."  Unless, of course, they have the misfortune of having a foreign teacher.  Because we, of course, thought high school was a breeze; at least, compared to college. We grew up with teachers and parents telling us, "Wait til you get to college, then no one will be there to hold your hand.  You will be responsible for yourself.  The work is going to be so much harder." And so on.  So foreign teachers are frequently frustrated by Chinese students because they often times do not think college students in China care about their courses.  Students will turn in homework late, be unprepared for projects, expect to be given the chance to make up poor grades on tests, etc.  And the foreign teacher's gut reaction is: "No! What do you think this is?  High school?!"  All without knowing that high school was a hell they just escaped from and college was supposed to be a more relaxed time.

When we (we being foreign teachers) get feedback from our students, it is typically flattering when it comes to our personality or appearance or teaching style, but not so flattering when it comes to homework.  We are often told that we assign too much homework (homework does not seem to exist in their courses taught by Chinese professors), assign too much reading, and create tests that are too difficult.  And it was not until I had been teaching in Hangzhou for probably about 6 months that I realized that the foreign teachers classes were a bit different from the Chinese teachers courses, and not just because we were not told about the curriculum (see earlier blog entry).

We would walk around during free periods to look at other classrooms, and the teachers would be standing in the front of the room, talking into a microphone, to a classroom of students half asleep (some full-out asleep) on the desks, or reading from the textbook, or playing with their phones.  Meanwhile, the foreign teachers are bouncing around the classrooms, making students talk to each other and participate, and I almost broke some kids Iphone when he took it out while I was teaching (do not get me started on the kid who thought he could take a nap in my class).

I suppose this realization that we were making their college lives more difficult did not really change our curriculum too much; after all, we had something we needed to teach them, and went about doing it the only way we knew how (I refused to lecture during an oral speaking class--what would be the point?).  But it did change how reacted to student involvement and how we structured our expectations for our students.  We made sure they understood that our course would be challenging and made sure what specific things they needed to do in order to get the grade they wanted.  We made sure they understood late assignments would not be accepted and that participation was worth 50% of their grade; so if they didn't talk and participate, they would not get a good grade in our class.  And we stopped getting so frustrated with them now that we understood the source of their attitude towards our classes.  I suppose I would be ticked too if I walked into a 100 level lecture class and learned it was being taught by some professor who really wanted to teach the graduate students, and so that was how he was going to treat this intro course.