What’s Wrong with China’s Secondary Education System
This post has been a long time coming.
It’s hard to put this in a politically correct way. But it’s better to be straightforward and honest than trying to make a made-for-everyone presentation.
Does anything make me qualified to talk about the Chinese education system, specifically high schools? Not really, just a year of teaching English experience and friends in the same boat. But that’s enough to have an opinion.
What’s Wrong with the average Chinese High School
- Too many students in one class
- Teachers with too many meetings and too few classes
- The military-like environment of many Chinese schools
- Class division according to overall, as opposed to subject-specific, test scores
- Overworked students – No time for anything but studying
- Overly high emphasis on memorization
- The joke called English education
- Resistance to change
Warning: This is a very long post, proceed at your own peril.
Too many students in one class
(Update: More about inefficient class structure in China here.)
This is the most apparent flaw in most Chinese secondary schools, and the one that most Chinese people will most readily provide as the Achilles heel of their education system. Class size is usually at least 50 and often over 60 students per class (at my school every class was about 64 students per class). Could you learn in such an environment?
The expectation is that all of the students will sit quietly and at attendance – that culture and norms will straight-jacket students to study in large classes. But it’s not that simple.
Many teachers can’t control so many students. It’s not conducive to learning. You can imagine why.
However, while the common excuse is that this is because of there being too many students, I don’t buy it. Let’s see why.
Teachers with too many meetings and too few classes
(Update: More about ‘under-worked’ teachers in China here.)
When I was teaching English my first year in China, the pressure the other teachers felt was obvious. So they had too many classes, right?
Strangely enough, most of them had a light class-load. Both the teachers at my school and those at most of the high schools around Shenzhen taught, on average, about 8-12 classes 45 minute classes per week. Does that sound like being overworked?
Cutting the class size in half and doubling each teacher’s teaching load would make class sizes a lot smaller, and most teachers I know back home teach about that many classes. Simple, right?
But there is no denying that Chinese teachers are under pressure, despite the light teaching load. They must be at school from about 7:30 am until 5:30 pm, and often have to supervise night study sessions. Almost all non-teaching hours are spent in their offices, and there are meetings for everything. And they grade the same amount of tests and papers as they would with a greater number of smaller classes.
So why not cut out the extra meetings and add in extra class time?
The military-like environment of many Chinese schools
Some Chinese high schools seem more like boot camps than places of learning. Morning roll call and regimented exercises back me up on this. All across China morning exercises are standard fare for students – almost everybody doing the same ones, guys like this:
At the school I taught at, every Monday morning the principle would scream through a loudspeaker for an hour. Half pep talk, half scare tactics, he pointed out low test scores and achievements and egged on the students to do better.
Is yelling a good way to motivate? What do you think?
Class division according to overall, as opposed to subject-specific, test scores
In most Chinese high schools, classes are divided according to overall test scores, not subject specific test scores. Students sit through all of their subjects in one group of 50-60 students. The classes are ranked, by number.
While this arrangement undoubtedly drives cooperation and fosters a spirit of unity among individual classes, it also means that the abilities of students are matched roughly to the classes they take.
So a student good in English but bad in every other class may end up in the lowest ranked class, meaning his or her English learning will suffer in comparison to someone with similar English levels in the top class.
In practice, it means that it’s impossible to teach to just one level of English in a single class
Division according to subject specific ability may be better. It takes more coordination and planning, but can help develop the strengths of individual students
Overworked students – No time for anything but studying
The biggest complaint most of my former students had is that they didn’t have time for anything but studying. Was it true?
Most Chinese high schools are divided into junior and senior high. Each one is three years long.
The first three years are not so grueling, but the pressure to do well on entrance tests into a better high school is palpable. Even the first year of high school isn’t too bad. It’s the last two years that are killer.
During the last two years of high school, serious students are at school from morning till night five days a week, and a half day on Saturday. Hours are long and activities are few, outside of classes. It all culminates in a two to three day exam that selects those who will go on to college and which one they will get into.
This college entrance exam tests the body of knowledge that is supposed to be acquired during the three years of high school, it is not an aptitude test.
No wonder students have little time to do anything else besides study.
Overly high emphasis on memorization
So many Chinese students study all day. But how exactly do they study? While things are getting better, there is still a massive amount of rote memorization going on. What drives this, of course, is the examination system that tests all of this accumulated knowledge.
It should not surprise you that long hours of rote memorization does not help foster creativity or problem solving skills. But the long hours do prepare you for a lifetime of hard work.
The joke called English education
Let me start right out by saying that not all English departments in Chinese high schools are a joke. There are certainly exceptions. However, what I and those who came to teach English on the same program ran into were a number of reasons why many English programs at Chinese high schools are quite poor.
Some of them you probably guessed just by reading the points above. But here they are:
- Excessively large class sizes for language learning
- Division of ability according non-English subjects
- Lack of well trained teachers
- Lack of good textbooks
- Teaching to the test instead of for true language learning
- Inability to change the status quo
Read on and I’ll tell you why I think there is such resistance to change in the Chinese secondary education system.
Resistance to change
Chinese schools are not much different from public schools around the world. Resistance to change is nearly universal.
Since it would take a complete overhaul and perhaps removal of the current college entrance examination to produce meaningful change, teachers individually and even collectively as a school have little leeway to implement changes. Students must be prepared for their tests.
But time can bring many changes. What do you think?
My response. It’d take a bit of late night editing to paste it here, so I’ll just leave you with the link.
Trey,
I enjoyed reading your response and you make some great points. Thanks for the expanded and improved input.
We were just talking about this the other day in my grad school class; historically, there’s been a great deal of anxiety amongst mostly academia in the US about our inability to keep up with China (and now India). I think you bring up some very interesting points.
Hey Preya,
I think you are responding to the first post in this series instead of this one (which talks about what is good, relatively speaking, about China’s education system) – but thank you for the input.
We already are well ahead of China – the question is neither this nor for how long, but instead ‘what can we do to insure the US continues to move forward?’
By some measures (ie using CPI data based on the old calculation methods like those at shadowstats.com to figure out things like GDP growth rate and inflation) the US is not only not moving forward – it is falling behind. What is for sure is that competitive forces from around the world have caused US median (average wages might be going up still) real wages to fall over the past 6-7 years – and will likely force wages down in real terms (after inflation) for years to come.
Oh, sorry! I thought I was on the right page because the text right above my comment is from “what’s wrong with China’s secondary Education System.”
Hey Preya – no you are completely right. It was me that was wrong. =)
“What’s Wrong with China’s Secondary Education System”
The friggin’ goal of brainwashing 1.3 billion people! THAT’S the 800 pound gorilla in this room…
Well…I can say that you’re completely right about what’s wrong…
I have a friend in China. She says her school does not let her have a proper weekend; she has one day off in a fortnight.
Overworked? Of course.
But with more than a billion people in China, secondary schools have to overwork the students. Otherwise once the children grow up, they cannot attend adaqute universities and end up unemployed. I believe the reason for such a tough secondary school program in China is for the eventual good of the students.
And it also builds up (though it also sometimes breaks down) the student’s constitution. The overall grading system forces the student to work on all areas of progress as, after all, all areas of the world are linked together. It expands the knowledge of students in many areas of study and will eventually be helpful in the future for the students.
I taught in primary school for a while when I was a student in Nanjing. The classes were smaller than the ones you describe, but the degree to which even English was rote-learned was somewhat shocking. I remember walking into my first class to find that the students had already learned how to read all of the dialogues in the book – but had no idea how to use the language contained in them. The atmosphere was marginally less militaristic than the one you describe, but the portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Mao, Lei Feng etc. which hung from the walls did make things seem somewhat oppressive.
Many good points in this post
To some extent, the Chinese education system is a tragedy and everyone wants a reform
However, not sure if you have thought about the reason behind the existence of such a system –the size of the population- as long as the college entrance test system is there, the schools will have to be like that.
Everyone hates the way of enrolling college students in china, but no one has a better idea than using an entrance test that all high school graduates have to take – the test at least ensures the equity of candidates for colleges within a region (passing scores for students in different regions are different, which is quite unfair ).
Besides, I keep wandering why so many people enjoy saying bad things about china, are they doing this for china or its people’s good??
As you said, Jeremy, “We already are well ahead of China – the question is neither this nor for how long, but instead ‘what can we do to insure the US continues to move forward?’—so probably the reasons are
1. Seeing and talking about bad things in china makes you guys happy as by doing this, you can feel “We already are well ahead of China” –deep down you feel china is a threat.
2. By convicting the world that china need changes, you can find reasons for your future interference like dividing china, establishing a new government for your interest.
Frankly, nothing transcends interests and perhaps, race, in this planet.
So it’s ok to create excuses for your countries interests, but we both know it’s selfish and dirty.
No country will be a dominant character on the earth forever; there is always a limit out there, you never know, Jeremy, you never know.
Hi Dachuan,
Thanks for the thoughts. First, I’d like to say that my general worldview has changed tremendously since writing this post.
These days my view is simple: Free it up. Don’t impose these policies from above, but instead let individuals and the market decide. That means that universities and schools would not be publicly owned. I don’t want to get into such a view here, but wanted to say that out front. I’m for the same in the US, and if it happened I think all of the problems referred to above would be lessened greatly.
Also, I don’t view China as a threat. Instead, I view my government’s view of China as a threat (and vice versa).
In conventional measures (total GDP), China is going to pass the US much sooner than most experts think.
It’s great that China is rising, it’s a reflection of the greater freedoms available to most Chinese people and it doesn’t have to come at the expense of anyone. The opposite view is based on Mercantilist and Militarist views of the world that have been ground to dust in theory (now if only most people in the world would realize this).
It’s not great that America is becoming less and less free, that’s a great threat to my family and friends and ultimately to the rest of the world.
I think only half of the junior high students gets to go to highschool,and that’s in Shanghai, the most developed city in China.
Hi
I’m a Danish first-year university student and I would like to point out that our english classes in high-school (as was the case with almost all of our subjects) were as much of a joke as anything. Every other class we would be talking about grammatical errors to avoid, mistakes that we would never have thought about making if they hadn’t been repeated to us so many times. The danish system seems to be all about keeping the academic level at an absolute minimum, removing any kind of interest in intellectual pursuits.
I am a chinese high- school student (actually its a so-called top100 best high school in china)and I completely agree with you.I always feel that my time before GAOKAO(you know what it is…the national college entrance examination) has been stolen from me.My peers and I have been brainwashed into willingly abandoning our identities,interest in learning,curiosity about the outside world and dicriminability for the right and wrong since we were born.
The situation is becoming even worse.When I was a kid,I basically finished my homework within three hours every day and still got an hour or so to spend with my family and friends.But one of my cousins who is only 6 years old now typically is forced(by her school or her parents or the society…I’m not sure) to keep ‘studying’ until 10p.m. from Monday to Friday.What’s more,her weekends have been excessively exploited,which are full of those ‘special classes’.
How can a child with such a childhood develop mentally,physically and emotionally.
I’m planing to go to Canada and immigrate there,for the purpose of breaking away from the sick and fossilised ‘education system’.I’ve had enough of it.
By the way,to tell you the truth,no one ever wants a reform.Sudents’ and teachers’ complaints are pretty prevalent and you may often hear their envy of the education in America,the uk etc,they don’t approve of it from their hearts.’how possibly can a student not spend much time memorising”’what…students dispute what they are taught”teenagers in western countries can’t learn much…are they even capable of calculating 45/3(I may be exaggerating this a bit)’
The excuse that is used the most is ‘this is due to the large population.The government is making every effort to improve but the population is too large.But my argument is that the funds the government allocate to education only take up 4% of the GDP,which is much lower that the proportion for india,brazil,even many poor countries in Africa.Is education really top on their agenda as they are telling us?
To use one word to describe Chinese education,unprofessional.
To use one sentence to predict the future,a school is a society in miniature.