教室 – Classrooms


As the first semester of my life in China passed, my site-mate Bethany and I were asked to volunteer in a local middle school. The students were excited as we entered the classroom for the first time, and we were nervous. The students seemed to fill the room: there were 50 at least. The desks were shared between 2 students who sat on a sawhorse type of bench seat. The room was very dirty, the blackboard was cracked and falling down, and the windows were broken. Despite these things, the students were sitting at their desks prepared to learn whatever they could from us. It’s not difficult to wrap your mind around the fact that, for the students, the only strange thing was the pair of foreign teachers entering the room: they had experienced what we would consider sub-standard and they had experienced it their entire lives.

Later, when I left the bathroom, I appreciated the fact that I was a product of the American Education system while at the same time being frustrated that this was the case. In America I had all the benefits of classroom heating, smaller class sizes and excellent facilities, but I was also less tough because of it. There is something truly shaping about the elements and environment in a Chinese classroom. What students survived and endured made them more able to cope with the same conditions in the future. Upon visiting my apartment, one student said that it was “too hot!” (I know that my apartment stays around 60 or 65 degrees during the winter).

In the classroom the students wanted us to sing songs and dance for them. Their English level was so low that I wondered what exactly we were expected to teach them. I said something like, “What do you want to learn?” in Chinese and I heard a few students mechanically turning pages in their books while other students stared blankly, waiting for a show. China has a way of filling me with frustration at times, and one thing that makes me angry is the perception of the foreign teacher and of western ideas. We are too often seen as entertainers and not as educators (though, under their noses we were teaching them through curriculum-based games and student-centered projects).

Almost every book I have picked up about American teaching methods or American teachers contains misinformation. When this is coupled with a National curriculum, the result is a large group of people with the same wrong, misleading, or confusing information.

As an American helping out, I want to know what I can do. Have me pronounce words and help them with their fluency. Give me a job. Tell me the goal and let’s work toward it.

My own classrooms are rife with signs of inadequate funding. Desks and chairs are wobbly and falling apart, there is no projection system for showing presentations, the tiled floors are breaking and the one sign of anything new, the television set and DVD player, are both somewhat unnecessary.

The students who are conscious of their money don’t buy regular pens, but fountain pens that can be refilled from cheap inkwells that they buy after pooling their money. When they are practicing for calligraphy class they write on old newspapers. They save their calligraphy paper for their final work.

Lights burn out and aren’t replaced. Strings that connect to the light switches break and lights are left forever on or off: whatever the state of those lights when the string broke. Hallway walls are smeared with dirt and badly in need of paint. Door locks are broken and, in the haste of new construction, the bars have not been replaced on the lower windows.

In the winter my students huddle together through winter classes in an unheated building. They carry around bags of water that are electrically heated to keep their hands warm. But the windows still remain open for a fear of stuffy air being too unhealthy. I guess broken windows aren’t so bad, after all.

The same is true of other schools, though many other places have scrambled to make improvements whenever their School Evaluation approaches. Money seems to appear from nowhere as muddy roads are covered with sand, “listening” labs are dusted and shipments arrive in large boxes while the people installing the new equipment look with confusion on all the wires and buttons. The National Evaluation, performed at the request of the Communist government, determined funding and is an important part of the school classification system. Spending is determined by face, not real need. Students in college during non-evaluation years are more likely to suffer through inadequate technology, substandard classroom environment, and cramped living conditions.

A large part of understanding the Chinese classroom involves a basic knowledge of history. Despite boasting a 5,000 year continuous history, only certain aspects of it are required to grasp what Chinese education looks like today. These various aspects include the Chinese writing system, a dynastic past, Confucianism, and modern development. These relatively few elements compose the Chinese classroom that is typical of the provinces: Emphasis on memorization, teacher centered instruction, respect for the authority figure (teacher), and changing classrooms that range from a few desks and a chalkboard to modern computer-projector systems complete with stereo sound. Though, I have yet to see these more modern installations in my own school.

The classes in which I taught lacked the qualities of most other colleges in China. Even other Peace Corps Volunteers would send PowerPoint presentations along via email and I would shake my head sadly, unable to use it unless I scheduled a campus-wide lecture. Technology was unavailable, or only available for more important classes than mine. So while my colleagues and fellow volunteers in larger cities didn’t think much of their ability to create a slide show of pictures, I agonized over my own inability to do the same. I thought of ways to gain access to better technology through discussions with people who could make things happen in the school, but the level of cooperation was low. There were times I toyed with the idea of trying to get a grant, but my suspicion that the school could afford more technology (but refused to buy it) was too great.

One of the most frustrating incidents involved two deans and several people who were in charge of the computer labs in a building across campus. My insistence upon computers that would record spoken audio and play it back seemed reasonable enough. After all, I was teaching phonetics – a course that required the students to hear what they were saying and compare it to native speech. After phone calls made by both deans, one of them escorted me to the technology building to find out if I could use a room.

It seemed promising at first. There was a room that included about 100 computers and access to the Internet. We would be able to download Audacity for student use. I just needed microphones and headphones for 40 students, which could be shared amongst the four 2 hour sections that I taught. And I needed permission to use the room – to negotiate a time.

Ultimately my hope was crushed by evasive answers and indirect responses. Excuses were made. Circumstances were invented. The final word? That computer lab is reserved for computer science majors. I was angry enough to drag everyone up to the room and point as I said, “Look. There are plenty of computers! The few students who are using computers aren’t working on computer science, they’re chatting on QQ!”

The real reasons for things were often concealed in China. The cause for the cover-up might be an irritable boss, a desire to spare someone’s feelings, or even that they didn’t want to do it. But there was never outright refusal. One quickly learns the word “maybe,” and begins using it with American friends when they want to be less direct. We carry the linguistic nuances between cultures and find ourselves lying to spare someone’s feelings or explaining something in a drawn-out, indirect way. These are the verbal equivalents of customs like pouring the drinks of friends before we poured our own, or putting some food in the bowl of someone next to us.

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Dustin Ooley