A wonderful article here on China Daily said that spending for education increases annually by about 20%. As a foreign teacher here, I'm wondering how it is spent and what are the results. You can spend more money without being effective.
One of my biggest questions is: Why do children in the USA stay in school 2-3 hours less each day, have very little homework, no weekend classes and still excel in education in comparison to most Chinese students?
Now, in my opinion, Chinese students are smart. Very intelligent, I know. I teach them. They know how to study hard and for long hours. They know how to endure long classes. Children in the USA wouldn't sit through a class of over an hour. 40-50 minutes for most classes at most in the USA.
When Chinese students attend university in the USA, their success rate is nearly 100%. Very, very rare does a Chinese child fail in the USA. Why? The answer is the same—they know how to study hard.So, compared to Chinese children, American children get far less classroom instruction and far less homework at night. Yet there are over 200,000 Chinese college students attending schools in the U.S. and that number is growing by 25% annually. In 3 years, there will likely be over 400,000 Chinese students studying in the USA.
Now, I can reason and reconcile why Chinese students want to attend college in the USA. But in my year and a half here, I've met parents whose children are in middle school and the parents want to send them to the USA. It seems to me that in China, long hours, extra hours and extra days of classes is perceived as better education. Schools I've taught at here, take pride in adding classes and oftentimes, longer classes. In the West, parents, teachers and students would never tolerate this. They wouldn't think of sending their children to school on Saturday or Sunday. However, in China, it is very common.
I honestly and sincerely don't know the answers to these questions. If Western education is THAT much better, then, shouldn't Western styles of teaching be adopted in China? Again, I'm seeking reasonable and intelligent objective answers.
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