Cultural differences, school edition part 1
China and the United States are very far apart culturally. In some ways, they're about as far apart as it's possible to be. This makes it tricky for their respective citizens to understand each other's motives or their methods. This can lead to frustration, anger, and failure. Cross-cultural understanding is crucial if you're planning on spending any amount of time here and be successful.
I recommend Geert Hofstede's work as a starting point. His Dimensions of Culture model has been refined over a few decades of research and offers a useful vocabulary for thinking about how to navigate cultural differences. His model isn't a replacement for deep knowledge of a specific culture, but it's quite useful on its own.
Hofstede country comparisons
I've taught in China for six months, while I taught in California public schools for 12 years. My current school is a private elementary/middle school, and my observations reflect that. I'm sure someone working in a language academy or a Chinese public school would have different takes on the differences between the two systems.
The first and most obvious difference between US and Chinese schools is that Chinese schools tend to be boarding schools. Students and staff will stay at the school throughout the week and go home on the weekends. I stay on the 15th floor of a 16-story residence built on the school campus. The majority of our students, teachers, and staff stay in the residence, too. I don't know the exact percentage, but it's very high. Sunday night and Monday morning there is a steady stream of students coming into the residence with their suitcases, and every Friday there's a massive traffic jam outside the school as parents come to pick up their children.
In the United States, students rarely have the exact same class from one year to the next. Grade level teachers tend to balance the next grade level's classes using several criteria, including racial and ethnic diversity, academic ability, and special educational services. This is decidedly not the case in China. Each class moves as a cohort up the grade levels, and with very few exceptions the class you start primary school with is the class you end middle school with.
These two things mean that students grow up with a tight-knit group of people they can rely on for all sorts of things, from academic help to job placement to finding a marriage partner. The idea of a "loner" who keeps to themselves is almost unthinkable here, and from a Chinese perspective seems ridiculous. No one can make it alone, so why would you even want to try? What's wrong with you that you would even think of it?
I admire this system a lot, even though it seems so strange to my eyes.
There are significant differences in how discipline is handled here, too. Corporal punishment is still a common thing in China, and here it usually means a Chinese teacher will casually smack the back of the head of a misbehaving student or rap them on the knuckles with a ruler. It's jarring the first time you see it.
This is not how foreign teachers are expected to discipline their students, and we don't really want to anyway. It creates a difficult dynamic for us. Students don't fear physical punishment from us, so they don't act as respectful of us as they do for their Chinese teachers. You can walk into a Chinese teacher's classroom and hear a pin drop while they are working. In the foreign teacher's English classroom, there's often low-level chatter in Chinese while you're trying to teach a lesson. The homeroom teachers are very helpful to us in dealing with misbehaving students, but I always feel like I'm losing some face when I have to ask them for help. It's an issue I'm still trying to navigate well and I hope I'll get better at it with more experience.
This isn't the case with all of my classes, though. I have some truly delightful, dedicated students who treat me with the utmost respect and are a pleasure to teach.
This seems like a good place to stop for now. In part 2, I'll talk about the strengths and challenges of the Chinese students I teach, and how cafeteria food here makes US school lunches look like crimes against humanity.
Edited to clean up a couple of typos.
I recommend Geert Hofstede's work as a starting point. His Dimensions of Culture model has been refined over a few decades of research and offers a useful vocabulary for thinking about how to navigate cultural differences. His model isn't a replacement for deep knowledge of a specific culture, but it's quite useful on its own.
Hofstede country comparisons
I've taught in China for six months, while I taught in California public schools for 12 years. My current school is a private elementary/middle school, and my observations reflect that. I'm sure someone working in a language academy or a Chinese public school would have different takes on the differences between the two systems.
The first and most obvious difference between US and Chinese schools is that Chinese schools tend to be boarding schools. Students and staff will stay at the school throughout the week and go home on the weekends. I stay on the 15th floor of a 16-story residence built on the school campus. The majority of our students, teachers, and staff stay in the residence, too. I don't know the exact percentage, but it's very high. Sunday night and Monday morning there is a steady stream of students coming into the residence with their suitcases, and every Friday there's a massive traffic jam outside the school as parents come to pick up their children.
In the United States, students rarely have the exact same class from one year to the next. Grade level teachers tend to balance the next grade level's classes using several criteria, including racial and ethnic diversity, academic ability, and special educational services. This is decidedly not the case in China. Each class moves as a cohort up the grade levels, and with very few exceptions the class you start primary school with is the class you end middle school with.
These two things mean that students grow up with a tight-knit group of people they can rely on for all sorts of things, from academic help to job placement to finding a marriage partner. The idea of a "loner" who keeps to themselves is almost unthinkable here, and from a Chinese perspective seems ridiculous. No one can make it alone, so why would you even want to try? What's wrong with you that you would even think of it?
I admire this system a lot, even though it seems so strange to my eyes.
There are significant differences in how discipline is handled here, too. Corporal punishment is still a common thing in China, and here it usually means a Chinese teacher will casually smack the back of the head of a misbehaving student or rap them on the knuckles with a ruler. It's jarring the first time you see it.
This is not how foreign teachers are expected to discipline their students, and we don't really want to anyway. It creates a difficult dynamic for us. Students don't fear physical punishment from us, so they don't act as respectful of us as they do for their Chinese teachers. You can walk into a Chinese teacher's classroom and hear a pin drop while they are working. In the foreign teacher's English classroom, there's often low-level chatter in Chinese while you're trying to teach a lesson. The homeroom teachers are very helpful to us in dealing with misbehaving students, but I always feel like I'm losing some face when I have to ask them for help. It's an issue I'm still trying to navigate well and I hope I'll get better at it with more experience.
This isn't the case with all of my classes, though. I have some truly delightful, dedicated students who treat me with the utmost respect and are a pleasure to teach.
This seems like a good place to stop for now. In part 2, I'll talk about the strengths and challenges of the Chinese students I teach, and how cafeteria food here makes US school lunches look like crimes against humanity.
Edited to clean up a couple of typos.
Comments
Post a Comment