An American Teacher in Guiyang

When you live in a foreign country, you're regularly confronted with the unfamiliar and the unexpected. People do ordinary things in what seem like extraordinary ways. It can be simultaneously fascinating and frustrating, but it's the real reason I love to go to countries outside the United States. I'm always interested in seeing how different people do everyday things, trying to understand why they do them that way, and adapting to fit in so that you don't stand out so much. Keep in mind as you read this that I'm not trying to make any value judgements here. I'm just observing what I see from the perspective of a white guy from California. I've lived in China less than six months and I'm only just starting to understand how little I know about how things are done here. I'm writing this to educate and maybe entertain a little, too. One of the first things I noticed was how little regarded your personal space is. In the US, we tend to have a fairl...

In my last post I talked about some of the day to day differences between Chinese and US schools. I'm going to dive a bit deeper into that with this post. The comparative history of education in various countries is fascinating to me, although I know it's not that way for everyone. It's vital to understanding how modern systems work, but I'll try to keep it general enough for everyone. As a reward for slogging through it, I'll show you some fantastic cafeteria food at the end of the post. The Chinese don't understand the resistance in the US to using high-stakes testing in education. They joke that they have 2000 years of experience with it and that it's worked out pretty well for them. They're not wrong. Civil service examinations for bureaucratic posts have been a feature of Chinese government since the Sui dynasty (AD 581-617), although it became much more systematized around the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279). If you did well on these exams, you could ...

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 worki...