To think the Chinese Teachers that taught in a English Comprehensive in Hampshire need to concentrate on their own countries problems.

[sunshield]

This experiment taken by BBC 2 ' Are our children tough enough' proves how far removed Chinese teaching methods are from , creating independent creative thinkers.

The Chinese teachers actually buy in to their 'state driven' dogmatic culture, that breeds total obedience to the state of china. They are also victims because they are unable to accept , that independent thinking is the key to a happy life.

China has abject poverty for 99% of the population, yet they decry a system that 'no matter that it is being altered ' still attempts to ensure no one starves on the street.

There is also another question to be asked about the PISA results , why do they only show schools from Shanghai ?. We could respond by only quoting results from Private or Grammar schools, because their results have been 'doctored'.

The quote we only have one type of syllabus in China 'survive or die' is typical of a state controlled workforce. This also shows they have no compassion for anyone who does not fit the norm though either academic intelligence or through Autism etc. The comment about not understanding the child who ran out of the class about 'One Direction' proves they have no understanding about teenage problems, whoever trivial.

The English education system needs to take no advice from the Chinese education system, despite what the baying mob think on the Daily Mail website think.

As someone who has taught in both state and private I am afraid it is naive to imagine low level disruption does not exist in the private sector or that it is incessant in the state sector. The ethos of the school can minimise it and small classes make it easier to quash but it is the nature of teenagers to challenge authority. However I would say parents underestimate the impact of their attitudes on classroom behaviour. I currently work in a school with a high level of immigrant pupils and the behaviour is excellent ant this is in many ways due to the high value the parents place on education.

"Are our Kids Tough enough" programme.. After watching this programme,
I feel very sorry for the teachers of today.. this school is classed as "outstanding", but certainly this does not apply to the childrens "Manners"..............

I wonder how much the achievement of the children is as a result of parental emphasis of 'sit down, shut up and learn'?

I suspect there are many of the children on last nights programme who wouldn't get a kick up the backside from their parents after seeing them mess about, talk and generally disrupt the class (the boy in the science exam who was talking, tapping, singing etc. as he couldn't do the exam).

One child did point out (the girl who was moved to chatting in class) that there was no shame or embarrassment in being singled out for talking or being disruptive, whereas a child in the Chinese system would be mortified to be told off.

I wasn't in school all that long ago and the loudmouths would be shushed by the others in the class 'I'm here to learn something - shuuttit you!'

I've just finished watching this programme. I haven't any real thoughts on the teaching to be honest, these programmes are heavily weighted to highlight difficulties.

I would however be having very serious chats with my teenagers (and removing phones etc) if they were being as rude as some of the teens in this class. The Head needs to get some priorities in place when it comes to manners in the classroom.

Kitty- you should complain to the BBC about the misleading info about one of the teachers. Do any of you remember Jamie's 15 programme when he took 15 supposedly disadvantaged youngsters and trained them? Well I met one of them / her mum taught in top girls private school and her dad was a successful business man living in the States.

From sunshield's post at 11.01 today:

"The states of the West want people to obey rules without questioning, the state's authority or reason for its policies.

The Western states quite cleverly has allowed a small number of people, to become 'RICH' this has two effects , first it creates an illusion that it is available to all ,if you buy in to the system.

The second thing it does and probably the most significant is it makes sure the Elite act as the states policeman in implementing the governments authority. The Elite will do this because they do not want their status questioned or threatened by others."

^^Substituting the West for China works for me, consider the elite in the West or even our own government here who also wants to maintain a status quo that protects their own.

The BBC said one of the teachers had taught over here for a long time and reverted to Chinese teaching methods for the "experiment." It was not hidden.

I love how the UK's culture of excuses is so amply on display in this program--the students are behaving appallingly, and yet apparently it is all the fault of teachers for not entertaining them enough.

God, this. This x1000

Why doesn't the school have a centralized discipline policy? Why are the students (apparently) permitted to have phones on them?

The school definitely has a centralised discipline policy, it would fail an inspection if it didn't. And I assume they also have a mobile phone policy which doesn't permit them in class. Neither make for very good telly though: we don't know how much of this is staged.

Tobikko. The major difference between the UK ,Western Europe and China though is we don't put 'bullets in the back of the head' for crimes that would not justify more than 5 years in prison !

Areyou- thanks for info. But in terms of an experiment the whole thing tells us absolutely nothing - my guess would be the average media type wouldn't recognise scientific method and hypothesis testing at all

it is the nature of teenagers to challenge authority

Is it?

Tobikko. The major difference between the UK ,Western Europe and China though is we don't put 'bullets in the back of the head' for crimes that would not justify more than 5 years in prison !

What's the relevance of this?

It is possible to have good discipline in schools and bring up children with the ability to have their own thoughts. However, it is much harder if one simply expects a level of bad behaviour from kids, as the kids will do what is expected of them.

All this emphasis on emotional support and fun learning does children a disservice. They won't get that at work once they've grown up.

My stepsister is Chinese and loved the first 15 years of her life in China. When she was 15 she moved in with my dad and stepmum and started school in the UK for the first time.

she has always said that the school system in China was great IF you were capable of doing well
Academically if not you were pretty much on the scrap heap (which is very rough) right from the start.

The other very odd thing to me was that both she and my stepmother were shocked and horrified the first time they saw images of real poverty in China, they came from a well off family in large city and they really seemed to have no idea what went on in other parts of the country.

99% of the population in abject poverty? OP your post is very ignorant and ill informed. I've been to China recently, and it is nothing like how you imagine. In the big cities, people are generally comfortable, with a rapidly growing middle class. Places like Shanghai are as developed as a lot of large cities in the west, if not more.

I couldn't even bother finishing the post as I just thought it is rather biased and prejudiced

Loving the PRC propaganda machine out in full force on this thread!

Sunshield, your post makes me very sad, it is the kind of complacency and lack of humility you display that will ultimately ruin the UK. You can learn something from everyone, let alone a civilisation as ancient as China, which has always placed great emphasis on educating its young. Yet you have decided to dismiss it based on a few snippets of info you have collected on China, without any in-depth knowledge gained from visits or good quality literature. Know your enemy, as the Chinese would say, one day they will overtake us, and you will wish you had been less dismissive.

'a few snippets of info'

actually what is genuinely pathetic is the way so many people (in rl as well as on this thread) so easily overlook massive human rights abuses as 'minor detail' so long as the country has money.

funny how we dont have programmes with finnish teachers to show us how it is done, but i guess its not really about education, its about the economy. treat your people however you want as long as you have a good economy. the uk attitude to dictatorships is pathetic.

"The authorities continued to severely restrict the right to freedom of expression. Activists and human rights defenders risked harassment and arbitrary detention. Torture and other ill-treatment remained widespread and access to justice was elusive for many. Ethnic minorities including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians faced discrimination and increased security crackdown. Record numbers of workers went on strike demanding better pay and conditions."

this is the first part of amnesty internationals summary of china last year

no connection to its education system you say?? what is the role of the state education sector, particularly in an oppressive regime, than to mould its citizens to life in that system: conform, obey, be passive

"Asylum-seekers and migrants faced detention in unsuitable facilities. An investigation into Finlandâ??s involvement in the US-led rendition programme failed to find evidence. Support for victims of sexual and gender-based violence remained insufficient. Transgender people faced obstacles to legal gender recognition."

thats the same summary report for finland btw. i know it wouldnt make as good tv, but when it comes to a discussion on academic role models, looking at how that education system fits into the morals and behaviour of the wider society and government framework should be part of the discussion.

It's not the school really, it's the shit curriculum and broader culture of education.

My year was the first year to follow the national curriculum from secondary level which I think gave us someone of a unique perceptive. It meant that teachers no longer had as much freedom about going beyond certain things to learn and at times the teachers did express their frustration about this. It was all about teaching to pass exams rather than teaching to learn.

This is actually effectively the model the Chinese have. The difference being that hot housing and expecting more and not being interested in children left behind means that the highest levels far outstrip the British way of doing things.

So we in effect moved to learning to pass exam rather than learning and understanding nearly 30 years ago.

The effect over the years has been that our creative 'thinking outside the box' thing that is so celebrated as being a British trait has been incredibly suffocated by the curriculum. I was lucky that my teachers were still willing and actually able to teach things that weren't in the curriculum because they still had the lesson plans and the skills to do so from the school years above us. Time constraints and a focus on exam results rather than ensuring that children have learned the principles underpinning things have been eroded massively since I was at school.

Yet we are criticising Chinese style of teaching, which is more similar today to our current system than it was previously, because we have this blinkered approach in believing in the national curriculum and the targeted culture that arose in the last 20 - 30 years. Its a system which in this country also tends to pander to mediocrity, because its focused on achieving a certain level by a certain point rather than pushing kids to achieve as much as possible within the extent of their abilities. Bright kids suffer and kids with problems suffer because they are constantly told they are underachieving or encouraged down other routes.

The whole 50% of kids going to university is the biggest load of bollocks of them all. All its done is effectively mean those who don't go to university are written off. You have to have a certificate to prove you have passed an exam in how to tie your shoe laces without necessarily just being allowed to demonstrate you can just tie your shoe laces, and many of those with the piece of paper saying they can tie their shoe laces have never done it in practice and are only familiar with the theory of it. Experience is considered worthless and at any rate you can't get experience without a qualification in the first place.

I am pleased that apprenticeships are being heavily promoted and supported by government. The only trouble being that they are still being regarded culturally as the option for 'failures' academically. In the last year I know of a school where a lad I know left to go to the brand new technical college as his school were not doing technology for GSCE. He and all the other kids were given a public dressing down and humiliated for it in front of the school he was leaving. The school wanted him to do languages despite this not being his strength nor interest. That's how obsessed we've become about passing exams and the culture that academic education is the be all and end all. Its less different to the Chinese way that we'd like to believe.

i thought apprenticeships sounded good til i saw our local ones. customer services apprenticeships, working in a local play park, so essentially a cafe worker, paid about £1 an hour (it was slightly more but i cant remember eg £1.25) because its an apprenticeship and you are being 'trained'. if you have ever worked in a cafe, you will know it takes about 30 mins to learn the job! an excuse for low pay and example of 'academicisation' (i made that up ) of a low pay job if ever i saw one

The report I gave a link to up-thread states there are about 150 million middle class Chinese mostly located in Cities out of a population of 1.5 Billion .
However, what defines middle class in China ?. It certainly is not the same definition used by developed 'western' countries in Asia such as Japan ,South Korea and highly successful Taiwan .

The report highlighted huge differences between cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and the rural majority of the country.

The treatment of the ethnic minorities , who want their own freedom (or at least a chance at self government ) is to crush any form of defiance is totally at odds with a forward thinking country.

This links in to education, because it means students do not question China's position or policies in relation to how they control Tibet ETC . Students that show 'compassion' or question China's 18th Century approach to Empire building and control are seen as 'week' or disloyal to 'mother' China.

The other posts stating that Chinese people see Education as not a right but a 'privilege' is telling in itself (education and basic health care are a fundamental right to any citizen in any country) . These are not privileges for which people need to stay in debt to their country for life.

This reminds me of a documentary I watched on Discovery Channel about a Surgeon who went to North Korea to remove cataracts from people. The first thing the 'poor' people would do when sight was gained, would play homage to 'dear leader' not to the Surgeon. The people believed it was 'dear leader's' wish and nothing to do with the Surgeon's skill that they should gain sight.

"The effect over the years has been that our creative 'thinking outside the box' thing that is so celebrated as being a British trait has been incredibly suffocated by the curriculum."

God, this. To think creatively, you need a thorough grounding in the basics and a wide and rich array of knowledge. This is not supported by the vacuous "skills-based" curricula of the past 30 years.

I remember studying history at my (very good, state) primary school in the 80s.

The teachers taught it to the whole class, with lots of chalk and talk; it was NOT dry or soulless, because it was really good chalk and talk. Done well. By people who actually understood and loved history and knew so many fascinating things from history!

They showed us pictures and maps, stimulated questions and responses from the class, and told us stuff that surprised us. We all acquired a strong knowledge basis of human history--a good basic chronological "sweep" of roughly what happened, why and when. This made it so much easier to study history at a deeper level later on.

Fast forward 30 years, and I don't even understand the vapid hodgepodge of random bits and pieces that makes up the history curriculum in my niece's primary school. You know, where you do a unit on Mary Seacole where you decorate a shoebox or something. And then a "theme" on the Great Fire of London that mostly consists of running around the classroom and goofing around with craft materials. Then World War II where you make a bomb shelter out of papier mache, and do some "research" (i.e., copy and paste some crap off the internet). And then there is a bit on the Egyptians where the main thing the kids actually remember is making toy mummies out of toilet paper... "The kids just love it, it's great! They have so much fun!!" And then World War II.... again. And so on. Christ almighty.

Sunshield, I currently work in China and a key focus of my job is population and wealth demographics, together with studying government policy.
You seem to be extrapolating facts from the data that aren't there. China's middle class don't earn as much as Western countries but equally the costs of living (outside Tier 1 cities) is vastly lower.
China is definitely not taking an '18th century empire building approach'. What makes you think that? The current government strategy is entirely focussed on removing dependence on other nations and growing the wealth and education of its own population to avoid financial impact from another GFC or equivalent (m.euronews.com/en/216572/). They have shown no desire to 'empire build'. They have defended what they see as 'their' territory in the South China Sea and have consolidated transport route and infrastructure to ensure their trade can continue but can you give an example of how they have demonstrated a wider empire building approach?

I think you also forget the rapid growth in wealth, education and urbanisation that has occurred under the government. Compared to India, another country of vast population and wealth disparity, China is steaming ahead in improving quality of life, infrastructure etc. and this is forecast to continue. By 2022 75% of the population will be middle class. (www.mckinsey.com/insights/consumer_and_retail/mapping_chinas_middle_class)
Whilst I personally believe democracy is by far the fairest government system and obviously the state censorship is indefensible, the Chinese government are nothing if not efficient and fully dedicated to improving the lives of their citizens.

It's in the interest of the government to ensure their population is happy and wealthy to avoid any popular protest or uprising. Why would they wish to subdue their economic aspirations?

The educated (and incredibly smart) Chinese people I have met absolutely question the system of government but they also see how effective it has been, which is unarguable. As an example, they just decided to build the second biggest airport in the country and it will be completed by 2019. Compare that to the UK where an extra runway at Heathrow has been debated for since 2005 without any conclusions reached.

As a culture they have achieved amazing things so something is working.

^^ eye rolls