Chinese School- anyone watching?

[toddlersareeasier]

They seem so used to be entertained rather than taught.

How can they compare which method is better if the Chinese one was only taught for 4 week, where as English for the majority of the year or even more? Or were they learning the same things only using two different methods?

Miss Yang's speech made me cry. " Struggle is not a sign of weakness, but is a sign of strength". I'll always remember that...

The behaviour of the kids were terrible and I wasn't too impressed with some of the attitudes of the parents.

Some of the "high fliers" will be competing with the Chinese for jobs - the vast majority will not - it is a flawed reason for changing an education method. I would rather we looked towards Scandinavia than Asia if we want to reflect on the philosophy and methodology of our education system.

I know he said it was a boring way of being taught, but that's exactly how most university teaching is done!

BlossomTang I totally agree with you!

Polkadot EXACTLY! The majority of my time at university was just sitting at my lectures copying down the notes from the projector and listening to my tutor. Yes, it was boring, but it was either, pay attention, do the work and do a lot of independent learning or fail!

This experiment is flawed. The British teachers and students want the Chinese system to fail. How are the tests at the end going to be fair? One way would be to tell the Chinese system kids that anything they get wrong will have to be re-studied in their own time - that way they have an incentive to do their best.
I'm thinking a better way to run the experiment would have been to use children who wanted to take part (and excluded the gobby shits they seem to be focussing on). Then compare their results to the children of similar ability in the British system.

I don't believe the Chinese system is better but it would be more interesting to see if they could learn more/better with a different system.
The behaviour of some of these kids is dreadful - the British teachers/head should have been present in the class to keep order and let the Chinese teachers teach.

I'm just distracted by their track suit uniform

I like the track suit. Much more comfy than some of the school uniforms in this country. And probably cheaper too.

If you google ' bohunt Chinese' a link to the school website appears with reference to an student exchange system they have. Bohunt are sending some students to China - God help the Chinese if they send this bunch of rabble over!

I've not watched the second episode yet (will do later!) but my 17 year old DS dud watch it and has commented on the appalling behaviour of the kids and the parents! He goes to a fairly trad independent school where it is mostly chalk & talk and the smallest infringement of discipline is squashed swiftly and effectively. He is about the behaviour in what is a high performing school. Yes they may have been playing up for the cameras etc but still.....

The other half of the year should have been given teachers that they don't know either. I don't see how you can compare at all really.

It's immaterial whether or not the Chinese methods are best. They're not getting a chance to be tested because the kids are playing up so much. I'd feel humiliated if I were their head. But no, he claims it's the teachers' fault for being dull. Bless the little things. Will they enter the work place expecting their bosses and clients to be entertaining before they perform their duties?
Those Chinese teachers are so lovely, so patient, so dedicated, and - most humbling of all - deeply proud of having achieved the status of teacher. It's clearly admired in China. Imagine that here... When DC leave home think I'll do a TEFL course and go and teach English in China.

adriana22 Miss Yang's speech made me cry too! I feel so sorry for those poor teachers, they've just been thrown in the lion's den without any support whatsoever and everything is weighted in favour of the English system winning.

I don't like the HT at all, he is really smug and arrogant. I get the feeling everything he says is geared towards staying in Ofsted's good books. He should be ashamed of the pupils behaviour, but instead chooses to not blame the teachers.

I was also thinking that kids today must really struggle in the workplace if everything in school these days is geared towards having fun. Life must seem so boring out of the classroom. When I was at school, all A level lessons were delivered by way of lectures in preparation for university and certainly at university the teaching was exactly like the Chinese method. We were used to having to push ourselves to concentrate when things were dull.

My Dds go to a school which has a reputation for strong discipline and excellent behaviour. When I asked them whether pupils at their school behave like that, they said all the time, although only with certain teachers. They said they tend to play up pretty badly with supply teachers.

Dd 16 said that she would have felt really guilty if she was one of the pupils watching the programme back. She was especially upset to see Miss Yang crying.

DS1 says it's an instant 50 lines if they are caught talking in class. A quick sanction applied consistently can help stop low level disruptive behaviour. If I was one of those poor teachers is give the Bohunt pupils lines but in chinese

I do think the Chinese teachers lack the classroom control skills that are essential in the West. (I was educated in the U.S.) That's where they have come unstuck. With quiet, deferential Chinese students, they have no need for them. I am in no way excusing the student's behaviour & I am sure they were playing up for the camera. The British English teacher well-demonstrated the strengths of the Western style -the use of more innovative & self-directed methods which lead students to learn from their own efforts. The Chinese teachers appeared to mostly drone on & explain.
I switched from humanities to science at uni & the change was much like this. Science was for the first couple of years memorising endless facts ( the periodic table, anyone?) & only later did it get creative.
Also remember that most Chinese in school are probably no more than a generation away from being a peasant, and probably have one or more illiterate grandparents, thus education is seen as a huge privilege . The English students would take it all for granted.

I think the Chinese teacher's point about the welfare state providing a safety net which means our kids don't feel the need to work as hard at school is a valid one. They know that even if they leave school with no qualifications whatsoever, they'll never have to worry about the cost of medical treatment or an empty belly. They think everything will be given to them on a plate. What they don't realise is the very serious competition the Chinese students pose in the global marketplace.

I hate the way so many of the children refuse to take responsibility for their actions and their immediate reaction is 'I didn't do anything' or 'I'm being picked on'. They seem to have a great sense of injustice. Sophie, who was really indignant about being moved to the front after talking insesently complained that she hadn't been given any warnings first. What?! If you can't do as you're told then expect to suffer the consequences!

What irritates me is that the Bohunt staff don't seem to be doing anything effective about their pupils' behaviour: just going in once and telling them they ought to be paying attention really isn't enough. Their own staff presumably have the full benefit of disciplinary backup from senior management, the ability to impose detentions etc, so it's not a level playing field.

Apart from anything else, I would have thought the head ought to be mortified at how bloody rude his pupils are being and really bawled them out about it and threatened all sorts of sanctions - after all, with the cameras there it's going to be easy enough to identify the culprits.

Didn't someone upthread (or was it a different thread) say that the Open a University running the project told the Bohunt staff to leave the Chinese teachers to it, and they only stepped in because it got so bad they couldn't possibly leave it any longer?

I think the whole Open University research thing is a nonsense. How can it possibly be a valid experiment when it's televised? There are times you can see the kids looking round for the cameras before misbehaving. And it can't be a true representation of the Chinese system because pupils in China have never really known any different system and are brought up in a culture of great respect for adults. I can't really see what academic credibility this can possibly have from the university's point of view.

Interesting result.The Bohunt staff didn't seem too pleased.

Thought the headmaster (unlike the Chinese teachers) was utterly graceless about the result.

And his maths skills obviously weren't up to snuff as he said the Chinese system only worked for those pupils who were already bright, when the key point was that the average mark had gone up across the board

It's hard to be sympathetic to such a negative approach; did anyone else get the impression that he was desperate not to learn the lessons from this experiment?

Yes, I agree with you.I believe that he thought the Chinese teachers would fail.

I loved watching the bit where the students were doing the fan dance. I remember doing fan dancing as a child, it was good fun. Wish I still danced, it was great exercise! The way the children got stuck in with determination and acceptance (and Rosie's comment about the boys being uncoordinated made me smile).