Jul 29, 2021, 17:51
On Saturday, the long-anticipated regulations governing off-campus tutoring programs were made public.
The severity of the regulations exceeds the worse expectations of those engaged in the once thriving training sector.
Then related businesses listed in domestic and overseas markets experienced steep declines. These training agencies have experienced explosive growths in recent years by cashing in on pervasive anxiety among Chinese parents over the education of their children.
For parents, the prevailing means of gaining competitive edge for their children is to get them into better schools, by paying more for extracurricular training.
I myself once attended a tutoring program on math, with a two-hour session costing my parents 800 yuan (US$123). I took ten sessions a month.
Unfortunately, my progress in the subject, as reflected by my scores at school, was unsatisfactory. When my parents took this up with the trainer, the answer they got was: "If you buy your son fifteen or twenty lessons a month, you can expect more progress."
It came as no surprise that when Indian movie Hindi Medium was shown a few years ago, it became a huge box office success, likely because the parental anxiety depicted in the film resonates with many Chinese viewers struggling with their children's education.
Like their Indian counterparts, parents here would do anything to get their children into the right school.
While most children like me would undoubtedly welcome the government regulation of the training sector, parental responses are more mixed.
Asked to comment on this, a mother whose son is taking four training courses was less than enthusiastic. The training is going on as scheduled, and she insisted that she would terminate the training only on condition that all other parents have done the same. "You know, there is still significant difference between professional instruction and learning on your own," she explained. Her attitude is not atypical, and probably well justified by past experience. Obviously, she has seen her fair share of previous rectification campaigns.
According to Yang Dongping, professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, Chinese parental anxiety stands out in two aspects. First, the anxiety affects all social strata irrespective of their financial circumstances. Second, for the children the competition gets started steadily earlier, from primary schools a few years ago to kindergartens now.
The formidable expenditures involved in bringing up a child make many wary of having more than one child, and this worsens the demographic structure in a fast graying country.
Zheng Yefu, professor of Sociology at Peking University, blamed this obsession with education on blind fetishism of diplomas, with those churned out by a few select universities particularly venerated.
Thus a fundamental change to the situation entails a change in attitude on the part of the whole society. It would mean a change to the narrow-minded perception of education as a good school and a lucrative job. Hopefully the current initiatives would go on to address growing superstition in, particularly in some governmental organizations, diplomas and "elite" schools.
Only when education goes beyond simple scores and metrics and evolves into a lifelong pursuit of sweetness and light could it hope to be truly self-motivating and sustainable. The guidelines might be effective in tackling off-campus tutoring, but addressing the pervasive anxiety will involve coordinated, lasting effort.
"The severity of the regulations exceeds the worse expectations of those engaged in the once thriving training sector....Hopefully the current initiatives would go on to address growing superstition in, particularly in some governmental organizations, diplomas and "elite" schools."
Many Chinese parents work very hard, long hours and don't have enough time or energy to spare to help with their children's learning. It's great when they can find the time to take their kids to engage in activities such as sports, music and art classes. They encourage their kids to do their best but the general educational focus on tests and exams becomes overwhelming and stressful for all involved. The result will exceed the "worst" expectations of many participants, and thus the growing "scepticism" for achieving entry into elite schools.
The new policy will shake down the tutoring industry. But will it shake up the mainstream education system as well so that more relevant results can be achieved than test scores by overloaded students and financial relief for parents?
What sort of relevant results can be targeted? A lighter workload with fewer textbooks combined with better teaching methods to enthuse learning as a discovery process that will open young eyes and minds to the wonders of the world so as to build their confidence and skills while yearning to rationally, resourcefully and resiliently improve themselves in the face of new challenges and complexities of an ever-changing future.
How does achieving that square with the need for meritocratic entry into higher learning institutions as passport to future achievement for both individual and state in the context of the global race for talent?
The present system is based on sufficient input to generate desired output based on a standardized system of teaching and testing for purpose of higher admissions without regard to natural differences of minds and backgrounds. The focus is on the success of the system and not the experience by the student while trying to learn in order to win in a paper chase.
Too often, all those factors will come together to create stress and demotivation. Some will surmount them to achieve high international test scores later. Many will however come out of the supply chain later wondering how they can shine more and make a bigger difference in their careers when so many others like them can also do the same thing to the same level of competency in a world that seems to have moved on with more breakthroughs.
Perhaps a new paradigm about teaching-learning is needed by shifting the focus from meeting the objectives of the system to creating a lifelong learning relationship for the student. Conceptually, each student, no matter what capacity or capability, will carry with him/her throughout life a certain thing called 'relationship' which is fundamental and useful, disciplined and habitualized, self-enervating and expanding.
This concept dropped in early this morning from what was remembered last night listening to a video on how a study of 700 persons in the west tracked the changes in their lives for 70 years with view to finding out what gave them happiness. The result of the study? happiness is sustained by good relationships with others which succor both health and the brain.
So the entire challenge reduces to (a) how to create that individual and internal learning relationship in every student from small to old, (b) while achieving the objectives of creating more informed, creative and out-of-box thinkers, (c) and at the same time, tapping to the fullest the individual potential of each student with different talents and inclinations to mentally flower in what they know they are good in as they progress in their lives.
This is going to be frustratingly difficult to a herculean level. How to achieve all that when the result of education can only be known ten to twenty years down the road? It's a long-term investment based on hunches when the imperative is now for more mentally agile and creative path-makers for national development in all fields. Meanwhile, parents will naturally be worried for the future of their charges in a greying population even while relieved their household spends on education will be lightened (unless, knock2, a blackmarket tutoring industry emerges).
Without any careful, for that matter informed, thinking:
1. pick the most successful features of the best education systems outside, and see how those features can be finetuned into local needs;
2. reduce the workload of students until they reach the university gates; they start at 8 am and must finish by 2 pm latest; 1-2 hours homework only.
3. schools at every level in each province to adopt only 1-2 textbooks for each subject; let the authors and publishers nationwide compete among themselves to produce the best referenced textbooks of the country;
4. each textbook must however embed content from answers to the best questions in past examinations, whether of the country or from advanced countries outside;
5. each examination question at any level must test: halfly what was taught, and halfly what was taught applied creatively by association to another subject;
6. therefore, the question framer must really be the first creative ones; making that demand will also trigger teachers and lecturers to be more creative;
7. only 1 coursebook for each level of each subject; the coursebook chapter covers the homework to be done for the chapter that was taught in the morning;
8. teachers must evaluate and annotate short observations in some standard forms on the student; start from kindy all the way to preuniversity; the form will only say how the student has done in what task; the purpose is only to flesh out potential and pitfalls; if the size is 50 students, the teacher is only to take 2 hours a week; about 2 minutes/student/week. Where will, way.
9. kindies to learn the 3R's well; teaching the 3R's must however be made more creative and sensitive.
Say, an english language lesson to learn 'cow'. Utter the word, show the mouth with teeth. Look at the word, draw out a fat one with a whiplashing tail and big belly (O in between C and W); C is the nose, W are the two pairs of legs seen from side. Sound of the cow? the bell making a sound - after the chorus of moo's. Smell of the cow? Eeuuhhh....like T or ... Touch of the cow? rough - like the pupil's canvas school bag (feel it). Then taste of the cow? like milk. Milk used for? drinks, butter, cakes, cookies, ice cream.....Then compare with some other animal (say, picture of Pompeo).
10. Variations of the above can be granularly escalated for the higher levels. Teaching a principle of something must also include where, when and why it breaks down, inasmuch how it has been applied creatively and productively.
One should however not be too smitten by the reputation of some courses in the west's socalled best tertiaries, for instance. Just youtube (use VPN) their free course video's. It's cringeworthy the way their best lecturers present the topics. No concern for whether the students can really catch all the ideas in the flow of logic from listening to the jaggedly presented lectures.
Lecturers should be better trained on how to organize and present and be ready to answer questions clearly and on the spot from the students. Students must be encouraged to ask relevant questions which they will prepare in advance after reading on the topic the night before the lecture. Good lectures should be video-recorded and shared across the country. At the end of each lecture, the lecturer should quickly view some of the notes taken by the more attentive students. If s.he is dismayed, the fault is not with the student and the lecturer must self-improve before the next lecture.
Question: The ASML EUV lithographic machine is basically made of five specialized components from four different countries. Trace the history in the development of each component. (20 minutes/5 marks). Schematize an alternative to each component by another process to achieve at least the same output (10 minutes/10 marks).
11. Develop a new parallel publication industry on popular science, curious facts and fancies, cross-associations. Trigger it with broadcasts, tv and social media channels, electronic portals. Embed that industry with content databases (encyclopedias, magazines, journals, handbooks, manuals, viewpoint essays, book summaries, pictorials).
Develop the translation industry. The ships of today are not those of the Qing dynasty burned to the water; they are the information and knowledge carriers to open minds about the whole world.
Make the learning of knowledge and the picking up of facts and fancies easier to access and the drumbeat of life-long learning so that curiosity does not die and every person's individual relationship with knowledge is sustained throughout his/her life. This can be fruitful because the present situation is only: how to do x, not how to do y which can be better than x, not even how to do x without causing problems with z.
12. At the end of each school day, teach the pupil to greet the parents politely when s.he goes home and pour them a glass of water each. This is PR to cool their temperatures (kekeke).
Gotta go out now to get baked in the sun.... a prayer for those in Henan, nonetheless.
Community login
Add a comment