JD was invited to a free Lego Trial Class yesterday. One of his school friends already attends every Sunday afternoon. The class had five boys in it and a very professional teacher who talked them though the different stages of making a sniper's rifle with the aid of a Powerpoint presentation (not my favourite object for them to be building, but it varies from week to week). JD loved the 1½ hour lesson, and he and his friend especially enjoyed "chasing and killing" me with the guns after class. Unfortunately, the Lego school is a good 30 minutes drive away, which has made us think twice about signing up.

Yesterday saw my last lesson with the Foreign Affairs Department of the Kunming Civil Service. The course was supposed to run for 12 weeks but, due to cancellations and public holidays, it's been 16 weeks since I started. They have been a fun group to teach, but I'll be glad to get my Fridays back again - it's my only JD/work free day each week.

Teachers are frantically bombarding their students with Exam Practice Papers these days - some have been doing so for months already. Despite my best efforts, this type of lesson remains super-boring for the students and a preparation-free, revert-to-speaking-in-100%-Chinese lesson for the teachers. What’s worse is that the teachers and students believe fervently that wading through literally hundreds of multiple choice questions is teaching them something and will mean better exams results. I doubt it. And then there’s the papers themselves. Despite being produced by a wide variety of publishers they are all, without exception, appalling.

Check these out:

1. “Pick the right picture” (and all four pictures have photocopied as solid black squares).

2. Many multiple-choice questions have two or three quite legitimate possible answers. For example, the perplexing...
 Anne and Jenny are my ______  
(a) teachers (b) friends (c) sisters (d) brothers

3. And often, the answers are just plain wrong. I saw these “correct” answers today:
 She has carly hair. (well, Carly does...)
 Is the weather like today? (what?)
 Eating apples can made you healthy. (you make a mistake!)
 I’m poor so I can’t play for it. (play for the FA Cup, perhaps?)
 He’s a straight man. (maybe this one is intentional?)
 She is learning Italian dish. (a cook maybe?)
 I’ll retire and grow lives. (Nope. Not a clue on this one!)
 Penguins are the kings of cats (my personal favourite  ...!?)

4. Even the “English Language Revision TV Programme” regularly makes a hash of things:
      He ________ harder last year than before.
      (a) study  (b) studies  (c) was studying  (d) studied

What do you think? Both (c) and (d) look fine to me, but the programme insisted the right answer was (b)??

JD is becoming a lot more vocal these days (especially if you include the screams!). If he is in the mood he can say about a dozen words, and he understands a dozen more. We read 2-3 books together every day and last week we drew pictures for each letter of the alphabet on the path outside the house. Quite a few passers-by stopped for a look throughout the day, with various local children trying to work out what the pictures represented. Of course, if it rains, the gallery will disappear but, since we've been without running water for 2 weeks now, rain would actually be most welcome.

The final destination on my tour of remote countryside schools was LongJie (Dragon Street) Middle School. It’s very poor. The photo shows a typical dormitory - 12 students living in a room the size of my kitchen. As usual, the day started with 2-3 hours in the car, then observing 2 lessons and giving feedback. After lunch, I gave 2 model lessons and an hour’s training. Then supper and 2-3 hours onward journey.

The observed lessons today couldn’t have been more different. The first was a new teacher, with the English name “Shrimp” (!?). She was teaching a Grade 1 class - students who had been learning English for just a week. Shrimp’s English is excellent and she kept it simple and clear. The students eagerly volunteered to come to the front to recite simple greeting dialogues and copied down new letters of the alphabet into their notebooks. The second lesson was from a more experienced teacher called “Ryan”. 90% of it was conducted in Chinese, and it involved the teacher, and later the students, drawing various things on the board and on paper. I was trying to work out the point of it all (with my limited Chinese) right until the bell finally rang and the lesson was over. The other teachers observing the class with me also left very confused. One asked me, “Was that an Art lesson or an English lesson?”. I managed to catch Ryan alone later, but when I asked him about the lesson he suddenly started crying! Once composed, he told me he had planned a lesson from the textbook, but changed his mind at the last minute and decided to try an idea he had read in a newspaper!? The other English teachers had apparently criticised him after the lesson and he now wanted to apologise to me! I ditched my planned feedback about “Teaching Aims” and “Lesson Plans” and tried to encourage him instead. I commended his willingness to try new teaching ideas(!), his bravery in letting others watch the experiment(!!) and assured him that for every failed idea there’s a successful one (right??). 

My own self-esteem took a battering between afternoon lessons. I had a bit of a wobbly tummy and had to rush to the school toilet. Staff and students share the same block - a series of holes in the ground with no partitions, let alone cubicles! Now, the sight of a foreigner in your school is enough for stares in itself, but a squatting foreigner trying to keep his balance amidst the filth is simply too much to miss, and I managed to attract a crowd of 10-15 gawking boys as I did my business! I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me …until I remembered what lay beneath!

Today was “Children’s Day” and I was invited to visit the oddly named “Groundnut Primary School” in the countryside. No English is taught there due a county-wide lack of English teachers, but there were plenty of “Hello”s from the students, aged 5-12, as I arrived. The morning ceremony was held in the playground under a very hot sun. It started with a salute to the Chinese flag [see photo below] as the National Anthem played. Then the school leaders, top students, a parent and I all gave short speeches. Some of the children were inducted into the “Young Pioneers” (the Communist Party's Youth Organisation) and given their red neckties to wear. Finally, the best students received prizes (pens, certificates, pencil-boxes, etc) and then all the children were given sweets, and a “take a photo with the foreigner” marathon began.

Afterwards, I was given a tour of the school. Only 140 students and 9 teachers – so, classes of about 20 (a ratio any English school would be delighted with). But it was very noticeable how spartan the classrooms were - little or nothing on the walls, and formal rows of desks all facing the backboard - a far cry from the primary schools I have worked in. And yet, the more investigating I did, the more I realised that the school’s problems were as much due to the Chinese mindset as to poverty or lack of resources.

I asked why none of the students’ paintings were displayed anywhere and was told that “none of the teachers were Art specialists”!? But why couldn’t the children just draw anything colourful to be displayed? I was told “Last year two students could draw well, but there are none this year”!? I was shown a library with quite a few books (though none in colour or with pictures) and was told that students borrowed books every week - but a layer of dust told another story. The “Materials Room” was locked at first but, once we got in, I was amazed by shelf upon shelf of globes, test-tubes, weather measuring machines, stopclocks, etc. But, as most of it was still wrapped in plastic bags, I asked how often teachers used these resources. “Never - they are too busy” was the perplexing reply. I spied a shelf full of beautiful posters, covered in dust. I asked why these couldn’t be put up in the classrooms to liven the rooms up. “No. Impossible. We have exams”!? I pointed out these were pictures of rabbits and flowers - hardly any use for cheating in exams. Blank looks from the teachers – brightening up the classroom seemed to be a totally foreign concept! In the playground, I asked how come all the basketball hoops had been broken off. I was told they had actually been deliberately removed to stop the students playing basketball, as the balls were damaging the hedges!? I was gobsmacked.

So, such is the teaching culture here that almost anything is seen as more important than the students and their education. Beautiful hedges are more important than exercise and fun, colourful posters rot in dark rooms whilst classrooms remain bare, libraries stay locked for fear of books actually being used, and children’s art cannot be displayed unless it is prize-winning. Schools here certainly have their problems, but some also have ready solutions and there seems to be a complete inability to connect the two!

One of my recent challenges has been running a weekly English course for teachers in Kunming's top Primary School. These are mostly teachers of Chinese and Maths who are keen to participate in the school's student exchange programme to Western countries, which requires a basic level of English from the accompanying teachers. (I'm also secretly hoping that getting known in the school might help my child's chances of being admitted there in the future! Can't hurt!).

Initially, I was told it would be a two hour lesson for 30 teachers. That turned into a one hour lesson for 25 teachers on the first week, and a 45 minute lesson for 55 teachers on the second week. Expect the unexpected in Chinese Primary Schools! The English levels of the teachers vary widely, from those who teach some English themselves to others who cannot answer "How are you?". We did manage some pairwork and role-play by the end of the second lesson though [see photo], and the teachers all seemed relaxed and enjoying the class, which is important.

It's exam time in China as literally millions of students sit the national College Entrance Exams, which sort out who can progress to University and who must settle for less prestigious further education or join the job pool. Pressure is intense - a recent study showed 62% of American High School students felt high levels of exam stress, while in Japan it was 69%. Korea was 75% but China topped the table with 86%! So it comes as little surprise that suicides and cheating are widespread. State school teachers often turn a blind eye to students cheating, knowing that their own pay will get docked if their students do badly in exams. I sometimes catch my own students trying to cheat in dictations or exams. They may get away with it in a class of 50+ students, but it's easy enough to spot in a class of 8-12!

There was a programme yesterday here on Chinese TV showing some of the high tech methods some students use to cheat - earpieces, internet phones, glasses with mini-cameras, even small digital screens built into erasers. Less high tech, but possibly more insidious, are the incressing number of public school teachers who offer their students paid-for "extra lessons" with the promise that this is where the real exam secrets will be explained.  If they do have inside information that is only being passed on to the richer students, that's pretty shocking. If they don't have any special secrets to share, then they are just playing on the exam nerves to make money - equally reprehensible.