The educational system was different in China, which was to be expected, as most educational systems differ from nation to nation, state to state, and even district to district. One of the top reasons for our group traveling to China was to strengthen “educational and cultural exchanges and fostering people to people interactions between China and the United States” – which denotes the mission of the organization that sponsored us.
There is much to be said about the organization’s mission and goals, and the outcomes of our voyage; we visited several of the top schools in their respective cities. However, I will focus this post solely on a few key educational observations noted during our time there; this does not represent a conclusive evaluation of China’s entire educational system, as different cities, towns, counties, and provinces most likely have different situations.
The schools were huge. If you read my previous post, then you know that we visited highly populated cities. As a point of reference, New York City – America’s largest city – has a population of approximately 8.5 million people. The cities in China where we visited elementary and middle schools, a secondary school and a university included Tianjin (16 million people) and Shanghai (35.9 million people).
One particular school that we visited either consisted of five campuses, or the principal oversaw five campuses, spread throughout the city – with thousands of students. On another campus, the principal was within her first or second year of leading the school; she had yet to learn all the names of her directors and assistants. They introduced themselves and their position to us – and to the principal it seemed at times; we found this interesting.
Most of the classrooms that we visited had at least 40 students and one teacher. Yet even with the large class sizes, the teacher was in complete control of the room. Students demonstrated deep respect for teachers, which was evident in all of the schools we visited. The Chinese culture tends to be one of honoring elders and saving face, and also places high regard on educators, which most likely contributes to positive classroom management. Perhaps the competitive nature of the state-run public educational system and the rigorous demands placed on students to excel further encourages positive classroom behavior, as the last thing a student may want is to have a parent, or family home, contacted because of poor behavior.
Speaking of honor. They rolled-out the red carpet for us, figuratively speaking. We were treated like royalty. Yet what impressed me more was how the school building administrators were treated. The level of respect demonstrated to them by their staff and students was, to me, equivalent to how we in the US may treat a politician or a famous person: holding open car doors, escorting, silent while the leader was speaking, etc.
The level of approachability of the principal was evident as well. My favorite school in which we visited was a middle school in Tianjin. It was evident that a true, authentic, collaborative relationship existed between the administrator and his staff.
A different type of honor. It was easy to identify the honor students because they wore a red scarf/tie, something that does not tend to happen in public schools within the US. I had to wonder what type of atmosphere this created among the students and the staff. Notwithstanding, it was evident through the different demonstrations shown to us that excellence was expected from students with or without a red tie.
Students also helped clean the building. This created a sense of pride and responsibility in their school.
Preserving history. On one hand, we heard from different sources during our visit about how several of the ancient artwork and cultural traditions were slowly fading to modern technological advances, yet on the other hand it was refreshing to see schools instructing their students in traditional art forms.
Visiting the schools was one of my favorite aspects of being in China. One particular memorable moment was talking with a classroom of students (45ish) that wanted to hear about students in the US. The classroom was one that consisted of students who needed extra support, perhaps even more structure; it’s a long story how I know this. The teacher practically begged us to visit his classroom, as he wanted to expose his students to the visitors from the US; I believe he was not one of the scheduled classroom visits. As we asked questions and answered theirs, you could hear a pin drop as their eyes were fixated on us. When we left the classroom and walked down the hallway, the classroom erupted with excitement. It was a good day.
Reflections from the Heart 
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