Adventures in China

Discipline in the Chinese schools I saw was very strict. In many cases, the strictness was necessary since there would often be over 70 students in a classroom. The students, especially younger students, often sat at attention. Their arms would be crossed on the desk and they would sit stiffly in their seats. If they wanted the teacher's attention or wanted to answer a question, they would raise their hand, but leave the elbow on the desk.

Students who get out of line are often hit or humiliated. Even in my private school, where hitting students was supposed to be controlled, I saw teachers slap students' faces when they acted up. Ridiculing bad behavior in front of other students was also unfortunately common.

This style of discipline is so ingrained that the teachers honestly do not see any other options they can employ. Because I brought different teaching styles into the classroom besides repetitive writing exercise and call-and-repeat exercise, I had to expose the teachers to discipline styles based on high expectations and specific rules, but that allowed more expression. The teachers were very interested in what I had to present to them, though some of my preferences were difficult to accommodate.

Part of the difficulty stemmed from the students' inexperience with a differently structured environment. Any time the students were not in their desks and following the regular strict rules, they became virtually impossible to control. Instead of having a general set of rules about quietness, attentiveness, and respect, the discipline the students learned in the classroom did not carry over to other situations.

The teachers at my private school were supposed to take advantage of their smaller class sizes and greater freedom, but most had no idea how to do that because they hadn't ever been exposed to other styles of teaching. Western style teaching is becoming more popular in the larger coastal cities, but had been slow spreading to the rest of China. Perhaps one of the most useful things I brought to China were some simple books about American teaching methods and discipline. They helped me recognize and verbalize the differences in the two systems, and I was able to leave those books for the Chinese teachers to look over.