When Shenzhen Middle School’s students returned from summer vacation last year they found the school completely transformed. In less than a year, I’d annexed a considerable part of the school, and built myself an empire.I now had an English library, a cafeteria, two study halls, a coffeehouse, a media center (with three publications), a reading room, as well as offices and classrooms. In the self-delusion and overconfidence that came with my lightning success, I thought students would be impressed and applaud my achievement.
Instead, students complained I hadn’t sought their approval before building the Special Curriculum. Online they wrote that Shenzhen Middle School was a democracy that was threatened by my tyranny. They complained that I’d monopolized public funding for the benefit of an elite minority (about ten percent of the school’s students planned to study abroad), and that the mission of a public school was to prepare students for the national examination, not for study abroad. They also demanded that I share Special Curriculum resources with all of the school: all Shenzhen Middle School students had the right to use the English library and take English classes taught by the American faculty, they wrote on-line.
In this tempest of protest, I would make a series of decisions that ignited a firestorm. I implemented a selection process to ensure that students adhered to the programme’s philosophy, and students who were rejected considered the process arbitrary. (It was: a selection committee admitted students based on a five-minute interview.) The senior three study abroad students complained that I refused to help them. (This was also true: I didn’t like their attitude, and resented their criticisms; they thought my job was to secure them a place at a US university, and they believed scoring high on standardized examinations was enough.) And finally I had thrown out of the coffeehouse and threatened a study abroad student who was organizing an on-line petition against me. (This really was inexcusable, and the students demanded police action against me.)
For a year in the build-up to the Special Curriculum I seemingly could do no wrong, and suddenly I could do no right. Students put up Cultural Revolution-style ‘big character posters’ calling for my overthrow, some called for revolution, and one cursed me to my face. And then there was all that pressure from within: Suddenly, without any management experience, I was in charge of a Chinese staff, an American faculty, and students. I was a terrible manager, ineptly handling interpersonal relationships and firing people at will.
I broke down under all the criticism and the stress. I saw conspiracies everywhere, and decided that the whole world was against me. And most insanely of all, as I told myself that the whole world was conspiring against me, I also told myself that I was the world’s only sane person. It was like that scene from that movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, when Jim Carey’s memories were breaking like glass in front of him. In the office, I lost control, shouting and screaming and cursing. With my paranoia and erratic behavior I lost the confidence and trust of my staff and students. In the end, Principal Wang Zheng and I agreed I should leave, and I decided I could never again return to Shenzhen Middle School. That was September 27th, 2009.
It seemed like it was all over.
A month and a half later, I met with Principal Wang in Beijing. We had left on very bad terms, as I had made angry accusations to him. During this time I’d calmed down considerably. I had mistreated a lot of people at the school, but I mistreated Principal Wang the most—he’d trusted and supported me, but I had built the programme too fast, ignored criticisms, stubbornly stuck to my ideals, and had become self-righteous. I had complained that the students were spoiled brats, but really it was I who was the most spoiled brat of them all: for me, it was all about empire and ego, and nothing about education and reform.
Principal Wang’s response was that reform was a hard, painful, and violent process. When he eliminated the head teacher system, parents and teachers cursed and threatened him at public meetings. Teachers, parents, and students organized against him, but he held firm, and Shenzhen Middle School today is the centre for education reform.
I was then updated me on the Special Curriculum: leaderless and directionless, there was political infighting among the staff, and the students played video games and left garbage everywhere. Once the envy of the school it was now the laughing stock.
So I returned to Shenzhen Middle School. I was scared and more afraid of my ego than the students. I first had a meeting with the Special Curriculum students, apologized to them for all the drama and trauma I put them through, and promised to put things right so that they could receive a good education. I wrote public letters of apology to the whole school in the daily newspaper, went to apologize to the senior three students, and took out to lunch the student I had threatened in the coffeehouse. I conceded I had been a tyrant, and so I broke up my empire: I made the Special Curriculum activities independent, turned the English library and cafeteria over to school management, and just focused on building the English curriculum. Believing that I had sincerely changed for the better, the school’s teachers and students voiced their support for me as I sought to make the Special Curriculum work.
My American faculty and I experimented with different ways of teaching English until we felt we had the right model for our students. We had four classes of ten students, divided according to ability. We gave them two hours of English everyday: one hour for speaking and listening, and another for reading and writing. In oral English class we focused on building the students’ confidence at speaking: they played games, gave presentations, and did group activities. In reading English we focused on analyzing the arguments and methodology, syntax and diction of essays. Through constant experimentation and the hard work of the faculty the English curriculum became a success, and the students saw rapid improvement in their English ability.
When I returned, my Chinese staff told me that working for me was like living in a soap opera, and by February this year I could joke to them that now that everything was working out, life was boring. We all laughed, so confident and certain that the second semester would pass by calmly and quietly. A week later, the city of Shenzhen replaced Principal Wang Zheng with a new administrator, who decided his first priority was to get rid of me.
In my last entry on my attempts at reform, I’ll write about the final days of the Special Curriculum.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
China's Lack of Passion Issue (Diplomat)
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes how back in the late 1960s, a computer purchase at Seattle’s Lakeside High School brought destiny calling to its two most famous students. Computers back then were large and unwieldy, but for whatever reason Lakeside mothers still decided to buy a machine that most people had never heard of. Two students, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, became fascinated with it, and when it broke down they hiked all the way to the University of Washington to play with that university’s computer instead. So, when the computer revolution finally came to the United States in the late 1970s, college freshmen Gates and Allen were already veterans.
Practice makes perfect, and according to Gladwell a person needs to practice for about 10,000 hours to be truly good at something. Hard work is an attribute of success, but it’s passion that drives people to work hard. That’s why, I tell Shenzhen Middle School students, America’s top universities search for that elusive quality in admissions applications.
But passion is part of the process, and Chinese students only understand results. They apply their national examination mentality to the US application process: they memorize vocabulary lists and take test cram classes so they can score high on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) so that they can get into a US News and World Report top-25 American university.
I ask them why they want to study in the United States, and it’s clear they don’t really understand the American education system. I ask them what major they want to study, and it’s clear they’ve never thought about their careers. When I tell them to research the country’s liberal arts colleges because they’ll provide a better education than the Ivy League,they tell me the point isn’t to get an education but to get that Ivy League diploma. When I tell them that it doesn’t matter what school they get into but how they perform, the students think there’s no point in talking to me. And when I talk about passion and how Chinese students lack it they think I don’t understand them. Of course, they have passion: they’re passionate about scoring high on tests, very passionate about getting into an Ivy League school, and extremely passionate about making a lot of money in the future.
In January, one of my students Pan Fangdi returned to talk to the Special Curriculum’s new first-year students. I introduced her as a success story and a role model: she was performing well in challenging courses, she was on the university dance team, and she flowed easily between the mutually exclusive worlds of US and Chinese students.
A student raised his hand, and asked which school Pan attended. She replied that she went to the University of Wisconsin, and the room fell silent and flat.
I told them that Wisconsin was a great university, and that Pan Fangdi had spent a year building the Special Curriculum. She came in to manage the coffeehouse students when they were in limbo, and she finished the renovation of the coffeehouse when that went awry. She worked hard to renovate the Special Curriculum rooms and facilities, and did all that numbing paperwork necessary to bring over the US faculty. Without her, I told the class, there would be no Special Curriculum. But the students remained cool and indifferent.
Then one of Pan’s classmates returned to talk to the students. He took the easiest courses he could, and still struggled through them. He spent his time with his rich Chinese classmates watching the New York Knicks play at Madison Square Gardens or hanging out at bars. But he filled a lecture hall with Shenzhen Middle School students—because he was at Columbia University.
A long time ago, China became a great civilization because its elite sought self-cultivation and learning. But too often today, Chinese only care about brands and labels, statistics and results. Yale is not an opportunity to receive an education that will make you successful—just getting into Yale is success enough. You don’t buy a real Louis Vuitton bag to enjoy your wealth—you buy it to show you are wealthy. Getting a high score on the national examination is not the result of your love of learning—it’s because you crave the praise and admiration of your classmates, parents, and teachers.
Chinese admire Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but they also admire Napoleon and Stalin. In China it doesn’t matter how you obtain wealth and power, and everyone just assumes that if you have wealth and power it’s because you’re wicked.
‘Get Rich or Die Trying’ seems to be the motto for too many Chinese students.
Chinese saw my job as director of the Special Curriculum as getting students into the Ivy League, and I saw my job as educating students and developing their passion.
Take Zhou Yeran, who spoke perfect English, shot music videos, and wanted a career in film. I introduced him to two difficult works of journalism—James B. Stewart’s Den of Thieves and David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter—and he loved both. I suggested he shoot a documentary about the building of the Special Curriculum, and he began shooting the renovation work and the coffeehouse students. The more I got to know Zhou the more he impressed me: he worked hard, and he was so serious about everything he did.
I asked Zhou Yeran to be editor of a new English magazine I was starting, and he readily agreed. He did all-nighters to learn the publishing software Quark Express. He wrote features on migrant workers, and his writing was strikingly mature. He had worked so hard on the magazine (www.sz-greenroom.com) he didn’t have time to study for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, but he got a 2260 out of 2400 anyway, and a 790 out of 800 in the reading section.
I thought for sure that Yale would take Zhou Yeran, and he would prove to all Shenzhen Middle School students that my philosophy was right: be passionate and work hard to develop your passion, and you’ll be successful.
This April, when Zhou Yeran failed to get into Yale or any other Ivy League school, his classmates mocked him on-line for being a failure. How was he a failure? At 18, Zhou Yeran now knows how to write magazine feature articles in English, and shoot and edit his own documentary. That’s what I told him, but I could see that he blamed me partly for his failure. I thought he wouldn’t speak to me again, and I began doubting myself.
Then one day Zhou Yeran re-appeared at the school with his video camera and started filming Special Curriculum classes and interviewing students. From then on, he came everyday to the office to shoot and edit his documentary. He showed me his edits, and I was so impressed I paid him the highest compliment I could think of: I told him he was so talented he didn’t even need to go to college.
The Ivy League will never know Zhou Yeran’s brilliance, but the world soon will. Zhou Yeran has passion, but he has a rarer quality seldom found even in the United States—character.
In a well-known Chinese parable, a farmer loses his best stallion one day and his neighbour comes to offer his condolences, but the farmer just replies, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the stallion returns with three wild mares, and the neighbour runs back to congratulate the farmer, who again replies, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the farmer’s son falls from the wild mare, breaking his arm and his leg. The neighbour offers his condolences, and again the farmer says, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the army comes to conscript village youth, but finds the son an invalid. And so on.
Life will always have ups and downs, Nassim Nicholas Taleb warns us in his book Fooled by Randomness. Chance is omnipresent and omnipotent, and we humans foolishly and futilely seek explanations and reasons and patterns for what after all are just random coincidences. In a world of flux and randomness, Taleb exhorts us to be above all stoic, to maintain dignity even in death—in other words, to have character.
Zhou Yeran may be going to a US state university, but he’s discovered his passion and has proven he has the character to maintain his passion despite failure and adversity. Before I thought that I could have it all, and now I see that I must choose either to develop students’ passion and character or get them into the Ivy League. Knowing that Pan Fangdi is so happy in the United States and seeing Zhou Yeran in the office every day excitedly and happily showing his edits to my office staff, that choice is obvious and clear.
Practice makes perfect, and according to Gladwell a person needs to practice for about 10,000 hours to be truly good at something. Hard work is an attribute of success, but it’s passion that drives people to work hard. That’s why, I tell Shenzhen Middle School students, America’s top universities search for that elusive quality in admissions applications.
But passion is part of the process, and Chinese students only understand results. They apply their national examination mentality to the US application process: they memorize vocabulary lists and take test cram classes so they can score high on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Scholastic Achievement Test (SAT) so that they can get into a US News and World Report top-25 American university.
I ask them why they want to study in the United States, and it’s clear they don’t really understand the American education system. I ask them what major they want to study, and it’s clear they’ve never thought about their careers. When I tell them to research the country’s liberal arts colleges because they’ll provide a better education than the Ivy League,they tell me the point isn’t to get an education but to get that Ivy League diploma. When I tell them that it doesn’t matter what school they get into but how they perform, the students think there’s no point in talking to me. And when I talk about passion and how Chinese students lack it they think I don’t understand them. Of course, they have passion: they’re passionate about scoring high on tests, very passionate about getting into an Ivy League school, and extremely passionate about making a lot of money in the future.
In January, one of my students Pan Fangdi returned to talk to the Special Curriculum’s new first-year students. I introduced her as a success story and a role model: she was performing well in challenging courses, she was on the university dance team, and she flowed easily between the mutually exclusive worlds of US and Chinese students.
A student raised his hand, and asked which school Pan attended. She replied that she went to the University of Wisconsin, and the room fell silent and flat.
I told them that Wisconsin was a great university, and that Pan Fangdi had spent a year building the Special Curriculum. She came in to manage the coffeehouse students when they were in limbo, and she finished the renovation of the coffeehouse when that went awry. She worked hard to renovate the Special Curriculum rooms and facilities, and did all that numbing paperwork necessary to bring over the US faculty. Without her, I told the class, there would be no Special Curriculum. But the students remained cool and indifferent.
Then one of Pan’s classmates returned to talk to the students. He took the easiest courses he could, and still struggled through them. He spent his time with his rich Chinese classmates watching the New York Knicks play at Madison Square Gardens or hanging out at bars. But he filled a lecture hall with Shenzhen Middle School students—because he was at Columbia University.
A long time ago, China became a great civilization because its elite sought self-cultivation and learning. But too often today, Chinese only care about brands and labels, statistics and results. Yale is not an opportunity to receive an education that will make you successful—just getting into Yale is success enough. You don’t buy a real Louis Vuitton bag to enjoy your wealth—you buy it to show you are wealthy. Getting a high score on the national examination is not the result of your love of learning—it’s because you crave the praise and admiration of your classmates, parents, and teachers.
Chinese admire Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but they also admire Napoleon and Stalin. In China it doesn’t matter how you obtain wealth and power, and everyone just assumes that if you have wealth and power it’s because you’re wicked.
‘Get Rich or Die Trying’ seems to be the motto for too many Chinese students.
Chinese saw my job as director of the Special Curriculum as getting students into the Ivy League, and I saw my job as educating students and developing their passion.
Take Zhou Yeran, who spoke perfect English, shot music videos, and wanted a career in film. I introduced him to two difficult works of journalism—James B. Stewart’s Den of Thieves and David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter—and he loved both. I suggested he shoot a documentary about the building of the Special Curriculum, and he began shooting the renovation work and the coffeehouse students. The more I got to know Zhou the more he impressed me: he worked hard, and he was so serious about everything he did.
I asked Zhou Yeran to be editor of a new English magazine I was starting, and he readily agreed. He did all-nighters to learn the publishing software Quark Express. He wrote features on migrant workers, and his writing was strikingly mature. He had worked so hard on the magazine (www.sz-greenroom.com) he didn’t have time to study for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, but he got a 2260 out of 2400 anyway, and a 790 out of 800 in the reading section.
I thought for sure that Yale would take Zhou Yeran, and he would prove to all Shenzhen Middle School students that my philosophy was right: be passionate and work hard to develop your passion, and you’ll be successful.
This April, when Zhou Yeran failed to get into Yale or any other Ivy League school, his classmates mocked him on-line for being a failure. How was he a failure? At 18, Zhou Yeran now knows how to write magazine feature articles in English, and shoot and edit his own documentary. That’s what I told him, but I could see that he blamed me partly for his failure. I thought he wouldn’t speak to me again, and I began doubting myself.
Then one day Zhou Yeran re-appeared at the school with his video camera and started filming Special Curriculum classes and interviewing students. From then on, he came everyday to the office to shoot and edit his documentary. He showed me his edits, and I was so impressed I paid him the highest compliment I could think of: I told him he was so talented he didn’t even need to go to college.
The Ivy League will never know Zhou Yeran’s brilliance, but the world soon will. Zhou Yeran has passion, but he has a rarer quality seldom found even in the United States—character.
In a well-known Chinese parable, a farmer loses his best stallion one day and his neighbour comes to offer his condolences, but the farmer just replies, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the stallion returns with three wild mares, and the neighbour runs back to congratulate the farmer, who again replies, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the farmer’s son falls from the wild mare, breaking his arm and his leg. The neighbour offers his condolences, and again the farmer says, ‘Wait and see.’ The next day, the army comes to conscript village youth, but finds the son an invalid. And so on.
Life will always have ups and downs, Nassim Nicholas Taleb warns us in his book Fooled by Randomness. Chance is omnipresent and omnipotent, and we humans foolishly and futilely seek explanations and reasons and patterns for what after all are just random coincidences. In a world of flux and randomness, Taleb exhorts us to be above all stoic, to maintain dignity even in death—in other words, to have character.
Zhou Yeran may be going to a US state university, but he’s discovered his passion and has proven he has the character to maintain his passion despite failure and adversity. Before I thought that I could have it all, and now I see that I must choose either to develop students’ passion and character or get them into the Ivy League. Knowing that Pan Fangdi is so happy in the United States and seeing Zhou Yeran in the office every day excitedly and happily showing his edits to my office staff, that choice is obvious and clear.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Coffeehouse Education (Diplomat)
A Shenzhen Middle School student once told me he wanted to go to the United States to become a chef. He had a wide-eyed, honest look as I stared at him in disbelief: ‘So you want your dad to pay $200,000 for you to go to college so you can become a chef? ’He smiled, and nodded.
After we parted I couldn’t get him out of my head, and thought to myself: well, if the boy wants to be a chef, why not? And that’s how I decided that starting a coffeehouse at Shenzhen Middle School would be a good idea.
It was, in fact, a terrible idea. What exactly was my experience or qualification for starting a coffeehouse? Well, I was Cantonese, and what else did we Cantonese do except open restaurants and Laundromats? My father and my two uncles were cooks in Toronto restaurants, and my father had been talking about opening his own restaurant for ages. I had worked in the Yale dining halls as a dishwasher. Oh, and I liked to eat at restaurants, and I had watched and liked Mark Burnett’s reality series ‘The Restaurant.’
But what did opening a coffeehouse have to do with applying to American universities? Well, nothing really. But I wasn’t about to tell anyone that.
It took me exactly one meeting with the coffeehouse students to regret the idea. They tried to convince me that the coffeehouse needed to have Taiwanese sausage sticks, instant noodles, and packaged fried eggs (don’t ask) on the menu. I pointed out that these foods would make the coffeehouse stink. And then they pointed out that no students at Shenzhen Middle School actually drank coffee. I replied that in the West a coffeehouse was not necessarily a place to drink coffee but rather a public space for people to talk and to discuss, to debate and to argue: contact + conflict = thought.
But the problems just got worse and worse. I had divided the coffeehouse into three departments: design, marketing, and management. I immediately discovered that to be a mistake because the students had apparently been culturally indoctrinated to like and be good at bureaucratic warfare: they refused to communicate and co-operate, and criticized and complained about each other. The design team had spent weeks drawing up a coffeehouse that looked like the bar of a five-star hotel, and when I told the kids that the school could not in fact devote this year’s budget to building one coffeehouse they looked deflated and crushed.
Yet, the biggest problem of all was that the students liked to have meetings, and did nothing but have meetings. I wanted them to get their hands dirty: to hang out at Starbucks in the evenings, to intern at coffeeshops on weekends, to flip through design books at the city library. But that meant taking risks, leaving their comfort zone and walking into uncertainty, and they much preferred having meetings and creating long lists of why this coffeehouse project could not work.
I was frustrated with them, and I kept on switching team leaders. Finally, some students joined the team who had initiative, and they made the others get their hands dirty. The students turned a classroom into a laboratory for experimenting with different menu options, and went to look for unsuspecting classmates to test their concoctions on (cucumber juice was a favourite).
Meanwhile the renovation of the coffeehouse was delayed; the design team leader was making decisions without informing the others, and had decided to cover the coffeehouse backyard with bathroom tiles. I replaced her, and warned the rest of the students on the importance of communication and consensus.
The students kept on finding reasons to delay the opening of the coffeehouse, and so I just ordered them to open one day. The night before opening, and the students scrambled around and argued with each other, the air thick with fear and anxiety. The next afternoon, when they finally opened, the coffeehouse was a roaring success.
Working together on the coffeehouse, the students learned process, communication, and co-operation. They learned how to trust themselves, how to take risks, and how not to fear failure. All their lives they’ve been told by their parents and teachers that risk means danger, and the students learned to rationalize this internalization and institutionalization of the fear of failure.
The opening of the intimate and friendly coffeehouse not only changed the physical space of the school, but also altered the school’s psychological landscape as well. Everyday when the students sat in the coffeehouse to do homework or to chat or to drink taro milk tea they could see for themselves what was possible if they simply dared to believe. After the coffeehouse, we started an English magazine called the Green Room (www.sz-greenroom.com), a daily paper of translated articles from the Western media called The Eyes (www.sz-theeyes.com), and a daily newspaper of school news (www.shenzhongdaily.com).
By far, the Special Curriculum’s most successful activity was also its most challenging and gruelling: the daily newspaper. Shy introverted students out of necessity learned to be smiling outgoing reporters, and reticent self-absorbed editors out of necessity learned to be effective communicators and managers of reporters. Staying up until one or two in the morning to put out the paper, the newspaper team developed intimacy and mutual respect.
The coffeehouse, the daily, the Eyes, and the Green Room all have certain similarities that are aligned with the education goals set out. They’re so time-consuming and complex that they require a team that understands process and communication, co-operation and co-ordination. There’s a clear concrete purpose to each activity: the publications must increase circulation, and the coffeehouse must increase its profit margin. All these activities also have instantaneous feed-back loops that tell the students how they’re doing, and how they can improve: readership feedback for the publications, and profit margin for the coffeehouse.
Moreover, all these activities force students out of their comfort zone, to engage the world and to learn empathy: a reporter must learn to win an interviewee’s trust, and a waiter must please his customers. And finally and most important these activities help develop students’ interests, and give them a good sense of career possibilities.
In other words, these activities are meant to develop passion among the students. In my next entry, I’ll discuss why passion is such an important education goal, and why it’s so difficult to encourage Chinese students to be passionate.
After we parted I couldn’t get him out of my head, and thought to myself: well, if the boy wants to be a chef, why not? And that’s how I decided that starting a coffeehouse at Shenzhen Middle School would be a good idea.
It was, in fact, a terrible idea. What exactly was my experience or qualification for starting a coffeehouse? Well, I was Cantonese, and what else did we Cantonese do except open restaurants and Laundromats? My father and my two uncles were cooks in Toronto restaurants, and my father had been talking about opening his own restaurant for ages. I had worked in the Yale dining halls as a dishwasher. Oh, and I liked to eat at restaurants, and I had watched and liked Mark Burnett’s reality series ‘The Restaurant.’
But what did opening a coffeehouse have to do with applying to American universities? Well, nothing really. But I wasn’t about to tell anyone that.
It took me exactly one meeting with the coffeehouse students to regret the idea. They tried to convince me that the coffeehouse needed to have Taiwanese sausage sticks, instant noodles, and packaged fried eggs (don’t ask) on the menu. I pointed out that these foods would make the coffeehouse stink. And then they pointed out that no students at Shenzhen Middle School actually drank coffee. I replied that in the West a coffeehouse was not necessarily a place to drink coffee but rather a public space for people to talk and to discuss, to debate and to argue: contact + conflict = thought.
But the problems just got worse and worse. I had divided the coffeehouse into three departments: design, marketing, and management. I immediately discovered that to be a mistake because the students had apparently been culturally indoctrinated to like and be good at bureaucratic warfare: they refused to communicate and co-operate, and criticized and complained about each other. The design team had spent weeks drawing up a coffeehouse that looked like the bar of a five-star hotel, and when I told the kids that the school could not in fact devote this year’s budget to building one coffeehouse they looked deflated and crushed.
Yet, the biggest problem of all was that the students liked to have meetings, and did nothing but have meetings. I wanted them to get their hands dirty: to hang out at Starbucks in the evenings, to intern at coffeeshops on weekends, to flip through design books at the city library. But that meant taking risks, leaving their comfort zone and walking into uncertainty, and they much preferred having meetings and creating long lists of why this coffeehouse project could not work.
I was frustrated with them, and I kept on switching team leaders. Finally, some students joined the team who had initiative, and they made the others get their hands dirty. The students turned a classroom into a laboratory for experimenting with different menu options, and went to look for unsuspecting classmates to test their concoctions on (cucumber juice was a favourite).
Meanwhile the renovation of the coffeehouse was delayed; the design team leader was making decisions without informing the others, and had decided to cover the coffeehouse backyard with bathroom tiles. I replaced her, and warned the rest of the students on the importance of communication and consensus.
The students kept on finding reasons to delay the opening of the coffeehouse, and so I just ordered them to open one day. The night before opening, and the students scrambled around and argued with each other, the air thick with fear and anxiety. The next afternoon, when they finally opened, the coffeehouse was a roaring success.
Working together on the coffeehouse, the students learned process, communication, and co-operation. They learned how to trust themselves, how to take risks, and how not to fear failure. All their lives they’ve been told by their parents and teachers that risk means danger, and the students learned to rationalize this internalization and institutionalization of the fear of failure.
The opening of the intimate and friendly coffeehouse not only changed the physical space of the school, but also altered the school’s psychological landscape as well. Everyday when the students sat in the coffeehouse to do homework or to chat or to drink taro milk tea they could see for themselves what was possible if they simply dared to believe. After the coffeehouse, we started an English magazine called the Green Room (www.sz-greenroom.com), a daily paper of translated articles from the Western media called The Eyes (www.sz-theeyes.com), and a daily newspaper of school news (www.shenzhongdaily.com).
By far, the Special Curriculum’s most successful activity was also its most challenging and gruelling: the daily newspaper. Shy introverted students out of necessity learned to be smiling outgoing reporters, and reticent self-absorbed editors out of necessity learned to be effective communicators and managers of reporters. Staying up until one or two in the morning to put out the paper, the newspaper team developed intimacy and mutual respect.
The coffeehouse, the daily, the Eyes, and the Green Room all have certain similarities that are aligned with the education goals set out. They’re so time-consuming and complex that they require a team that understands process and communication, co-operation and co-ordination. There’s a clear concrete purpose to each activity: the publications must increase circulation, and the coffeehouse must increase its profit margin. All these activities also have instantaneous feed-back loops that tell the students how they’re doing, and how they can improve: readership feedback for the publications, and profit margin for the coffeehouse.
Moreover, all these activities force students out of their comfort zone, to engage the world and to learn empathy: a reporter must learn to win an interviewee’s trust, and a waiter must please his customers. And finally and most important these activities help develop students’ interests, and give them a good sense of career possibilities.
In other words, these activities are meant to develop passion among the students. In my next entry, I’ll discuss why passion is such an important education goal, and why it’s so difficult to encourage Chinese students to be passionate.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Importance of Space (Diplomat)
Principal Wang Zheng had approved my plan to create a Special Curriculum to prepare students for study abroad in the United States, but I knew that teachers, parents, and students doubted my experience and my qualifications (who wouldn’t?). So I had to work slowly to win the school over. I thought about the elements of my plan—the organizing of new activities, the hiring of reading seminar teachers, the building of a library, and the renovation of classrooms—and decided that creating new spaces at Shenzhen Middle School ought to be my first initiative.
It seemed that Robert Moses had built China’s new cities, so gigantic and ambitious, so imposing and all-encompassing are the monuments of glass, steel, and concrete. I’ve had meetings with Chinese architects where I’ve pointed out that breathing human beings would find living in their proposed building uncomfortable and stressful, and they’ve invariably replied that the new buildings would look good in pictures. That really was the Robert Moses mentality: buildings as statistics and promotional pictures, triumphs to show off to government officials and to the press, landmarks in a world created and moulded by one’s indomitable will. But even Moses would have balked at the pointlessness and lifelessness of Chinese architecture.
As a journalist I reported on the destruction of Beijing’s hutongs, the tree-lined quiet small alleyways that were Beijing’s arteries, flowing with life and community and tradition, connecting Beijing’s past and present and future. What Jane Jacobs wrote about Manhattan neighbourhoods could also apply to Beijing’s hutongs: a complex, organic web of life, activity, and space that evolved according to the needs and aspirations of its inhabitants. Then Beijing’s Robert Moses-inspired urban planners decided to knock down these vivid and vital neighbourhoods to make room for shopping malls and skyscrapers. Beijing’s hutongs were small and narrow, but they were also open and free, dreamy and limitless. The new skyscrapers, while vast and monumental, made Beijing feel cold and scary, lifeless and claustrophobic. There was that glare from the glass and concrete, that odour from overflowing sewage and newly renovated offices, and that noise from car horns and construction drills. And above all there was that stunting feeling of insignificance and confusion and alienation that came from living in a city where residents no longer lived and interacted but served and obeyed.
The classrooms at Shenzhen were cramped and sterile, with bad lighting and even worse air circulation. The school had green space, but it was fenced in. Gates and walls ordered the movement of students, and the school suffered from too many choke points—doors or stairways where students massed together during the changing of classes. And the school was overflowing with dead space, large concrete patches that were open and accessible but were so ugly and unseemly that students stayed far away. The school, borne out of utilitarian and mechanical planning, now needed a little more organic growth and Jane Jacobs.
So I began experimenting. First, I had a team of students re-design an unused office. The office was small and ugly, populated by gray metal cabinets. The students cleaned and cleared the room, re-painted the room from a hard white to a soft eggshell yellow, and went shopping at IKEA. They put in tables and chairs and sofas, and the room was suddenly teeming with life and interaction. After this initial success, in less than a year’s time, this enthusiastic and creative team of students would go on to design and renovate a coffeehouse, a reading room, new classrooms and offices, and a media centre (which housed the Special Curriculum’s daily newspaper and English magazine). They did so all with IKEA furniture, and two of them for the sake of efficiency and expediency just memorized the IKEA catalogue.
The altering of Shenzhen Middle School’s physical space was important for several reasons. The introduction of public spaces like the coffeehouse made the campus more friendly and intimate, and the bright, spacious, and colourful classrooms encouraged interaction and involvement. The light movable IKEA tables and chairs meant that students could re-arrange the rooms according to their needs and purposes. The rooms were multi-functional as well, taking into account the individual study and work habits of the students: the reading room had small rooms for individual study and large tables for group study, and the media centre had individual work stations but also conference tables. Above all, the physical space empowered students to think of the possibilities instead of the limitations of their environment—they could now interact with and shape their space instead of being confined and trapped in them.
In my next entry, I’ll discuss the creation and development of the Special Curriculum activities.
It seemed that Robert Moses had built China’s new cities, so gigantic and ambitious, so imposing and all-encompassing are the monuments of glass, steel, and concrete. I’ve had meetings with Chinese architects where I’ve pointed out that breathing human beings would find living in their proposed building uncomfortable and stressful, and they’ve invariably replied that the new buildings would look good in pictures. That really was the Robert Moses mentality: buildings as statistics and promotional pictures, triumphs to show off to government officials and to the press, landmarks in a world created and moulded by one’s indomitable will. But even Moses would have balked at the pointlessness and lifelessness of Chinese architecture.
As a journalist I reported on the destruction of Beijing’s hutongs, the tree-lined quiet small alleyways that were Beijing’s arteries, flowing with life and community and tradition, connecting Beijing’s past and present and future. What Jane Jacobs wrote about Manhattan neighbourhoods could also apply to Beijing’s hutongs: a complex, organic web of life, activity, and space that evolved according to the needs and aspirations of its inhabitants. Then Beijing’s Robert Moses-inspired urban planners decided to knock down these vivid and vital neighbourhoods to make room for shopping malls and skyscrapers. Beijing’s hutongs were small and narrow, but they were also open and free, dreamy and limitless. The new skyscrapers, while vast and monumental, made Beijing feel cold and scary, lifeless and claustrophobic. There was that glare from the glass and concrete, that odour from overflowing sewage and newly renovated offices, and that noise from car horns and construction drills. And above all there was that stunting feeling of insignificance and confusion and alienation that came from living in a city where residents no longer lived and interacted but served and obeyed.
The classrooms at Shenzhen were cramped and sterile, with bad lighting and even worse air circulation. The school had green space, but it was fenced in. Gates and walls ordered the movement of students, and the school suffered from too many choke points—doors or stairways where students massed together during the changing of classes. And the school was overflowing with dead space, large concrete patches that were open and accessible but were so ugly and unseemly that students stayed far away. The school, borne out of utilitarian and mechanical planning, now needed a little more organic growth and Jane Jacobs.
So I began experimenting. First, I had a team of students re-design an unused office. The office was small and ugly, populated by gray metal cabinets. The students cleaned and cleared the room, re-painted the room from a hard white to a soft eggshell yellow, and went shopping at IKEA. They put in tables and chairs and sofas, and the room was suddenly teeming with life and interaction. After this initial success, in less than a year’s time, this enthusiastic and creative team of students would go on to design and renovate a coffeehouse, a reading room, new classrooms and offices, and a media centre (which housed the Special Curriculum’s daily newspaper and English magazine). They did so all with IKEA furniture, and two of them for the sake of efficiency and expediency just memorized the IKEA catalogue.
The altering of Shenzhen Middle School’s physical space was important for several reasons. The introduction of public spaces like the coffeehouse made the campus more friendly and intimate, and the bright, spacious, and colourful classrooms encouraged interaction and involvement. The light movable IKEA tables and chairs meant that students could re-arrange the rooms according to their needs and purposes. The rooms were multi-functional as well, taking into account the individual study and work habits of the students: the reading room had small rooms for individual study and large tables for group study, and the media centre had individual work stations but also conference tables. Above all, the physical space empowered students to think of the possibilities instead of the limitations of their environment—they could now interact with and shape their space instead of being confined and trapped in them.
In my next entry, I’ll discuss the creation and development of the Special Curriculum activities.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Why Teach in China (Diplomat)
My family and I emigrated from Guangdong Province in 1983, when I was six years-old, and from then until my leaving for college I never once thought about China.
But during my sophomore year at Yale I did nothing but think about China. I took a two-hour Mandarin class every day, and read Chinese history books as well as the Far Eastern Economic Review and South China Morning Post. I tried to make friends with mainland Chinese, many of whom found my pro-China views and my born-again Chinese-ness annoying and grating. To prove my Chinese-ness I watched Chinese national TV’s New Year’s special and ate frozen dumplings imported from China.
I desperately wanted to visit China, and in my junior year I applied for a fellowship to study Mandarin in Beijing. When I was rejected I was demoralized and depressed for two weeks (which as a Yale English major meant an eternity of brooding and poetry writing) before I thought of another possibility: why not volunteer as an English teacher in China?
A Yale classmate from Beijing told me that he might know someone who could help, and that was enough to make me hop on a Christmas Day plane to Beijing. I slept in an underground motel, and the next day my classmate took me to Peking University High School to meet Vice Principal Wang Zheng.
Ten years later, again with no job and no place to stay, I was flying to Shenzhen to see Wang Zheng. When I arrived in Shenzhen, he told me about his reforms, and I was impressed. He then asked me to advise his students who wanted to study in the United States.
I worked as the China correspondent for the Washington-based Chronicle of Higher Education from 2001-2, and so I knew about Chinese students going abroad. But it was mainly for graduate study, and back then it was difficult for Chinese to secure student visas. Starting around 2004-5, a series of trends converged together to launch a tidal wave of Chinese students going abroad: The United States’ relaxing of student visa requirements for Chinese students, the increasing internationalization of US universities, the fast-growing middle-class in China, and China’s increasing prominence on the world stage. Each year, tens of thousands of Chinese students were matriculating as undergraduates at American universities, and a lucrative industry had developed to help these students apply.
I also taught students how to play Texas Hold’em poker, and taught a class on neuroscience. I encouraged students to read East of Eden and Anna Karenina. I organized a screening of ‘Mulholland Drive,’and throughout I sat blushing and sweating (for whatever reason, I’d forgotten that David Lynch movies had sex scenes) as the students sat calm and transfixed.
Spending time with Shenzhen Middle School students,and seeing how happy they were,I was reluctant to encourage them to go abroad. I remembered growing up in Toronto, and how my classmates bullied me because my father cut my hair and my mother bought my clothes at bargain outlets, and because I was socially awkward and had a stutter. I lived a lonely alienated life in Toronto, and that’s why I worked so hard to escape. But at Yale I was even more lonely and alienated, and that’s why I was so desperate to go to China.
I was impressed with the openness of Shenzhen Middle School students, but didn’t think they had thought long and hard about the rigor and challenge of studying and living in the United States. I told Wang Zheng I was impressed by the creativity and originality of the students, who busied themselves organizing fund-raisers and Model United Nations conferences. US universities complained that Chinese students lacked co-operation and reading skills, so I said that I’d create activities—a coffeehouse and an English magazine—that would help teach students co-operation skills, and I hoped to hire graduates from top US schools to teach reading seminars. I also wanted to build a website and an English library, and renovate classrooms to facilitate and encourage debate and discussion. I was told to write a blueprint.
I had packed my suitcase and was mentally prepared to return to Toronto to work on my Amazon.com ranking when I was told the school had approved my proposal. I couldn’t believe it!
But during my sophomore year at Yale I did nothing but think about China. I took a two-hour Mandarin class every day, and read Chinese history books as well as the Far Eastern Economic Review and South China Morning Post. I tried to make friends with mainland Chinese, many of whom found my pro-China views and my born-again Chinese-ness annoying and grating. To prove my Chinese-ness I watched Chinese national TV’s New Year’s special and ate frozen dumplings imported from China.
I desperately wanted to visit China, and in my junior year I applied for a fellowship to study Mandarin in Beijing. When I was rejected I was demoralized and depressed for two weeks (which as a Yale English major meant an eternity of brooding and poetry writing) before I thought of another possibility: why not volunteer as an English teacher in China?
A Yale classmate from Beijing told me that he might know someone who could help, and that was enough to make me hop on a Christmas Day plane to Beijing. I slept in an underground motel, and the next day my classmate took me to Peking University High School to meet Vice Principal Wang Zheng.
Ten years later, again with no job and no place to stay, I was flying to Shenzhen to see Wang Zheng. When I arrived in Shenzhen, he told me about his reforms, and I was impressed. He then asked me to advise his students who wanted to study in the United States.
I worked as the China correspondent for the Washington-based Chronicle of Higher Education from 2001-2, and so I knew about Chinese students going abroad. But it was mainly for graduate study, and back then it was difficult for Chinese to secure student visas. Starting around 2004-5, a series of trends converged together to launch a tidal wave of Chinese students going abroad: The United States’ relaxing of student visa requirements for Chinese students, the increasing internationalization of US universities, the fast-growing middle-class in China, and China’s increasing prominence on the world stage. Each year, tens of thousands of Chinese students were matriculating as undergraduates at American universities, and a lucrative industry had developed to help these students apply.
I also taught students how to play Texas Hold’em poker, and taught a class on neuroscience. I encouraged students to read East of Eden and Anna Karenina. I organized a screening of ‘Mulholland Drive,’and throughout I sat blushing and sweating (for whatever reason, I’d forgotten that David Lynch movies had sex scenes) as the students sat calm and transfixed.
Spending time with Shenzhen Middle School students,and seeing how happy they were,I was reluctant to encourage them to go abroad. I remembered growing up in Toronto, and how my classmates bullied me because my father cut my hair and my mother bought my clothes at bargain outlets, and because I was socially awkward and had a stutter. I lived a lonely alienated life in Toronto, and that’s why I worked so hard to escape. But at Yale I was even more lonely and alienated, and that’s why I was so desperate to go to China.
I was impressed with the openness of Shenzhen Middle School students, but didn’t think they had thought long and hard about the rigor and challenge of studying and living in the United States. I told Wang Zheng I was impressed by the creativity and originality of the students, who busied themselves organizing fund-raisers and Model United Nations conferences. US universities complained that Chinese students lacked co-operation and reading skills, so I said that I’d create activities—a coffeehouse and an English magazine—that would help teach students co-operation skills, and I hoped to hire graduates from top US schools to teach reading seminars. I also wanted to build a website and an English library, and renovate classrooms to facilitate and encourage debate and discussion. I was told to write a blueprint.
I had packed my suitcase and was mentally prepared to return to Toronto to work on my Amazon.com ranking when I was told the school had approved my proposal. I couldn’t believe it!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
The Cave (Diplomat)
Let’s say you were sitting outside a Sydney bistro enjoying a lunch of chilled heirloom tomato soup and hummus with pita bread. Your life is good, but you’ve also noticed some odd things: The weather’s always warm and sunny, Sydney somehow manages to hold one billion people, and it’s been the year 1999 for the past 50 years. Then suddenly Keanu Reeves walks up to you, and says your life is a lie; he implores you to seek truth and freedom, and follow him into a world where there’s neither sunlight nor 'Seinfield,' and you’ll have to live under the earth and fight against omnipotent machines in a war in which your only hope is Keanu Reeves.
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, humans are chained inside a dark cave where they develop a 'false consciousness.' Some break free of their chains, venture outside into the light, discover the real world, and from then on humanity has a choice of whether to forever dwell in the darkness or venture out into the light. Plato himself was not optimistic about human nature: his own teacher Socrates had to drink hemlock for trying to enlighten the youth of Athens. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man may become a hermit or go crazy, but he’d never become king.
In his book The End of Food, Paul Roberts tells us something we’ve always suspected: humans are lazy. In the days of hunter-gatherer societies, food was scarce, and that meant that humans had to adopt a speculative mentality: do the least work for the most calories. The game of evolution rewarded those clever hunters who somehow managed to slip away and sleep in the meadows as his team exhausted themselves hunting gazelles, and then quietly slipped back into formation as his team triumphantly brought back meat to the tribe. Better yet, let your neighboring village stockpile meat for the winter, and then go raid them.
In his book The Brain that Changes Itself, the psychiatrist Norman Doidge explains 'neuroplasticity,' how the brain is organic and malleable. There’s a paradox to neuroplasticity: exposing yourself to new stimuli can make the brain flexible, but choosing to stay within your comfort zone will make the brain rigid. Learning itself is slow, hard, and painful (the cementing of neural connections requires constant and strenuous practice, the 'use it or lose it' principle of neuroscience), and the changing of one’s already established neural connections is even slower, harder, and more painful. It’s much easier and convenient to merely rely on our current belief system.
Philosophy and psychology, history and experience, medicine and biology all agree: humans don't want to think, they don't want to work, and they don't want to change. That is essentially what went wrong with Principal Wang Zheng’s reforms: it ran up against human nature.
And this is the ultimate paradox about reform in China: people may not like their current state, but they also don't want to take the risk, do the work, and bear the pain that change requires. Memorizing textbooks from dawn until dusk may sound painful, but pain is subjective, and Chinese teenagers have adapted to this system, which is safe, predictable, and certain. Principal Wang Zheng’s reforms may free teenagers to be teenagers, but that means pain and pleasure, choice and consequence, triumph and tragedy – a new set of emotions and experiences for their teenage minds to struggle over, to be confused by and agonize over. Shenzhen Middle School students can testify: Learning to memorize textbooks is far easier and more enjoyable than learning to think for yourself, and make your own decisions.
And worst of all, some classmates will take advantage of this new freedom to enjoy life, annoying and angering the majority who choose to be chained to their textbooks. It's not there will be some who will live in the light and some will be live in the darkness: those who suffer from 'false consciousness' will instantly beat to death with their chains anyone who dares that there’s a “real world” outside, and Keanu Reeves won’t be karate kicking machines but other humans who refuse to leave the certainty and comfort that is the Matrix.
Consider Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that transformed China from a stagnant and xenophobic autarky into the world’s fastest-growing and most dynamic economy. There is now opportunity and openness, internationalization and progress, but there's also now cynicism and corruption, inequality and crime. There are winners, but that means there are losers; there are the rich, but that means there are the poor. The startling fact about China today is that the people are richer, more educated, and more enlightened than ever before, but the vast majority of Chinese are nostalgic for the Chairman Mao days when there was leveling of society and suppression of thinking. People back then were poor and ignorant, but they were also happy and fulfilled.
Shenzhen Middle School’s western campus also testifies to how much Chinese students seem to prefer 'imprisonment and slavery' to freedom and choice. When they entered the school for the first two years they were subjected to choice after choice, opportunity after opportunity. What class do they take? What activities do they join? Should they date? What should they do? How should they think? Two years go by, fast and furious, a haze of agony and exhilaration, confusion and excitement.
And for their senior three year, students are shipped to the school’s western campus where they have to cram for the national examination. The old ways are back in force: they have to study from dawn until dusk, with their head teacher and their parents watching and nagging them. They can’t think and they no longer have any choices to make, and never before have they been so happy and fulfilled.
'When I was back in the main campus, I was aimless and confused,' one senior three student Pi Qianting tells me. 'Now I’m focused and determined because the harder I work, the better I’ll perform.' Her classmate Zhang Yiwei adds: 'Tests everyday make life stressful but stress is a great motivator.'
After having seen the light and the 'real world,' students quickly and happily run back to the cave to put the chains back on.
Principal Wang Zheng understood the difficulty of his education vision, but also knew that there were many enlightened parents in China who agreed with his ideals and principles. The problem was the high school entrance examination ('zhongkao'), which determined which students could enroll in Shenzhen Middle School. By definition, those who had adapted well to China’s test-oriented system would do well on the 'zhongkao' and not so well at Shenzhen Middle School. In other words, Principal Wang Zheng had to educate those who were in fact most resistant to his pedagogy; Sisyphus had an easier job with that boulder.
Shenzhen is now a thriving city of seven million with China’s largest middle class base because reform permitted Chinese who believed in reform to come together to create a city from nothing. Principal Wang Zheng’s dream is to reform an education system that has been more or less in place for millennia, and neuroscience as well as simple commonsense tell us it’s easier for people to build new neural connections than to change existing neural connections.
That’s why Principal Wang Zheng for the past four years has been lobbying the local education bureau for the power to select a quarter of the school’s incoming class, a power that would have made his experiment a success. And that’s why the local education bureau refused him. They also pointed to the school’s falling scores on both the national examination and the junior high school examination (even though he refused to accept the validity of statistics as indicators of his performance), and replaced him.
In the end, this visionary reformer failed because he was a visionary and because he was a reformer. Principal Wang Zheng preferred to drink milk tea with students than to drink baijiu with government officials. In a country where everyone was first a politician, Principal Wang was first an educator, and he saw his students as individuals to be encouraged and nurtured rather than as pawns on his chessboard or as statistics to boast his career. And what was truly astonishing about him, and what actually permitted him to be true to his ways, was his modesty, his patience, and his forbearance. He never sought praise or promotion. His teachers often made twice as much officially as he does (and maybe even much more unofficially), but Principal Wang always made sure to pay the dinner tab. An ascetic and a workaholic, he was selfless and made personal sacrifices in order to help those around him.
One of those individuals he helped was me. I myself had certain education ideals, and for a long time I’ve wanted to work with Principal Wang. I finally had the opportunity in September 2008 when he hired me to manage the school’s stream for study abroad students. Together Principal Wang and I would try to create an innovative education program called the Special Curriculum.
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, humans are chained inside a dark cave where they develop a 'false consciousness.' Some break free of their chains, venture outside into the light, discover the real world, and from then on humanity has a choice of whether to forever dwell in the darkness or venture out into the light. Plato himself was not optimistic about human nature: his own teacher Socrates had to drink hemlock for trying to enlighten the youth of Athens. In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man may become a hermit or go crazy, but he’d never become king.
In his book The End of Food, Paul Roberts tells us something we’ve always suspected: humans are lazy. In the days of hunter-gatherer societies, food was scarce, and that meant that humans had to adopt a speculative mentality: do the least work for the most calories. The game of evolution rewarded those clever hunters who somehow managed to slip away and sleep in the meadows as his team exhausted themselves hunting gazelles, and then quietly slipped back into formation as his team triumphantly brought back meat to the tribe. Better yet, let your neighboring village stockpile meat for the winter, and then go raid them.
In his book The Brain that Changes Itself, the psychiatrist Norman Doidge explains 'neuroplasticity,' how the brain is organic and malleable. There’s a paradox to neuroplasticity: exposing yourself to new stimuli can make the brain flexible, but choosing to stay within your comfort zone will make the brain rigid. Learning itself is slow, hard, and painful (the cementing of neural connections requires constant and strenuous practice, the 'use it or lose it' principle of neuroscience), and the changing of one’s already established neural connections is even slower, harder, and more painful. It’s much easier and convenient to merely rely on our current belief system.
Philosophy and psychology, history and experience, medicine and biology all agree: humans don't want to think, they don't want to work, and they don't want to change. That is essentially what went wrong with Principal Wang Zheng’s reforms: it ran up against human nature.
And this is the ultimate paradox about reform in China: people may not like their current state, but they also don't want to take the risk, do the work, and bear the pain that change requires. Memorizing textbooks from dawn until dusk may sound painful, but pain is subjective, and Chinese teenagers have adapted to this system, which is safe, predictable, and certain. Principal Wang Zheng’s reforms may free teenagers to be teenagers, but that means pain and pleasure, choice and consequence, triumph and tragedy – a new set of emotions and experiences for their teenage minds to struggle over, to be confused by and agonize over. Shenzhen Middle School students can testify: Learning to memorize textbooks is far easier and more enjoyable than learning to think for yourself, and make your own decisions.
And worst of all, some classmates will take advantage of this new freedom to enjoy life, annoying and angering the majority who choose to be chained to their textbooks. It's not there will be some who will live in the light and some will be live in the darkness: those who suffer from 'false consciousness' will instantly beat to death with their chains anyone who dares that there’s a “real world” outside, and Keanu Reeves won’t be karate kicking machines but other humans who refuse to leave the certainty and comfort that is the Matrix.
Consider Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that transformed China from a stagnant and xenophobic autarky into the world’s fastest-growing and most dynamic economy. There is now opportunity and openness, internationalization and progress, but there's also now cynicism and corruption, inequality and crime. There are winners, but that means there are losers; there are the rich, but that means there are the poor. The startling fact about China today is that the people are richer, more educated, and more enlightened than ever before, but the vast majority of Chinese are nostalgic for the Chairman Mao days when there was leveling of society and suppression of thinking. People back then were poor and ignorant, but they were also happy and fulfilled.
Shenzhen Middle School’s western campus also testifies to how much Chinese students seem to prefer 'imprisonment and slavery' to freedom and choice. When they entered the school for the first two years they were subjected to choice after choice, opportunity after opportunity. What class do they take? What activities do they join? Should they date? What should they do? How should they think? Two years go by, fast and furious, a haze of agony and exhilaration, confusion and excitement.
And for their senior three year, students are shipped to the school’s western campus where they have to cram for the national examination. The old ways are back in force: they have to study from dawn until dusk, with their head teacher and their parents watching and nagging them. They can’t think and they no longer have any choices to make, and never before have they been so happy and fulfilled.
'When I was back in the main campus, I was aimless and confused,' one senior three student Pi Qianting tells me. 'Now I’m focused and determined because the harder I work, the better I’ll perform.' Her classmate Zhang Yiwei adds: 'Tests everyday make life stressful but stress is a great motivator.'
After having seen the light and the 'real world,' students quickly and happily run back to the cave to put the chains back on.
Principal Wang Zheng understood the difficulty of his education vision, but also knew that there were many enlightened parents in China who agreed with his ideals and principles. The problem was the high school entrance examination ('zhongkao'), which determined which students could enroll in Shenzhen Middle School. By definition, those who had adapted well to China’s test-oriented system would do well on the 'zhongkao' and not so well at Shenzhen Middle School. In other words, Principal Wang Zheng had to educate those who were in fact most resistant to his pedagogy; Sisyphus had an easier job with that boulder.
Shenzhen is now a thriving city of seven million with China’s largest middle class base because reform permitted Chinese who believed in reform to come together to create a city from nothing. Principal Wang Zheng’s dream is to reform an education system that has been more or less in place for millennia, and neuroscience as well as simple commonsense tell us it’s easier for people to build new neural connections than to change existing neural connections.
That’s why Principal Wang Zheng for the past four years has been lobbying the local education bureau for the power to select a quarter of the school’s incoming class, a power that would have made his experiment a success. And that’s why the local education bureau refused him. They also pointed to the school’s falling scores on both the national examination and the junior high school examination (even though he refused to accept the validity of statistics as indicators of his performance), and replaced him.
In the end, this visionary reformer failed because he was a visionary and because he was a reformer. Principal Wang Zheng preferred to drink milk tea with students than to drink baijiu with government officials. In a country where everyone was first a politician, Principal Wang was first an educator, and he saw his students as individuals to be encouraged and nurtured rather than as pawns on his chessboard or as statistics to boast his career. And what was truly astonishing about him, and what actually permitted him to be true to his ways, was his modesty, his patience, and his forbearance. He never sought praise or promotion. His teachers often made twice as much officially as he does (and maybe even much more unofficially), but Principal Wang always made sure to pay the dinner tab. An ascetic and a workaholic, he was selfless and made personal sacrifices in order to help those around him.
One of those individuals he helped was me. I myself had certain education ideals, and for a long time I’ve wanted to work with Principal Wang. I finally had the opportunity in September 2008 when he hired me to manage the school’s stream for study abroad students. Together Principal Wang and I would try to create an innovative education program called the Special Curriculum.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
When Bad is Good in China (Diplomat)
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduces us to Chris Langan, an American with an exceptionally high IQ who dropped out of university because he couldn’t convince his professor to let him skip one class for work. Gladwell contrasts Langan with J. Robert Oppenheimer, who as a doctorate student at Cambridge once tried to poison his advisor. When he was caught, Oppenheimer convinced the university authorities to put him on probation instead of calling the police. Both men were decidedly brilliant, but whereas Chris Langan went on to become a nightclub bouncer J. Robert Oppenheimer went on to secure everlasting fame with the Manhattan Project.
The authors of Freakonomics explain that economists have long discovered that parents’ profession is a much better indicator of success for their child than either IQ or education. The existing data tells us that an individual neglected and abused by two divorced alcoholic doctors is likely to perform better economically in life than an individual raised in a loving household by two Wal-Mart clerks who read their child bedtime stories and who taketheir child to the opera.
This economic data seems to suggest the supremacy of genes, but Gladwell in Outliers suggests another explanation is social conditioning, confidence, and attitude. Chris Langan grew up poor in a divorced household, whereas J. Robert Oppenheimer was born and bred on New York’s Upper East Side. From an early age, the over-achieving and brilliant Chris Langan had issues with power and authority: he fought his abusive stepfather and his college professors. From an early age, the overachieving and brilliant J. Robert Oppenheimer was confident that he would one day become power and authority, a belief reinforced in him by his wealthy family and his Harvard professors.
For Gladwell, the class divide then is not just one of income,but one of attitude: America’s poor fatalistically submit to authority, whereas America’s middleclasses teach their children how to negotiate and cajole (even on a simple visit to the doctor, a middleclass mother will teach her six-year-old child to ask questions and to demand explanations). Poor children are can often be polite and obedient and well-behaved; they’re too ready to accept their lot in life. Middle class children can be grasping, selfish, and demanding; they set their expectations high, and they confidently and aggressively push the boundaries around them in order to achieve their goals. Gladwell argues that more than genes or money or education, confidence determines success.
Now consider Chinese students, most of whom are conditioned to think and to behave like America’s poor. Principal Wang Zheng, however, has conditioned Shenzhen Middle School students to think and behave like the US middle class. This sort of education means that Shenzhen Middle School students probably will not do well on the national examination but they will do well in life.
Ordinary Chinese students are sponges, whereas Shenzhen Middle School students are self-learners. Ordinary Chinese students may know a lot, but they don’t communicate and ask questions, so their knowledge can neither be updated nor expanded—in our fast-changing world Shenzhen Middle School’s communication and curiosity are what works. Ordinary Chinese students may be focused and hardworking, but because they refuse to think for themselves and to challenge the world, they will muddle through life safe and obscure. Shenzhen Middle School students are confident risk-takers, and they’ll often achieve a great deal just by not fearing failure. (Many Shenzhen Middle School students will get into China’s top universities because they’re confident they’ll test in, whereas many better students lacking in confidence apply to second-tier universities.)
But let’s be honest: Shenzhen Middle School students are a pain in the ass to deal with. They’re confident communicators, but they can also be arrogant. Having a principal who treats them like friends and equals means Shenzhen Middle School students neither understand nor respect social hierarchy and decorum. Having a principal who answers their phone calls right away while refusing to answer those from the mayor means that Shenzhen Middle School students feel empowered to skip class and use school resources for their own end. Shenzhen Middle School students criticize and are condescending; they like to give lectures, often on topics they don’t know anything about; they like to make unsolicited comments and ask provocative questions; they demand management and leadership roles although they possess neither the qualification nor the experience. In other words, Shenzhen Middle School students were probably like J. Robert Oppenheimer and many successful Americans when they were teenagers.
Both Chris Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer were geniuses, but in different ways. Chris Langan was a genius in the traditional Chinese sense, and so while he excelled at IQ tests he had issues managing personal emotions and social relationships. J. Robert Oppenheimer may have been an accomplished theoretical physicist, but what made him such a brilliant leader on the Manhattan Project was his ability to excite and to inspire, to prod and to cajole, to bring together and to contain all those hundreds of egos, many of whom thought they were God. Those remarkable qualities were somewhat borne out of his Upper East Side breeding and Harvard education, but mostly borne out of all the disappointments and tragedies, loss and pain of a man who had the courage to believe in his future greatness and who had the confidence to pursue it.
Shenzhen Middle School incubates students’ courage and confidence. They graduate from college, head out into life, survey what they see, and are dissatisfied and discontent with what’s before their eyes. They’ll seek what they believe to be rightfully theirs, and if the world does not give it to them then they will seek to change the world. They are schemers and dreamers, pirates and builders, speculators and visionaries. Having organized basketball tournaments and masquerade balls, having been the vanguard of Principal Wang’s education reforms, having re-made Shenzhen Middle School in their image they’ve received the best sort of education to become China’s next generation of managers and leaders, dreamers and thinkers. Their lives will be rewarding and disappointing, exhilarating and depressing, triumphant and tragic. But it will be their lives and theirs alone. That is Principal Wang’s greatest accomplishment and legacy.
Education is by definition and by necessity a long endeavour, and in twenty years’ time, as Shenzhen Middle School students come into wealth, power, and fame, Principal Wang’s reforms will be at long last proven right. But today, Shenzhen believes Principal Wang’s reforms at Shenzhen Middle School to be a dismal failure, fired him, and put in place an administrator who is bringing back the old ways. And the teachers and parents are cheering on this new principal, but so are many students.
Principal Wang Zheng had given freedom and choice to his students, and many of them refused it. Why? That will be the subject of my next and last article on Principal Wang Zheng’s legacy at Shenzhen Middle School.
The authors of Freakonomics explain that economists have long discovered that parents’ profession is a much better indicator of success for their child than either IQ or education. The existing data tells us that an individual neglected and abused by two divorced alcoholic doctors is likely to perform better economically in life than an individual raised in a loving household by two Wal-Mart clerks who read their child bedtime stories and who taketheir child to the opera.
This economic data seems to suggest the supremacy of genes, but Gladwell in Outliers suggests another explanation is social conditioning, confidence, and attitude. Chris Langan grew up poor in a divorced household, whereas J. Robert Oppenheimer was born and bred on New York’s Upper East Side. From an early age, the over-achieving and brilliant Chris Langan had issues with power and authority: he fought his abusive stepfather and his college professors. From an early age, the overachieving and brilliant J. Robert Oppenheimer was confident that he would one day become power and authority, a belief reinforced in him by his wealthy family and his Harvard professors.
For Gladwell, the class divide then is not just one of income,but one of attitude: America’s poor fatalistically submit to authority, whereas America’s middleclasses teach their children how to negotiate and cajole (even on a simple visit to the doctor, a middleclass mother will teach her six-year-old child to ask questions and to demand explanations). Poor children are can often be polite and obedient and well-behaved; they’re too ready to accept their lot in life. Middle class children can be grasping, selfish, and demanding; they set their expectations high, and they confidently and aggressively push the boundaries around them in order to achieve their goals. Gladwell argues that more than genes or money or education, confidence determines success.
Now consider Chinese students, most of whom are conditioned to think and to behave like America’s poor. Principal Wang Zheng, however, has conditioned Shenzhen Middle School students to think and behave like the US middle class. This sort of education means that Shenzhen Middle School students probably will not do well on the national examination but they will do well in life.
Ordinary Chinese students are sponges, whereas Shenzhen Middle School students are self-learners. Ordinary Chinese students may know a lot, but they don’t communicate and ask questions, so their knowledge can neither be updated nor expanded—in our fast-changing world Shenzhen Middle School’s communication and curiosity are what works. Ordinary Chinese students may be focused and hardworking, but because they refuse to think for themselves and to challenge the world, they will muddle through life safe and obscure. Shenzhen Middle School students are confident risk-takers, and they’ll often achieve a great deal just by not fearing failure. (Many Shenzhen Middle School students will get into China’s top universities because they’re confident they’ll test in, whereas many better students lacking in confidence apply to second-tier universities.)
But let’s be honest: Shenzhen Middle School students are a pain in the ass to deal with. They’re confident communicators, but they can also be arrogant. Having a principal who treats them like friends and equals means Shenzhen Middle School students neither understand nor respect social hierarchy and decorum. Having a principal who answers their phone calls right away while refusing to answer those from the mayor means that Shenzhen Middle School students feel empowered to skip class and use school resources for their own end. Shenzhen Middle School students criticize and are condescending; they like to give lectures, often on topics they don’t know anything about; they like to make unsolicited comments and ask provocative questions; they demand management and leadership roles although they possess neither the qualification nor the experience. In other words, Shenzhen Middle School students were probably like J. Robert Oppenheimer and many successful Americans when they were teenagers.
Both Chris Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer were geniuses, but in different ways. Chris Langan was a genius in the traditional Chinese sense, and so while he excelled at IQ tests he had issues managing personal emotions and social relationships. J. Robert Oppenheimer may have been an accomplished theoretical physicist, but what made him such a brilliant leader on the Manhattan Project was his ability to excite and to inspire, to prod and to cajole, to bring together and to contain all those hundreds of egos, many of whom thought they were God. Those remarkable qualities were somewhat borne out of his Upper East Side breeding and Harvard education, but mostly borne out of all the disappointments and tragedies, loss and pain of a man who had the courage to believe in his future greatness and who had the confidence to pursue it.
Shenzhen Middle School incubates students’ courage and confidence. They graduate from college, head out into life, survey what they see, and are dissatisfied and discontent with what’s before their eyes. They’ll seek what they believe to be rightfully theirs, and if the world does not give it to them then they will seek to change the world. They are schemers and dreamers, pirates and builders, speculators and visionaries. Having organized basketball tournaments and masquerade balls, having been the vanguard of Principal Wang’s education reforms, having re-made Shenzhen Middle School in their image they’ve received the best sort of education to become China’s next generation of managers and leaders, dreamers and thinkers. Their lives will be rewarding and disappointing, exhilarating and depressing, triumphant and tragic. But it will be their lives and theirs alone. That is Principal Wang’s greatest accomplishment and legacy.
Education is by definition and by necessity a long endeavour, and in twenty years’ time, as Shenzhen Middle School students come into wealth, power, and fame, Principal Wang’s reforms will be at long last proven right. But today, Shenzhen believes Principal Wang’s reforms at Shenzhen Middle School to be a dismal failure, fired him, and put in place an administrator who is bringing back the old ways. And the teachers and parents are cheering on this new principal, but so are many students.
Principal Wang Zheng had given freedom and choice to his students, and many of them refused it. Why? That will be the subject of my next and last article on Principal Wang Zheng’s legacy at Shenzhen Middle School.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)