On October 6, Peking University High School will celebrate its 50th anniversary, a time as much for reflection as for celebration.
When Peking University launched the high school in 1960, it dispatched its professors to teach the children of the faculty of Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Staff and students were proud of the school, and it was common for students to return as teachers. Current principal Wang Zheng is a graduate of the high school, and his former math and Chinese teachers teach in the International Division.
From its inception, Peking University High School was considered the best high school in China. But not anymore.
In 1998, then Vice-Principal Wang Zheng hired me to teach English, and back then I found the students to be curious and creative, and the school to be open and free. Those days as a new teacher were some of the happiest and most rewarding of my life.
But in 2000, the high school made a disastrous decision that would prove to be its downfall.
Back then, the Beijing education bureau in its infinite wisdom permitted its cash-starved schools to make money themselves. Principals became businessmen: they leased space to hot pot restaurants and beauty parlors, opened weekend cram courses, sent their students to expensive private schools overseas for a commission, and charged students who didn’t test into their high school an exorbitant entrance fee.
These were small scams that temporarily relieved budget crunches. And then a real estate developer suggested to China’s most famous school the biggest education scam yet—building Peking University High School franchise schools around China. The school was so prestigious and famous that local governments offered free land and preferential loans.
The school leaders heard ka-ching! The teachers were apparently resistant, until the developer reportedly offered a pay raise and a free European vacation. Ten years later, Peking University High School has over a dozen franchise schools scattered around the country, and its reputation is now destroyed.
Wang said he’s determined to close down these mismanaged franchises.That will be hard enough, but there’s a much more difficult task ahead for him.
Peking University High School teachers have always been proud of and trusted their students’ self-discipline and love of learning (that which Chinese call suzhi or ‘cultivation’). But this cultivation came about because of the university’s strong, selfless intellectual tradition and the relentless poverty under Mao Zedong’s autarky.
Chinese intellectuals saw themselves as selfless servants of the motherland, but after Tiananmen 1989 and the mad gold rush following Premier Zhu Rongji’s wholesale dismantling of China’s socialist apparatus, intellectual self-sacrifice was seen as more shameful than prostitution and watermelon-selling. Life’s goals were to make money and spend it rather than to learn and improve oneself.
And in this new social milieu Peking University High School’s fragile freedom became unfettered chaos: Discipline and drive disappeared, and in their place came dating, video games, mobile phones, and Internet chat rooms and blogs. Test scores dropped, and Peking University professors scrambled to place their only child in other high schools. School administrators were clueless and paralyzed: other schools responded to the shifting culture by clamping down on students, but that would be against Peking University High School’s tradition of freedom and openness.
Wang came of age in the 1980s China, a radically different time from today’s China. The trick now is to maintain the school’s proud traditions while embracing/confronting 21st century China. It will be no easy task, and it may well be impossible.
As alumni gather for Peking University High School’s 50th anniversary, there will be a lot to celebrate. But there’ll be even more to ponder.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Back to School (Diplomat)
It’s a new school year, and as I mentioned I have a new job in Beijing, running the International Division—a partnership between Peking University High School and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut. My management team has moved up with me to Beijing from Shenzhen; we’ve recruited thirty bright motivated students for our inaugural year, we have an excellent staff of both Chinese and foreign teachers, and even before classes started we’ve received favourable media coverage.
But I admit I still deeply miss my students at Shenzhen High School, and regret how the Special Curriculum ended. Was I right to have stuck to my vision? I kept on repeating the message ‘it doesn’t matter what American university you get into, but how you do when you get there.’ Looking back, I realized how stupid and naïve Chinese administrators, parents, and students must have thought I was.
In my first meeting with the new students in the new programme, I was intent on sticking to this message, but was unsure of how to best articulate it. Half an hour before orientation I received an e-mail from Zhou Yeran, a Shenzhen Middle School student who just started at the University of Illinois. I’ve written about him previously, and this past summer he began editing a feature hour-long documentary on the building of the Special Curriculum, 10 minutes of which you can watch here.
I shared both Zhou Yeran’s video and e-mail with my new students, telling them that three years from now, when they are enrolled in US universities, I hope to receive a similar e-mail from all of them. In fact, it’s the goal and purpose of the International Division to educate them in such a manner so that every student will write me such an e-mail.
Here is Zhou Yeran’s e-mail in its entirety:
‘Having been in America for two weeks, I'm starting to understand why so many Chinese students are failing here.
'The biggest obstacle for Chinese students is not culture, knowledge or even language. It's their narrow comfort zones that's making them isolated and socially marginalized. A Chinese student might speak perfect English and get straight A's in classes, but the idea of making friends using English, learning a new way of living or asking a question in class is simply horrifying for him. It is so tempting for him to stick with his fellow Chinese friends, speak Chinese all the time, and take totally unchallenging courses such as Math and Physics. In short, he wants to live his old life in this new country. But the thing about America is, living that old life is easy to do. People are used to gangs of Chinese shouting mandarin, and simply choose to ignore them most of the time. No one is eager to Americanize him, he either actively blend in or become isolated. Most Chinese take the latter, easier choice.
'Now I realize how important my last year in Special Curriculum is.The most crucial thing I've learned from this experience is not leadership or writing skills, but rather the spirit of constantly challenging myself, stepping out of my comfort zone and embracing new ideas. My new life here is a tabula rasa, I can do whatever I want to do and be whoever I want to be. I'm in the Yoga club (and totally enjoyed its first session); I'm learning Ultimate Frisbee; I'm taking the American Literature seminar (in which I am probably the only international student) and facilitating the discussions all the time; I'm socializing with all kinds of people: Americans, Indians, Koreans, African-Americans...; I've applied to work for the Daily Illini (I hope they'll hire me, because I really, REALLY want that job); I can be "Joe", "Zhou", or "Yeran".
'I have to admit, though, things weren't always going so well. At first, socializing in English was totally awkward and uncomfortable (mostly due to my lack of confidence), but after a week I've made a lot of friends and my confidence has been rocketing. The first American Literature reading assignment was hard to understand (It was Columbus and John Winthrop. I knew virtually nothing about the fourth voyage or the Puritan values and certainly wasn't used to reading English written with "thy"s), but I struggled through it, learned the backgrounds from Wikipedia and realized it wasn't half as hard as it seemed. So now, at the end of a very long and exciting week, I guess I can say that I've been doing pretty well.’
Now back to work.
But I admit I still deeply miss my students at Shenzhen High School, and regret how the Special Curriculum ended. Was I right to have stuck to my vision? I kept on repeating the message ‘it doesn’t matter what American university you get into, but how you do when you get there.’ Looking back, I realized how stupid and naïve Chinese administrators, parents, and students must have thought I was.
In my first meeting with the new students in the new programme, I was intent on sticking to this message, but was unsure of how to best articulate it. Half an hour before orientation I received an e-mail from Zhou Yeran, a Shenzhen Middle School student who just started at the University of Illinois. I’ve written about him previously, and this past summer he began editing a feature hour-long documentary on the building of the Special Curriculum, 10 minutes of which you can watch here.
I shared both Zhou Yeran’s video and e-mail with my new students, telling them that three years from now, when they are enrolled in US universities, I hope to receive a similar e-mail from all of them. In fact, it’s the goal and purpose of the International Division to educate them in such a manner so that every student will write me such an e-mail.
Here is Zhou Yeran’s e-mail in its entirety:
‘Having been in America for two weeks, I'm starting to understand why so many Chinese students are failing here.
'The biggest obstacle for Chinese students is not culture, knowledge or even language. It's their narrow comfort zones that's making them isolated and socially marginalized. A Chinese student might speak perfect English and get straight A's in classes, but the idea of making friends using English, learning a new way of living or asking a question in class is simply horrifying for him. It is so tempting for him to stick with his fellow Chinese friends, speak Chinese all the time, and take totally unchallenging courses such as Math and Physics. In short, he wants to live his old life in this new country. But the thing about America is, living that old life is easy to do. People are used to gangs of Chinese shouting mandarin, and simply choose to ignore them most of the time. No one is eager to Americanize him, he either actively blend in or become isolated. Most Chinese take the latter, easier choice.
'Now I realize how important my last year in Special Curriculum is.The most crucial thing I've learned from this experience is not leadership or writing skills, but rather the spirit of constantly challenging myself, stepping out of my comfort zone and embracing new ideas. My new life here is a tabula rasa, I can do whatever I want to do and be whoever I want to be. I'm in the Yoga club (and totally enjoyed its first session); I'm learning Ultimate Frisbee; I'm taking the American Literature seminar (in which I am probably the only international student) and facilitating the discussions all the time; I'm socializing with all kinds of people: Americans, Indians, Koreans, African-Americans...; I've applied to work for the Daily Illini (I hope they'll hire me, because I really, REALLY want that job); I can be "Joe", "Zhou", or "Yeran".
'I have to admit, though, things weren't always going so well. At first, socializing in English was totally awkward and uncomfortable (mostly due to my lack of confidence), but after a week I've made a lot of friends and my confidence has been rocketing. The first American Literature reading assignment was hard to understand (It was Columbus and John Winthrop. I knew virtually nothing about the fourth voyage or the Puritan values and certainly wasn't used to reading English written with "thy"s), but I struggled through it, learned the backgrounds from Wikipedia and realized it wasn't half as hard as it seemed. So now, at the end of a very long and exciting week, I guess I can say that I've been doing pretty well.’
Now back to work.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
How the World is Like China (Diplomat)
Some readers of this blog might think I’m a self-hating Chinese. Actually, this isn’t true at all—I am, above all, a self-hating global citizen. It’s back-to-school time, and I’d like to share some stories that demonstrate that education systems around the world are just as hopeless as the Chinese system.
1. This country is financially and ideologically bankrupt. Its elite seem like a kleptocracy, and the people are discontented, joining radical groups. In response, its politicians decided to print money. China? No, it’s America, where public officials have responded to financial implosion and public cynicism by spending $578 million dollars building the world’s costliest school.
Surely, Chinese officialdom won’t sit idly by and let US politicians outdo them in extravagant waste of public resources? China’s poorest children will be happy to hear any and all potential funding for their school will be diverted to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen as they compete to build the world’s costliest school so that the Chinese bureaucracy can maintain its reputation.
2. Teachers who don’t teach, and students who don’t study. Falling standards and discipline. Too much drug-taking and video-game playing on campus. Governments around the world are failing to reverse these trends, and so one government has taken the novel approach of deciding that these could be, in fact, positive trends.
You’d think that that government would be China, which I called doublethink nation previously. But it’s actually the government that legalized pot. This outrageously glib article discusses how a school is responding to the Dutch government’s call for ‘self-directed learning’ by overhauling the traditional classroom:
'The prototypical factory model with its self-contained classrooms is replaced by an environment that features a diversity of spaces that flow into one another. The design promotes reflective, collaborative learning that mimics the way teenagers think, learn and socialize.'
Maybe it’s just me, but reading this passage and looking at the photos I get the feeling this school will become the ideal setting for students just wanting to smoke pot and play World of Warcraft together. But, then again, what better model of ‘self-directed learning’ is there than World of Warcraft?
3. Okay, maybe no one really cares what the Europeans think and do anyway. So let’s go back to the only place that does matter—namely the United States, and specifically Princeton University, where a student created a ruckus, made an ass of himself, is proud of it, and isn’t Chinese.
Ebay billionaire and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s son and captain of Princeton’s rugby team Will Harsh apparently willfully and harshly (!) kicked softball-playing graduate students off the rugby field, even though they had university permission to be there.
You can’t blame the Chinese princeling wannabe though. First, he was merely defending the divine and universal right of the rich, white, and foolish to indiscriminately bully anyone who is not rich, white, and foolish. He also has an older brother who at a Princeton eating club apparently threw beer at someone, and explained his actions by pointing to himself, and saying, ‘Billionaire.’
Still, can any parent naming a child ‘Will Harsh’ really expect him not to grow up to be a mean idiot?
1. This country is financially and ideologically bankrupt. Its elite seem like a kleptocracy, and the people are discontented, joining radical groups. In response, its politicians decided to print money. China? No, it’s America, where public officials have responded to financial implosion and public cynicism by spending $578 million dollars building the world’s costliest school.
Surely, Chinese officialdom won’t sit idly by and let US politicians outdo them in extravagant waste of public resources? China’s poorest children will be happy to hear any and all potential funding for their school will be diverted to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen as they compete to build the world’s costliest school so that the Chinese bureaucracy can maintain its reputation.
2. Teachers who don’t teach, and students who don’t study. Falling standards and discipline. Too much drug-taking and video-game playing on campus. Governments around the world are failing to reverse these trends, and so one government has taken the novel approach of deciding that these could be, in fact, positive trends.
You’d think that that government would be China, which I called doublethink nation previously. But it’s actually the government that legalized pot. This outrageously glib article discusses how a school is responding to the Dutch government’s call for ‘self-directed learning’ by overhauling the traditional classroom:
'The prototypical factory model with its self-contained classrooms is replaced by an environment that features a diversity of spaces that flow into one another. The design promotes reflective, collaborative learning that mimics the way teenagers think, learn and socialize.'
Maybe it’s just me, but reading this passage and looking at the photos I get the feeling this school will become the ideal setting for students just wanting to smoke pot and play World of Warcraft together. But, then again, what better model of ‘self-directed learning’ is there than World of Warcraft?
3. Okay, maybe no one really cares what the Europeans think and do anyway. So let’s go back to the only place that does matter—namely the United States, and specifically Princeton University, where a student created a ruckus, made an ass of himself, is proud of it, and isn’t Chinese.
Ebay billionaire and California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s son and captain of Princeton’s rugby team Will Harsh apparently willfully and harshly (!) kicked softball-playing graduate students off the rugby field, even though they had university permission to be there.
You can’t blame the Chinese princeling wannabe though. First, he was merely defending the divine and universal right of the rich, white, and foolish to indiscriminately bully anyone who is not rich, white, and foolish. He also has an older brother who at a Princeton eating club apparently threw beer at someone, and explained his actions by pointing to himself, and saying, ‘Billionaire.’
Still, can any parent naming a child ‘Will Harsh’ really expect him not to grow up to be a mean idiot?
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