Observations: Teachers in China

I will now discontinue the trend of event and storytelling and now I shall do an observation or topical post.

As some of you may know, many of the participants here are teachers. Middle school teachers to be specific. Now, in China, you only “have” to go to school up to middle school (8th or 9th grade). I say “have” because it’s not compulsory.

Ok, so there are approximately 1.4 billion people in China. There are not enough schools. I have heard of class sizes as low as 40 – 50 and as high as 150-170. Per classroom. In middle school. Because there are many students, it is hard to teach. Many of the students are… well middle schoolers. Unruly and difficult.

The teachers do not have a choice in curriculum or really HOW they teach. They also do not have much money to experiment with what little they can.

Furthermore, I have asked many of them if they like being teachers.

No one really does. It is difficult. I asked them why and they said, “Too much work. Not enough pay.” They work hard and hardly get paid. In fact, I heard at one point that sometime they have to pay for some things. So it is difficult to support a family. No one really wants to be a teacher because the class sizes are so huge, the students do not want to learn, and the pay is not good.

So the teachers do not want to teach and the students do not want to learn.

High school (senior middle school) is much different. That is a choice and so the class sizes drop dramatically. If a student does not do well in school up to middle school, they will not go on. Many of them need to get jobs to help support their families.

Finally, in China, changing jobs is very difficult. You graduate from teaching school and you are a teacher.

For life.

It is extremely difficult to change. In fact, I have had questions asking if it is easy in America to change jobs. This is a novel thing for them. Some of them hope that learning English MAY have the possibility of another job, but hope is grim.

University students are essentially the elite. You do not go to university if you are not a good student. Or at least wealthy. These students are only a small portion of the population. One interesting fact from university: you and your roommates are roommates for your entire time. Also in any grade, a class monitor is chosen and that person is the class monitor for the entire time in that grade school (middle/high/university)

Lastly, in China, you maintain contact with your classmates for life. Even if they are just middle school, or perhaps high school, or even university. You are in contact with them until you die. You know their job, how many children, their names, etc.