Probably Not Your Catholic High School

Actually, I know the schools that I visited weren’t—the principal at the first school explained that all schools in the county were public, due to the living standards in the area. Let me say first, this did not appear to be a doomsday scenario—there weren’t 90 kids packed into a tiny room using 30 books between them, which were so old that World War I was referred to in the “Current Events” section. And no, they weren’t being taught by some old guy off the street who just happened to need a job, and who didn’t even graduate high school himself (one elementary school’s courtyard was quite nice, see pic). Maybe it’s just because I’ve been to China several times and am used to subpar conditions and just expect this sort of stuff. But it just wasn’t the worst case possible.

However, you would never find anything like this in the States, and most likely not even in Chinese cities. On Wednesday afternoon I visited three elementary schools, and hit up a high school and another elementary school on Thursday. To give you a little background, elementary school in China is grades 1-6, middle school 7-9, and high school 10-12. To advance from high school to college, you have to take the feared college placement test, the score of which all but seals your economic fate in China by determining which colleges you can apply to (which usually in turn determines what kind of job you will have). To advance from middle school to high school, students also take a high school placement test, and this test also stamps a number on your head and then determines your eligible high schools. Through talking to a couple of Chinese students, they did not appreciate the system, even though they scored well. Because the middle school I planned to visit was taking that test, we weren’t able to go. But I still did find some interesting stuff, and it’s separated into a few main themes I kept running into.

Government Assistance – Compulsory education ends when students get to high school. Therefore, the government does not fully fund (if at all) high schools. To attend, these rural students must pay for tuition, room and board (90% of students live on campus, as home can be as far away as four or five miles…think walking), food for all meals, and books. At the elementary and middle schools, classrooms receive shiny new textbooks quite frequently, as they are issued by the government. The high school teacher, Mr. Wang, explained that these fees are the biggest problems facing students. Even if a student does do well on his or her middle school exit exam, the fees that student faces in the city are even higher than the ones in the country. The student is usually forced to attend his school, which Mr. Wang admitted, was quite poor—only 20% of graduates attend college. He feels the government should cover the fees to give students who want to continue their education a fighting chance…makes sense.

Facilities – At every campus I visited teachers were eager to point out deficiencies in their facilities. Principal Zhu, at the first elementary school, showed me the pathetic-looking light bulbs. She said that in the morning, the lights aren’t bright enough, so students study in semi-darkness. The ceilings were also a problem—as the building was really old, it wasn’t made well and the ceilings were too thin. The constant moving around above was a huge distraction during the class day. Whether too old or not enough, pretty much every school had a need for desks. Mr. Wang showed me how in 2005 he had purchased nearly half of the new desks (pictured). Funding ran out when student population dried up (remember, no government funds), and so half the desks were still a quarter of a century old. Most buildings were pretty old (see the girls dorms in the pic...8 to a room!). One teacher pointed to their administrative office, which he explained, kind of laughingly, was once a Buddist mosque—a structure over 100 years old. During my tour around the high school, Mr. Wang pointed out a handful of buildings (seemed like 1/3 of the standing structures) that were now abandoned, as they were deemed safety hazards.

Teachers – At pretty much all the schools there were enough teachers—student to teacher ratios got as low as 13:1, Ivy League style. And quality was decent—about 90% held undergraduate degrees. But they were dying for some English-speaking teachers. In China, students start learning English in 3rd grade (I believe). However, in the countryside, the government allows schools to start teaching English in middle school, because most counties have an insufficient amount of English teachers. This was the case in this county. So these kids are not getting exposure to English until 7th grade, and English makes up one-fourth of the college placement test. At this point I was starting to see why city folks are rich.

Learning Materials – On top of the difference in textbooks (or at least the means of attaining them) I was interested to know about the school’s library and computers. Or should I say “computer”, as in singular (you can see me using it!). Each elementary school had one computer for the whole the school (yes, that’s one computer, and some of these schools had up to 600 students). I asked how the students took turns using it, and the principal remarked, “Well, only the teachers use it and the students crowd around.” Awesome. Later I thought about what kids in the States are doing these days in 5th or 6th grade on the computer—like night and day. While the computer wasn’t running MS DOS (it had XP), it definitely didn’t have an internet connection. As for the library, you can see the expanse of books available to students in grade 1 in the computer picture. Each grade has its own little cabinet. These things were depressingly small—approximately 200 books per cupboard. The situation was similar at other elementary schools, and I didn’t get a chance to see the high school’s.

Well, I realize this has gotten long, but I wanted to give you the full scope of what I saw. Now you can go back to class this fall and think, “Man, I hate doing this stupid work, but at least I have a light to see this stupid work that I so much hate doing.”