School hours are from a. Usually, one school in each city is designated to provide special education for students with disabilities. There is no home schooling in China, unlike in the United States. There are few athletic and nonacademic extracurricular. Primary education and elementary school start at the age of 6 and last 6 years.
Secondary education consists of 3 years of middle school and 3 years of high school. Mandatory education requires 9 years of education starting at the age of 6. Secondary education consists of 2—3 years for middle school and 4 years for high school.
However, many students participate in after-school activities to prepare for tests, including the entrance exam to universities, which students can take just a single time unlike the SAT Reasoning Test and ACT, which can be taken multiple times in the United States.
Text messaging has become a popular way for teachers and administrators in China to communicate with parents about homework or school notices. Many elementary school students learn mathematics from a specialized mathematics teacher, but that is not universal. In grades 1 and 2, the mathematics teacher may also teach Chinese literacy. In some places, mathematics teachers also teach science, though science is not a prominent part of the curriculum in Chinese elementary schools.
In schools in rural or remote areas, an elementary teacher in China may teach all subjects, as is often the case in similar situations in the United States.
Nevertheless, mathematics specialist teachers in elementary schools are common in China and less common in the United States. Mathematics instruction in China using western notation 1 did not begin until , when an American missionary, Calvin W.
Mateer, published the first arithmetic book in Chinese that used Arabic numbers written horizontally rather than vertically. And mandatory elementary education was not instituted in China until —52 years after the first mandatory school attendance law was passed in Massachusetts. However, Chinese culture has emphasized teaching and learning for thousands of years, Ma pointed out.
At about the same time that Socrates — BC lived in the West, Confucius — BC was writing extensively about the role of teachers in society. Even today, Ma observed, all Chinese students learn several sayings from Confucius directed specifically toward education. These sayings can be summed up in three phrases:. Today, teachers in China are still highly respected.
In his teaching, the superior man guides his students but does not pull them along; he urges them to go forward and does not suppress them; he opens the way, but does not take them to the place. Guiding without pulling makes the process of learning gentle; urging without suppressing makes the process of learning easy; and opening the way without leading the students to the place makes them think for themselves.
Now, if the process of learning is made gentle and easy and the students are encouraged to think for themselves, we may call the man a good teacher.
Only through education does one come to be dissatisfied with his own knowledge, and only through teaching others does one come to realize the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge. Being dissatisfied with his own knowledge, one then realizes that the trouble lies with himself, and realizing the uncomfortable inadequacy of his knowledge, one then feels stimulated to improve himself.
In contrast, the main intellectual resource for teachers in the United States is new ideas about education generated by educational research. Most U. Also, regular exchanges among teachers, which are common in China, are less frequent in U.
Ma described two kinds of rewards that motivate U. One is salary, and the second is personal interest in students. The physical layout of Chinese classrooms differs from that of U. Chinese teachers have much larger classes: typically around twice the size of U. When Ma was an elementary school teacher in China, she said, she had classrooms with as many as 60 students, and she has attended classes in China that have more than that.
Also, classes in China typically have all of the desks facing the teacher, whereas in the United States, desks may be clustered into groups so that students can work together though many U. When we teach math, we all focus on math. But in U. Also, in Chinese schools, students tend to stay in one room and teachers travel to that room to teach.
But in China, students own their rooms and teachers travel to them. These rooms are primarily for work rather than for relaxation. They have desks, tables, a telephone, and bookshelves Figure Teachers use these rooms to grade homework, prepare and analyze les-. People are different, and people need to approach mathematics differently. For example, in a group learning about the properties of rhombuses, an artistically inclined person might prefer to draw a rhombus, a programmer might code one, a philosopher might discuss the essence of rhombi, and an origami master might fold a paper rhombus.
Many people live to a ripe and happy old age without knowing calculus, for example. Children need to be exposed to a variety of math styles to find the one that suits them best. But they also need to see meaningful to them people doing meaningful things with math and enjoying the experience.
Math circles , where people help one another, are growing fast and are one way to achieve this. That means giving children a voice in which activities to participate, for how long, and also the level of mastery they want to achieve.
Adults must be prepared for those times when a child would rather be doing something other than the planned activity.
This is hard to do—it requires both pedagogical and math concept knowledge, but it can be learned. Droujkova has noticed that in most groups, there are one or two kids do something else, while the rest do the main activity. The non-participants still absorb a surprising amount, she adds. Pushback has come primarily from two very different and usually opposing camps. When we assign a lot of similar exercises, we picture kids in situations that require industrial precision.
There are three types of high-school courses: compulsory courses, distributional electives and optional courses. Before , there were 16 optional math courses, including difference equations, number theory, cryptography, spherical geometry, symmetry and groups, etc. But this arrangement was not successful, because no high school had the ability to teach all the 16 topics.
Starting from the autumn of , many optional courses that were nearly impossible for high-school students to master will be canceled. But it also means that the flexibility will be decreased. Besides the 16 optional courses, some high schools offer more optional courses.
Shenzhen Middle School SMS offers advanced placement AP courses of calculus, statistics and linear algebra, as well as other optional math courses such as mathematical modeling and math contest. Li: Among the three types of Chinese high-school courses, compulsory courses and distributional electives roughly cover the scope of the National College Entrance Examination commonly known as Gaokao.
But the optional courses are not tested in the Gaokao. But the Chinese optional courses are not related to the Gaokao, so the schools, parents and students are not willing to spend time on them. Zhu: Exactly. In SMS, the optional courses are mostly taken by students who are going to universities abroad, but not the great majority who would take the Gaokao.
Xia: In the top US universities, some freshmen are able to take advanced math courses and some second-year students are able to take graduate courses, which is unimaginable for the Chinese students.
I think these American students benefited a lot from the AP courses. Yang: The basic physics and chemical courses in college require mathematical knowledge of calculus and linear algebra. In Chinese universities, most freshmen have no such knowledge so that we have to stop the specialized courses for one or two weeks, during which we supply them with the mathematical knowledge before we can come back to the main course. So I think the linkage of high school and university is not well organized in China.
This may greatly affect the students. If they encounter difficulties in the first specialized courses at university, they would lose confidence and interest in their major, and it would be very difficult for them to catch up in the following courses. Zhu: In the s, we tried to teach calculus in high schools. But there were critiques that high-school teachers were not well trained for calculus so that the students had to learn it again at university. Li: There are different ways to improve high-school education so that graduates can accommodate their university studies quickly and smoothly.
In France, most high-school graduates go to universities, while some of the best graduates go to the prepas, where they learn calculus and other basic courses for 2 years before entering the Grande Ecoles. This mode is very successful and has fostered much talent for France. I think, for China, the AP mode might fit our situation better. Actually, we have been attempting to set up AP courses for several years. There is still a long way to get them properly evaluated in Gaokao and make the credits recognized by the universities.
But it is worthwhile to push forward with the project. Tang: Some students in Peking University told me that they did not learn anything new in the last year of high school. They feel that that year was wasted. Zhu: China's high-school education is Gaokao-oriented, which has raised some problems.
First, we have to teach and learn what is tested in the Gaokao, no more and no less. After decades of practice, the styles of Gaokao questions have been totally fixed. Every year, the students face questions of the same number, the same types and in the same order. To get high marks in the Gaokao, all high schools throughout China teach almost exactly as the Gaokao requests and the students are trained month after month to solve the same types of questions as quickly and accurately as possible.
But, through this training process, students who were initially interested in math cannot enjoy the joy of acquiring new knowledge and independent thinking, and that will definitely ruin their interest. Third, students selected by exam-oriented training usually cannot get very far. There is a middle school in Shenzhen that is very good at training for the High School Entrance Examination. Every year, many students of this middle school enter the high school of SMS, but most of them cannot perform well in the high school.
I think it is the same for the Gaokao. Many Gaokao top scorers become ordinary at universities. Meanwhile, many students selected by math contests keep being the best. Fourth, and most importantly, the last year of high school is wasted. The students are 17 years old in their last year of high school. This is the best age to absorb and comprehend new information—the best age to think about life and to build their own philosophies.
But all Chinese students spend their entire year-old time in repetitive training for the Gaokao, which greatly harms their creativity as well as the future of the whole nation. All Chinese students spend their entire year-old time in repetitive training for the Gaokao, which greatly harms their creativity as well as the future of the whole nation.
Tang: Very good point. We cannot change China's education without reforming the Gaokao. Zhu: I have a simple suggestion for the Gaokao: cancel the 12 choice questions in the math examination. Currently, there are 22 questions in the Gaokao math examination, including 12 choice questions, 4 fill-in-the-blanks and 6 comprehensive questions. The 12 choice questions, whose types and orders are completely fixed, are actually unnecessary.
We should first cancel the choice questions, then cancel the fill-in-the-blanks questions and leave only the comprehensive questions. This could endow the students with more space for independent thinking and stop selecting students by repetitive training. Actually, many foreign math examinations, as well as the Gaokao math examination in the late s, do not contain choice questions and these exams are effective enough to select talent. But, the reality is, it is nearly impossible to change the Gaokao.
Changing the style of a single question may lead to great repercussions from the parents, not to say the cancelation of all the choice questions. Xia: Chinese students are really good at exams. Take the GRE advanced math test as an example. So we can tell that the scores of Chinese students cannot truly reflect their preparedness for math, but rather their preparedness for taking exams. Maybe we should change the styles and types of questions in the Gaokao every year, so that repetitive training would not work.
In the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University, the best students are often selected by math contests or the Independent Recruitment program. These students often have solid basic skills and a real interest in mathematics. Meanwhile, the scores in the Gaokao cannot predict the future development of students. Currently, the government has made a new policy for entrance to university. But I think these special talent-selecting programs are necessary. We have to make a balance between fairness and talent selection.
Tang: The students entering universities through the contests are strong in a certain subject, but they are often weak in other subjects. Zhu: Actually, in recent years, for most contest students, it is impossible to be too weak in the other subjects because they have to pass the general examinations and the high schools dare not bet their future on a single contest.
On the other hand, if someone is a real genius in mathematics, we should allow him or her to fully develop his or her talent. We should not waste his or her time in repetitive training in other subjects.
We give special education and offer very flexible environments to the special talents. If we can better support these students, they may become the future masters in diverse fields. We should not ruin their talents by forcing them to learn every subject.
Xia: Among all the Chinese students, only a small number are allowed to develop their interests by contests. Maybe we should change the system and allow all students to enjoy their interests to some degree, instead of training all students by a single standard.
There is more flexibility in the USA.
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