After warnings about how much of an issue discipline would be for me at my placement I was terrified of my first day. Beyond the typical naïveté and cluelessness of a student teacher on his or her first day in the classroom I was terrified of ruffian students actively rejecting any authority in the classroom. Even worse was a separate fear that the students would not reject or accept anything. I closed my eyes at night to see a classroom full of zombies, unaffected by any icebreaking joke I can think of. My mentor teacher, before classes started on the first day, assured me that probably only seventy percent of the morning classes would be zombies. Luckily, he was just trying to prepare me for the dissonance between my prestigious private school background and a less motivated classroom environment. Watching the classroom dynamics for the first two and a half weeks of school has been really fascinating and can inspire countless blog posts on different things I am observing, and it will, but right now I want to focus on discipline. Discipline comes into this situation in the form of classroom management. Educators do not want to be disciplinarians, but in some classes it can be difficult. Gaining trust and respect from the students is key. Without it, educators may be in for some major headaches. This is striking me very hard because it was so different when I was in China. The students, even at lower achieving high schools, were generally quite motivated, and not prone to act up significantly in class. The teachers even said they seldom had to worry about students’ respect. This is for a number of reasons, but I will only focus on one for this entry. I recently listened to one of my former students tell me about a requirement that all middle school, high school, and college students must endure during their first year of each of the above.
This specific account deals with schools in Shenzhen (A modern metropolis in southeastern China) and is from a current freshman in college (he goes by “Kidd”), but it applies to high school as well. This requirement is between one and three weeks of “military training.” One week for high school and middle school and up to three weeks for college or university students. The boy whose perspective I will be writing from was to “train” for the first three weeks of September in daily temperatures ranging from 32 to over 40 C in constant Guangdong humidity. This is his summary of the average day and is by no means an assault on or condemnation of Chinese education. This is Kidd’s experience.
The dorms are what one might expect from “military training.” The students must wake up at 5:30 AM and be dressed (full uniform, cap to boots) and ready to go by 6 AM. The first step is run several laps around the area to warm up. Then there is fitness training. Kidd recounts fifty each of various exercises, push-ups being tip of the iceberg. The military officers keeping them in task (wujing) constantly (nad loudly) ensure that each push-up or other exercise is the most sincere efforts. After these exercises the students must line up and stand at attention. This is for anywhere from forty minutes to one hour, and all movement is strictly prohibited. Kidd stresses that even shaking one’s hands or wiping away sweat are punished offences. The wujing officers’ punishments range from yelling, singling out/humiliating certain students, and in extreme (atypical) cases hitting a student with a bamboo stick. The physical punishment is only for consistent defiance or constant failure to fulfill the tasks. The strikes with the bamboo sticks are generally to the students’ legs. A scant breakfast of porridge is then served at or shortly after 7 AM.
After breakfast the students return to their dorms and clean up. The command is to fold their quilts “like tofu—” a very high standard indeed. If the quilts are not folded to the wujing officers’ standards, then they will cast the quilts on the ground and have it done again. Sometimes the wujing officers ask the students to fold them again regardless.
The next assembly happens at 8:30 AM for various other forms of training. Kidd speaks the most about marching, reminding that it is pretty simple for one person, but to keep fifty students in perfect harmony is not a simple task. When one student falls out of line, the students are to try again and again until perfect harmony is achieved. Kidd emphasizes the aching in the soles of his feet.
Lunch is served between 11 and 11:30 AM, usually consisting of cabbage, cucumber, and other simple vegetables with little meat. After lunch the wujing officers usually demand a little more quilt folding until 1:00 PM. There is an actual rest period until between 2:40 PM and 3 PM (it varies from day to day). This is where Kidd describes the dorms a little bit, saying that it is “a big storehouse holding five hundred students.” Five hundred warm bodies seem to add to the existing heat and Kidd finds it difficult to sleep, citing an average among students of forty minutes to “calm down and fall asleep.” Kidd adds that only wujing officers are allowed fans.
The afternoon training is much like the morning training and goes until dinner time at 6 PM. Dinner is similar to lunch in terms of food. After dinner there is a window of time for the students to shower, but Kidd recalls having difficulty finding enough physical space to shower amongst the masses in the shower room. Kid recalls that even the dish washing room was "full of naked people."
At 7:50 PM is the next and final assembly of the day. There is no training at this time, but instead taking classes about the achievements and benefits of being a part of the Communist Party and watching war films. According to Kidd, who says that this is his favorite time of the day, the mosquitoes also love it, feasting on all the “fresh blood.” At 10 PM is dismissal and 10:30 is lights out, as the day is finally over. Some nights, however, the wujing will wake students up around 1 AM for an “urgent assembly,” where the students must get out of bed and quietly (and in the dark) assemble outside. Failure to do this silently and orderly can result in punishment. This is an exercise of vigilance and again, discipline. To add to this, every student gets at least one chance for individual guard duty, where the student will have to stand “guard” alone for one hour in front of the dormitory during the night.
This is an intense program in the curriculums of Chinese middle schools, high schools, universities, and colleges that serves MANY purposes. Right now, my interest in this program is primarily for discipline. Having students be trained, like actual military, certainly must impact their attitudes toward school, responsibilities, and authority. I saw formalities at the high school I worked in which mirror this discipline. Although students’ behavior and obedience to rules were far from perfect, there was a clear VISIBLE respect for teachers and parents. The way the students addressed their teachers (in Chinese) was different in body language than they way students in US public schools do. Many times I saw students with their arms behind their backs, more or less, at attention, listening to their teachers. I also saw some students turn their backs and mock the teachers once they were free from the teachers’ audio and visual ranges. Is this respect genuine? How is it being genuine or not significant for the classroom setting if the goal is to transfer content into our students’ minds? I have my own opinions here but would rather leave these as questions for now…
Other differences in Chinese education influence students’ discipline in schools. Maybe a stronger cultural importance on grades, specifically the dramatically built up (for good reason) 高考, the college entrance exam, affects students’ respect for teachers and discipline more than this training. What I want to understand more, though, is how to motivate US public schools in less fortunate areas. What outside of the classroom can help teachers keep students motivated to engage in classes?
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Thanks for this highly interesting and very thought-provoking post, Adam. Lots to think about here. Because of their often crowded and seemingly chaotic character, schools (on the surface, anyway) seemingly cry out for order and discipline, and when we look at China we often see reflected an more orderly and respectful society like *we wish that we were*
ReplyDeleteOf course (like you, clearly) it also leads me think about costs and benefits. Do teachers in the US suffer from not being able to assume the kind of respect that would perhaps automatically be accorded them elsewhere? If American teachers have to earn that respect a bit more than they would otherwise, is that a bad thing? Linking to your final question, do American students have different expectations about their relationships with their teachers? Do they expect more acknowledgment of who they are as individuals before they let go of some of their resistance behaviors? Could be.
In any case, your post leads to some rather fundamental questions, Adam, and I thank you for that.