From teaching in a normal school in China for three weeks I hope to sum up what I have learned here. The school that I taught at is neither a city school nor a rural school. It is actually in between the two due to its location. Each class typically have around 50 to 60 students and each grade is composed of 5 to 6 of these classes. The school has three grades, 7th, 8th and 9th. Their day starts with morning individual study at 8:10 and ends at 4:20 p.m. Usually the school day hs 7 periods of 45 minutes each with a morning exercise time at 9:20-9:55 a.m. and lunch period from 12:30 to 1:45 p.m. From what I gather, the subjects tends to be: Math, Literatue, English, History, various sciences, Geography, P.E. and every couple of weeks, art and music.
When we arrived at the school the 9th graders had already finished their exams so we mostly taught 7th and 8th graders. Perhaps due to puberty, there were two totally different attitudes between the two grades towards learning. It seems that while the 7th graders are still open minded towards learning, the 8th graders really dislike it. There seem to be a general trend in China currently with the attitude of the 8th graders: dislike of learning. In a discussion with one of my uncles, he seem to think that while the Chinese students tend to learn more in the school system at a younger age, it seem to be cramming too much information too soon into the children, thus causing them to really dislike school in general.
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