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Learning to change

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-06-12 09:03

Teacher: If I change this particular word, it won't be as good as the one in the text? Why did the author have that word choice?

More students doze off.

Teacher: Can we change the place of these two sentences? And why not?

Most students fall asleep.

Teacher: Now, if you don't listen in class, you cannot get high scores; and without high scores you cannot get into colleges; and without college, you can't This is the way of life.

End of story.

When I did research on this parallel parable, which I feel is more illustrative than tomes of academic thesis on the same topic, I found, to my surprise, it has been copied and pasted to numerous Chinese websites. Although nobody seems to be aware of the origin or authorship, there's a consensus it is a fairly accurate depiction of the rigid and pathetic way language and literature are taught in Chinese schools.

Simply put, the American pedagogy emphasizes discussion, enlightenment and multiple perspectives while the Chinese approach is all about theory and cramming.

But obviously Chinese teachers have realized they cannot go on with this. The latest evidence of change came a few days ago at the annual college entrance examination. For the writing part, the topics were no longer limited to "epiphanies from a small incident", such as stumbling upon a wallet in the road or planting a tree on environmental protection day.

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