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His Divine Shadow posted:So is the chinese educational system as broken as the GBS thread makes it out to be? And if it is, how the heck is the country working still? Most of the GBS China posters who talk about the education are also teachers so it's coming from first-hand experience. I would say that thread is basically accurate. Nothing has made me appreciate American education more than working at schools in East Asia. As for your second question I honestly don't know. It's debatable if the country is working.
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Apr 7, 2017 10:00
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Chengdu university just outside the second ring road sounds like you may be right down the street from me. 
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Apr 10, 2017 07:09
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flosofl posted:What is a KTV? Karaoke. There's always hookers available at them somewhere.
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Apr 11, 2017 02:21
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Skoll posted:If religion DOES come up, how are you supposed to react to it as I imagine the PRC has specific guidelines for foreign teachers when it comes to such things. I just talk about it normally. Proselytizing is specifically illegal in the PRC but it's not illegal to be religious. I am atheist so there's no danger of me trying to spread religion around. There are at least a few Christian kids in the school, I've seen them with Bibles.
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Apr 11, 2017 11:37
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Sounds like way more effort than anyone in Sichuan is willing to go through.
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Apr 11, 2017 11:50
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lemon-lyme disease posted:Question-wise, it seems like the teaching/working conditions are less than ideal. How does the living situation compare? Are you paid well enough to afford a decent home/apartment/what-have-you? It's quite good by Asian school standards, honestly. The combined competence of every single person I ever worked with in Korea would be less than the office manager at this school. Having American bosses means they understand things like sick days, being paid, and a desire to have more than five days vacation per year. I wouldn't say it's great but it's easily the least lovely work environment I've had. I have a one bedroom apartment near the subway, in a building where things mostly work, which costs about $130 a month. Sichuan has excellent food available everywhere for reasonable prices. The main bad things are: A) Pollution. Chengdu is not the worst for this, but it's bad and getting worse. B) Filth in general. C) A lot of people are... uh, let's say they fell off the turnip truck yesterday and are the physical embodiment of rudeness. It is exhausting to deal with. D) Every single person who gets behind the wheel of a car in China should be thrown out of an airplane. It might take a while but it's worth doing. E) Nothing ever works and everything takes 15 more steps than is necessary. China has carefully crafted a society where literally everything you do is an enormous hassle for no reason, which constantly drags on you. porkswordonboard posted:As an avid reader of both the China and the poo poo Kids Say threads, I'm a bit curious about what kind of flora/fauna you guys get where you are. I am one of those people who would wither and die without some trees/plants/woodsy areas etc around, are there any places you can go that are at least somewhat "natural?" There's no wildlife. One of the biggest things that shocks kids when they start attending college in the US is squirrels. WeChat moments walls full of squirrel pictures. Other than birds (and there aren't many of those) you don't see animals in a Chinese city, ever. I show pictures of deer on the lawn in the middle of the city I'm from and nobody believes me. Chengdu is a very green city compared to most in East Asia, which is nice. Some narrow streets downtown lined with trees that arch up over it to make a tunnel. They do occasionally roll through and rip out all the trees and grass for ??? and leave fields of mud. If you want you can definitely do natural. Sichuan has two distinct regions. The eastern half or so is mostly flat land filled with cities and farms. The western half is the beginning of the Himalayas and is part of historical TIbet, which was divided between multiple provinces in the PRC. You can travel an hour or two directly west and be in huge mountains with virtually no people except yak herders if you like. Also some national parks around here like Jiuzhaigou.  
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Apr 13, 2017 04:05
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green chicken feet posted:I've seen many articles about how the US education system is falling behind and students here test poorly in comparison to other countries, especially in math and science. A few years back, Shanghai was listed as #1 in math out of those who had taken the test. Those articles are all just screaming "I have no idea what I'm talking about". Even if you accept test scores as meaning the students here are better (which is complete bullshit IMO), manipulating grades and scores is just standard practice here. Plus there's all the cheating. That said. Students here are quiet good at standardized, multiple choice tests. If your testing requires no creative engagement with the material but just pure memorization of information, Chinese students are good at that. It's what the entire educational system is focused towards. Math is a good example, Let Us English can back me up on it. I don't do much math in my science classes because I am not a math person and you really don't need much for introductory astronomy, but there is a bit. The students are good at taking very clearly laid out, specific problems and solving them. If you ask them to create a problem, or to explain what the parts of the problem mean, they are completely incapable of it. Every student I have had in my classes has a worse understanding of math than me, which is impressive because I suck. They claim being good at operations makes them good at math and don't like when I point out that's why we invented calculators and computers, which do what they're bragging about than any human could ever hope to. So yeah it depends on the context. I would say in general I think American students are better than Chinese, but that is because of my cultural values that prioritize creative engagement and critical thinking. If you don't accept those as meaningful and you're focused on rote work Chinese students are generally better. It's been an interesting experience personally because modern East Asian schooling is very similar to how ancient Roman education is described, so I feel like I have some better understanding of that now.
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Apr 14, 2017 03:22
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There's a lot of fair criticism to make, it's just that specific subgenre of "American education is failing, we should copy China and South Korea!" that have literally no loving idea what they're talking about.
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Apr 14, 2017 06:55
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Summer has arrived all at once so now it's the time of year when the office is full of wasps because screens on windows are impossible technology.
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Apr 14, 2017 07:01
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hi liter posted:What is the standard of living for your kids? I know things aren't easy to compare across borders and continents, but are their basic needs and poo poo all being met? Some of our students are so rich that parents literally visit the school in a private helicopter because cars are for poor people. None of them are in this sort of situation. It'd be cool if someone else teaches in a poorer school to give that perspective but me/Let us English/Fleta Mcgurn have no experience with it.
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Apr 15, 2017 11:42
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Balqis posted:I've known my share of Chinese grad students, and many told me they were assigned/chose their "English" names as kids. About half resented it, about half liked it. I also know someone whose name sounds like a bad word if you mess up the tone just right. That's not too uncommon, Cao and Gan are two common surnames that can also mean gently caress in the correct tone.
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Apr 22, 2017 04:36
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The knife attacks caused massive nationwide freakouts. At our school there are fences and gates and dozens of guards manning the perimeter (napping) at all times. The guards are dressed like fake military and wear armor, with a few literally dressed up like SEALs or something and full armor. The guards have riot shields and these big fork things that I guess you're supposed to be able to contain someone with, not sure how they work. China does freakout security theater nonsense way worse than the US. The school has gone on lockdown a couple of times but not for knives. The last one was after two middle schoolers had a fight. One kid beat the other one, and the dad of the kid who lost the fight got local mafia goons to show up and wait in vans with sledgehammers outside every gate to beat the unholy gently caress out of the fight winner kid if he showed his face.
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Apr 27, 2017 03:11
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Chinese security stuff is so bad that the last time I was through the US I actually thought about how nice, professional, and efficient the TSA is in comparison. That's a wider thing but seeing the guards in body armor and their little plastic helmets and riot shields on Fridays when the kids are leaving school always makes me laugh.
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Apr 27, 2017 03:26
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Chinese students get expelled/fail out a ton in the US. The universities are happy to take you(r money) but it's way better for them to string you along in English bridging programs and stuff for six years then give you the boot than give degrees to undeserving students. I guarantee at least half the graduating class this year isn't getting a degree in the US from anything other than a diploma mill.
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May 3, 2017 07:43
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Well, a good third of them weren't able to get accepted to any programs whatsoever in the US and a good bunch of those are going to Singapore. A small number didn't even graduate Chinese high school and aren't getting a diploma at all. And a bunch are going to the fake University of Toronto English program that is basically college purgatory, you can't get a degree from it and you can't get into actual U of T without passing the program. It was an easy bet for me because way less than half of them are going to the US at all. I'm not sure how many students there were in total because a third never attended the entire year of school (lol) but I think there were about 70, and of those I'm only aware of 10 who got into US schools. It's just such a bizarre contrast. Last year's class was great other than a couple zeroes. The good students all got into good schools and are doing well. But this year they were all garbage. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 07:57 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 07:55
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John Smith posted:Why? Cheapest alternative? It's the place with the lowest standards that a PRC student can get into that still counts as "foreign". In Singapore they don't need to speak a word of English, it's just Mandarin. Vancouver is the North American equivalent--Chinese student going to school in Vancouver means a bad student who couldn't manage anything else.
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May 3, 2017 15:27
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Who said anything about an engineering program? 
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May 3, 2017 15:50
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Vegetable posted:Or any program a Chinese student would take. Unless they're literally studying Chinese, there's no escaping English in a Singapore university. They take remedial IELTS programs they will never actually graduate. I don't know what to tell you, every loser student who doesn't speak a word of English but still has the money to study abroad goes to Singapore, like clockwork. We had a bunch of them this time around. The students who go to Singapore or Vancouver and come back to visit have never learned poo poo, and if anything their English is even worse than when they left.
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May 4, 2017 02:34
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Here's an example of the riot shields and forks we were talking about. These are from some random rent-a-cops but the school guards use the same things.
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May 4, 2017 03:43
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Lima posted:How do you see the future of China being when the elite apparently is educating their kids to be incompetents and/or idiots? Or have this always been the case in some way? I expect a lot of the nouveau riche here are going to lose their money. There is no old money in China because of the revolution, so every fortune began with the privatization of property in the late 90s. People got lucky and managed to get control of their work unit housing, then when the market happened suddenly they had a bunch of property worth a bunch of money and hey, I'm rich now. In China, owning property is still considered the only real investment/form of wealth by most people. There have since been web entrepreneurs and stuff but the money all started with real estate. China has a gigantic real estate bubble which will trash an obscene amount of wealth when it goes. My observation of the wealthy here is they spend like the money is poison and they need to get rid of all of it. I don't want to get too off topic but I don't see a lot of hope for the little emperor generation.
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May 4, 2017 11:22
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Choco1980 posted:I have to wonder, why do they even show up to school in the first place? I have been asking myself this question for years. I have no idea. There aren't truancy laws, high school is not mandatory in China.
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May 5, 2017 05:19
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The SAT cheating is so intense it's not offered in the mainland at all anymore, yes. Our students go to Thailand most of the time. Other Asian countries it gets banned occasionally, Korea it happens every couple of years and if you can't afford to leave the country to take it, welp. Universities here are such a joke I'm not sure they even need to cheat. Once you get in, you're guaranteed a degree unless you are King Fuckup of Fuckup Mountain. Grad school is different but undergrad is four years of hanging out with friends and then you collect your degree. I assume that cheating is as rampant as it is in every other area of education, when anyone bothers attending class. I've noticed US schools starting to assume all Chinese grades and applications are fake, and that's unfair to the good students but I completely understand it and would do the same. As for what they want... in my experience there are few to zero students interested in a business degree, but 100% of the parents give not a single poo poo and require the kid to go for business or finance. There are some students who actually want to do science or engineering and don't get pushed to finance. There was one student who wanted to go to art school and got into SCAD, that's the only one pursuing an interest without immediate financial gain. Money is the only thing mainland society values, so it's not a big surprise.
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May 8, 2017 16:41
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That's super weird. I just figured it was banned outright in the mainland, but the idea of it being specifically banning mainlanders is amazing.
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May 9, 2017 10:37
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TOEFL you can do here, yeah. The SAT is the only test I know of that's strict enough on cheating to cancel in entire countries.
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May 10, 2017 02:15
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It's really hosed up but makes sense as a way to entrench the aristocracy. China killed the aristocrats and has only had private property for a couple decades so to get a real good permanent upper class they need to do some work.
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May 11, 2017 03:11
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There's an enormous SAT test center right next to the Hong Kong airport for mainland kids, a bunch of my students went to that one.
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May 11, 2017 08:51
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ntan1 posted:Do you all have any context into how good or bad the undergrad programs at top tier universities in China are, ie Tsinghua, Peking, or Fudan? All of the Chinese immigrants who do end up working in the US always originally went there. Those ones are sort of okay. I still wouldn't trust a degree from them but it's a lot more likely to be legit than anywhere else. China does the same thing as Korea in having three acceptable universities and everything else is considered poo poo. I have read those three universities have actual classes and stuff. 
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May 11, 2017 10:03
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EKDS5k posted:The book doesn't exist in a vacuum, it was written as an attempt to answer the question of why in the West "made in China" is basically synonymous with "low quality junk." Not just the west. In China they also consider made in China to mean low quality junk. Anyone with money buys imported products. There is literally no one who thinks Chinese products are good, they aren't patriotic about it at all. When something breaks in school a student will inevitably make a "made in China" joke and everybody laughs. China being full of fakes/junk/scams is something people are completely self aware about here. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 15:35 on May 12, 2017 |
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May 12, 2017 15:30
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GoutPatrol posted:Most Europe jobs are taken by people with an EU passport. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what opportunities show up once the Brits are gone.
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May 13, 2017 04:40
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Probably but there's a lot less people in Ireland than the UK so there may be enough job openings that non-EU people have a chance. I don't ever want to teach English again, but who knows what the job market will look like in a couple years.
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May 13, 2017 05:00
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I've only ever heard stories. The only times the stories were someone in the same city (I've never known one of these creeps personally) were university teachers dating students, which is marginally less creepy I guess. There also seems to be a fair amount of dating/banging going on with adult classes but they're consenting adults so, eh whatever.
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May 23, 2017 10:54
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They usually aren't bilingual. You'll just get some guy on the bus autistically muttering "hambaga... Obama..." to himself. It's very weird. Happened a lot more in Korea, here most people don't even speak any Mandarin let alone English.
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Jun 9, 2017 08:47
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:34 |
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Korea's largely the same except much less competent, and 99% of the teaching jobs there are elementary school English or elementary age cram schools. Japan I don't know.
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Jun 12, 2017 01:48
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