Most days of the week I only have two classes to teach (with the exception being that dreadful Thursday). However, the schedule makes it so that one day they’ll be in the morning and the next they’ll be the last two classes of the day, making it kind of hard to get into a routine. They are spread so far apart from each other too that I haven’t quite figured out how best to spend my time – a typical school day here goes from 8am to 5pm. That seems like a lot of time to spend in class! The Chinese here seem surprised to hear that the American school day stops at around 3pm – I wonder if they think that we are lazy.
Except that American schools are able to be far more efficient about their use of time, fitting in about the same amount of classes while leaving plenty of room for the after-school mayhem of extracurriculars. Chinese schools seem to take things much more easily during the day – for instance, this lunch break that I’m on right now is two and a half hours long. Compare that to the half hour we had in high school for the same thing! The other teachers even take naps during this period.
Maybe this all-day experience contributes to the primacy of school in the lives of children here. I’ve noticed that even on the weekends, many kids come back to campus (having to bother the guards to let them through the gates) to play basketball in the school courtyard (and leading me to wonder if these are the same children whom some of my students claimed were not very studious studying during introduction games).
My room’s 4th floor vantage point gives me a good view of the basketball courts at the rear of the school, so I can always watch what’s going on down there, even during lunch break while I’m still in my shirt and tie. With my album art decorations on the walls and the hipster music I’ve stolen from Hunter, as well as going through all the R&B, punk rock, and grunge that I cycled through on my own iTunes as reminders of friends and their tastes, it feels like my room is a little bubble of Western aesthetic that I can watch a different time and a different place from.
I don’t know if Chinese schoolkids are really taking it that easy! The regular school day may be 8-5 (with a two and a half hour break, the length of which is due partially to the fact that many Chinese schools don’t offer lunch and also because Chinese people like taking naps), but ubiquitous amongst middle/high schoolers is 补课 – which takes runs from about 6PM to 11PM.
Chinese students also have a ton more homework than their American counterparts, so many don’t go to sleep until well past midnight.
If you have the chance, ask your students about 补课 – it offers a fascinating glimpse into a fundamental chasm between the American and Chinese education systems.
I’m not saying that the Chinese don’t work as hard as Americans, how silly – especially given all the additional homework and extracurricular classes they do. I just think that they all might be able to go to sleep before midnight if they didn’t take a nap in the middle of the school day.