bummer charlie brown

Last night in the school cafeteria I chatted with Gong Laoshi, one of the 9th grade science teachers. He speaks English very well, so we were able to have a relatively complicated conversation about genetic testing (I learned the word for “law” from this) and figured out that we were both going to be on the 9th grade teacher trip to the Dameisha beaches this weekend. I also asked him about the test for tenure that many of the other teachers took on Sunday, as it seemed that many teachers were anxiously waiting for the results to come out. He shook his head and explained to me that he had already passed the requirements twenty years ago when he first came to the Yucai school group, but that was then and this generation’s test was altogether a different beast. I have seen Nana and Guan Laoshi’s textbooks – huge manuscripts chocked full with characters about education theory and classroom management, and heard about how teachers must memorize and recite large passages from it. “10,000 teachers in Shenzhen take this test every year,” he said. “Only 300 are allowed to pass.” He went on to say that many teachers repeatedly take the test year after year in the hopes that they will be one of the 300. “The government does not want there to be too many teachers,” he said. “They say that after a few years, the amount of children will decline, and that there will be too many teachers then.”

I thought about what a previous teacher had told me – that in Shenzhen, free and guaranteed education is only given up till secondary school. After that, there are only enough high school seats for half of Shenzhen’s teenage population, and so 50% of them end their schooling right after middle school. I was curious about this, but thought that it might be because of the sheer number of “undocumented” citizens lured by Shenzhen’s economic promise who do not figure into population counts or policy changes. Perhaps this was why no more schools could be built. It seemed to me an oddly regulatory move in a city of supposedly rampant capitalism.

With this in mind, I asked Gong Laoshi what he thought – would there really be a population decline in the next few years? He shook his head again. “They are wrong, I think. But the real reason they are like this is because for them, fewer teachers are easier to manage,” he said. I recalled again the relatively centralized financial flow of Shenzhen’s education budget. I may be wrong about this – Joe, if you’re reading this feel free to correct me – but I had understood that in the States, public schools receive their funding after district residents file their taxes. The portion of those taxes designated for the local school system then eventually winds up at that school. I don’t know the extent to which an entire city government has to involve itself in this affair, but if Los Angeles Unified is any indication, it may end up being pretty complicated as well. Still, some amount of the process remains localized. In Shenzhen, it seems that taxes are taken out of wages before they are delivered, meaning no individual taxes are filed (Mandy, please correct me about this if I am wrong again) and that those taxes which are paid to the government are paid by large employer groups, which seems to grant weight towards the top of management for budget concerns. If Shenzhen’s education system does indeed approach their budget from a more top-down perspective than schools in the States do, then I can see how they would want to artificially keep the number of teachers down. But I still don’t think it’s a good policy decision for anybody but the government office.

“Some teachers have to send money to the government to ask them if they can pass the test,” Gong Laoshi laughed. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or if he meant that those teachers were desperate or just outright bribing the Education Bureau. “And then there are young, beautiful women teachers…” he laughed again. I laughed too, a little uneasily. “Do you understand what I mean?” In any conversation where I am switching between two languages with every other sentence, this would usually have simple connotations, but I wasn’t sure. “Eventually Shenzhen would only have young, beautiful women teachers?” I hazarded. He didn’t say anything and just went back to eating.

The pensive quiet after that persisted into today’s lunch. Usually I eat with the other English teachers, but today everyone seemed to be whispering to each other in small groups. Over every office there is a tense silence, and some teachers occasionally wipe at their red eyes with a kerchief. Coming home without having passed is a dreadful thought for both younger and older teachers alike. One muttered morosely “if I fail, my parents will be so disappointed” under her breath. An older teacher who had been looking forward to having the time after the test to cook a nice meal for her son learned that she did not pass today and I found her in the office long past work hours, quietly slouched in her chair with her son at her side. I taught five classes today, an unusually heavy load for my work week, so I wasn’t in our office much – but I did eventually learn that none of our teachers had passed the exam. I’m not sure if that means none of our department’s teachers, or none of Yucai Third Middle’s teachers. Either way, I really wonder about the fairness and efficiency of this system, especially given the actual market need for more teachers and the 50% of students for whom it will exclude from further education.

I think I should probably bake some more cookies.