Web opens world for young Chinese, but erodes respect
Armed with outside ideas and information, teens are challenging their teachers. And some schools welcome it.
from the May 14, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
At the cutting edge of this drive is Tianjin's No. 1 Middle School, which teaches students up to the university entrance level. The school is experimenting this year with a history curriculum that breaks the old rules. For the first time, says Mr. Yan, students are allowed to write history essays that disagree with the textbook's conclusion about the political significance, for example, of the Boxer Rebellion against colonial powers.
"If they argue well, they get good marks," explains Yan. So far, however, this history test has only been administered at the middle school level in three school districts. "Whether they will allow this [latitude in answering the question] in the national exam [to get into university] we will have to see," he adds.
That exam is so critical for ambitious students desperate to get into China's top universities, says Wang Zhangmin, a veteran history teacher at the school, few of them dare to step out of line for fear of risking their chances of success.
That fear acts as a brake on change. Teachers at the Tianjin school, which prides itself on the high proportion of its graduates who get into the best colleges, say the pressure is so intense on elite students that they are still scared to challenge their teachers or to spend much time exploring topics outside the prescribed curriculum.
At more ordinary schools, too, teachers do not always encourage student-initiated digressions.
"We don't get many debates in my class," says Xi Haixin, a 17-year-old Beijing high school junior. "Sometimes we want to discuss something, but the teacher has too much material to get through and he drops the issue."
It is also difficult, Xi acknowledges, to hold a coherent debate when there are 50 or so students in the class, as is normally the case in China.
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