On the recent Cornell CAPS trip to Hebei province, we spent just one day in a small village called 虎什哈. We were only at the local school for four hours, two of which were spent with a seventh-grade class. Despite the brief time, the impact on us – especially in terms of the astonishment we felt – was immense, perhaps even greater than what the students might have felt based on their requests for our signatures. From the moment we arrived, through our time at the school, and later in conversations with 先老師, we encountered many different, and sometimes conflicting, aspects of middle school life in the village. What I initially thought would be a light-hearted cultural exchange turned into a deeper reflection on how we present the "best" version of ourselves.
On the first night when we had arrived at the village, 先老師and the other teachers of the program had kindly arranged for us to join them for a delicious hot pot dinner, during which I got my first “experience” of what the students at the local middle school were like. Since we were such a big group, hot pot had been divided into three different groups, and I somehow ended up in the local teacher group, where it was one me and the rest were all local teachers. Over the course of dinner, apart from only our group going through four large bowls of lamb meat (compared to the single bowls of the other two groups), then, we discussed various random topics ranging from what we had done earlier in the day to what they had recently harvested to the state of education in the village on three different levels.
On a broad level, it was really interesting to learn about the changes in how they teach English in elementary and middle schools. 先老師(and 王老師and 郝老師as well, since they would chime in on the conversation every so often) was saying that because in Chinese language teaching they had begun to skip teaching pinyin in favor of jumping into more difficult passages, “forget being able to sound out the differences between ‘p’ and ‘b’ in English, they had difficulty reading or typing pinyin.” Apparently, students previously had always started with learning pinyin, or at least using pinyin in early textbooks. Learning pinyin helped students transition to English letters, but the lack of early exposure now adds an extra layer of difficulty. I found this particularly fascinating, as it mirrored the challenges of learning Chinese as an American without early exposure to Chinese characters or phonetics.
However, 先老師also painted a more challenging picture of the students. He lamented two issues: a lack of discipline and a weakening connection to culture. Some students, he noted, refused to complete assignments or respect authority, despite corporal punishment still being used. He also pointed to the rise of short-form media, which he believed had diminished students' language skills and their ability to engage with complex topics. Interestingly, these issues aren't unique to China; similar trends can be seen in the U.S., though without corporal punishment. Based on this conversation, my initial impression of the students was that they were typical of the younger generation globally - facing distractions and challenges similar to those seen elsewhere.
And yet, I felt that when we experienced their English class the next day, we experienced a very different presentation than one that I was expecting from 先老師’s comments. Firstly, even before we walked into the classroom, all of the students were sitting quietly with their backs upright, looking at the blackboard, textbooks ready in front of them – a far cry from the more lively imagery painted by 先老師’s descriptions the night before, but also also felt too military-like. Then, as soon as the clock struck time, the teacher immediately greeted the class, with the class suddenly uniformly standing up, greeting the teacher back before sitting again. I think I can say on behalf of all of the CAPS cohort that none of us were prepared at all for the sudden forest of students to stand over us. The lesson itself was a blur, smoothly carried out without any disruptions, the classroom either filled with the teacher’s rapid rapping of the lesson, silent pen scribbling as the diligent students filled in in-class assignments, or eager students’ rapid answers for questions the teachers posed – I had never heard so many students rapidly spell out “S-I-N-G-A-P-O-R-E SINGAPORE” before. On one hand, I was very impressed by the efficiency of the lesson, as the amount of content they covered would likely take at least double the amount of time in the U.S. But on the other hand, there were times when I could feel the 填 鴨式style, especially with the drilling of the spelling, sentence structures and the vocabulary. I feel like there were many times when the teacher would ask a rhetorical question and leave no time in between for students to actually contemplate the answer. This left me with a second impression: the students were diligent and focused, but perhaps constrained by the structure of the lesson.
What made this class even more intriguing was what 先老師shared afterward: the students had rehearsed the lesson the previous night, and some were even brought in from other classes to participate. While I cannot verify the accuracy of this claim, parts of the lesson did feel overly rehearsed. For example, some students consistently raised their hands but were ignored in favor of a select few who repeatedly answered. According to 郝老師and 王老師, some students in the back hadn't written anything during the essay-writing portion, while those in the front diligently worked. This contrast made me think about how schools may feel pressured to present the "best" version of their students and teaching methods, perhaps even more so when hosting visitors.
We later finally were able to interact with the kids during their break after PE and before their next class, in which I feel like I finally got to form my own impression of the students there. At first, they were all a little shy, but later we began to chat a little bit more about ourselves. I primarily talked to two kids: one student who had contributed many times in English class, and whose favorite food was noodles and whose favorite color was pink; and one whose older brother was studying abroad (he was very endearing, because he kept talking about his older brother with such pride). We talked about the different classes they liked, the foods they liked, how school was, but also how Peking University was and how we – the CAPS students – were. The moment I started to take a selfie, all the students began to pile up behind us. And then once someone started asking for a signature, everyone else did, which felt a little bizarre. This personal interaction gave me a third impression: despite all the conflicting portrayals, these students were simply young people with similar experiences and dreams as any other.
In this one short village visit, I feel like we got a small snapshot of three different perspectives of education in the village: the ideal, perfected presentation put forth by the school in the delivery of the English class we sat in on; the frustration from the perspective of individual teachers, constrained by the national education system and the school; and the students themselves, who experience it through their own lives. Each perspective felt genuine and valid, yet together, they reveal the complexities of balancing competing motivations. In the same way that the school wanted to present the “best” of their students, we want to interact on the most genuine level, thus introducing a conflict of what “best” means. This also makes me question whether or not us CAPS students were able to present ourselves in a meaningful and genuine way as well.