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Q: What are the causes of the short attention spans here?
Is it the lead in the food and the air or is it the education system?
I taught a brilliant lesson today to a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds. We were talking about imagination, day-dreaming and how you can use it to enrich your life if you've got nothing better to do. Hell, this place is so boring, you'd think more people would just sit in the corner and dream. I am so sure I can save the poor bastards from a life of vulgar materialism, vanity and tedium, even if it is only a few at a time.
Anyway, in the afternoon, I tried to get the same kind of discussion going with a group of slightly older kids. I got nowhere and they thought I was bonkers. They're used to chanting and repetition even though their English level is higher than the previous class.
FYI, the first class were grade 4 and the second were grade 6. I am very sure it is the education system which messes them up, but I'm still not settled on that because you always have the option of not listening. The older kids weren't "too smart" for such a discussion, as they started asking me about watching movies with zombies in them.
Zombies are gay and gays aren't scary unless there are many of them and there's a sale on.
9 years 7 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
1) remove their mobile phones for the duration of the class
2) plan a succession of short activities
3) get them to do a 'show and tell' style activity where each person has to ask a different question about what has been brought in - and ask them randomly so they have to pay attention to when their turn is, not successively by seat.
4) move the students around in the class don't let them choose their own seat so they are sitting beside their mates
there are lots of tricks that you can employ to prevent them falling asleep
laowaigentleman:
Their reaction is more like guppy fish at feeding time rather than inflicted somnambulence.
Your suggestions are great and I will definitely try them out. I am possibly being a little harsh in my descriptions of them given I come in after the lunch period which they've spent working on math problems, but this is why I'm so sure the education system makes people stupid.
I really pity the poor bastards. They're screwed even if I can conjure up a session that caters to their low level.
sorrel:
the post-lunch class is one of the most challenging: the students are tired from their 'nap' and full from their lunch. Friday afternoon is the 'graveyard shift' (certainly in a University) when most students also want to leave for the weekend.
Remember that most places see the FT's class as 'edutainment', and not a proper class, and students have accepted this idea as well.
I would get the students on their feet and away from their desks: it is more difficult to play with a phone or sleep.
Maybe you should have told them about 'Dawn of the Dead' (awesome zombie movie) and asked them to imagine what they'd do if they were holed up in a shopping mall with a few thousand zombies outside trying to get in. What weapons would they need, what would you need to stockpile etc etc.
Once that conversation had run its course and they had racked their brains for solutions to the problem you could describe the mall and all the awesome free stuff they now had access to now the zombie problem was solved. What sort of entertainment center and wardrobe would you build for yourself? This is where the daydreaming would begin.
Stiggs:
I know what you mean though. I've seen it myself.
As kids here get older they often lose whatever imagination they might have had and spend most of their day trudging from one class to the next and being required to memorize pages of useless crap in order to pass the next test. Then they go home and spend 4 hours or whatever doing homework which probably involves memorizing that useless crap so they can regurgitate it in the next test.
By the time they get to your class they are like zombies themselves. Tired, sick of classes and just wanting you to tell them what they are required to memorize for the test. The only thing they have to look forward to is the occasional break in their studies they get. There is not much chance of anything creative happening.
If you do want to try to encourage creative thought, I think you need to use something that interests them and will remove them from their current state of mind. If they like zombie movies why not use zombies?
1) remove their mobile phones for the duration of the class
2) plan a succession of short activities
3) get them to do a 'show and tell' style activity where each person has to ask a different question about what has been brought in - and ask them randomly so they have to pay attention to when their turn is, not successively by seat.
4) move the students around in the class don't let them choose their own seat so they are sitting beside their mates
there are lots of tricks that you can employ to prevent them falling asleep
laowaigentleman:
Their reaction is more like guppy fish at feeding time rather than inflicted somnambulence.
Your suggestions are great and I will definitely try them out. I am possibly being a little harsh in my descriptions of them given I come in after the lunch period which they've spent working on math problems, but this is why I'm so sure the education system makes people stupid.
I really pity the poor bastards. They're screwed even if I can conjure up a session that caters to their low level.
sorrel:
the post-lunch class is one of the most challenging: the students are tired from their 'nap' and full from their lunch. Friday afternoon is the 'graveyard shift' (certainly in a University) when most students also want to leave for the weekend.
Remember that most places see the FT's class as 'edutainment', and not a proper class, and students have accepted this idea as well.
I would get the students on their feet and away from their desks: it is more difficult to play with a phone or sleep.
I have found that young students are capable of paying attention for a long time if the teacher keeps their interest with humor, changing activities and charisma. Sorrel gives some good suggestions. If you're teaching little kids, don't make them think to much as they have no imaginations. Just keep the class light hearted and don't put too much pressure on them. There are ways to keep a class engaging and educational but a lot of teachers just fall into being dancing monkeys. I wouldn't try to be too academic though, even with uni. students it just doesn't work. They don't care.
laowaigentleman:
I learned that last lesson quickly. Don't dare bring academia into China. They only want diplomas.
Mao Zedong's retarded fat grandson has a doctorate and I think he's a colonel in the army too. Sums the place up nicely.
Most of the problems faced by FTs in China come from the idea that they are not "real teachers" and from a minority of drunken losers giving other teachers a bad name, so Chinese think it's okay to do whatever they want during your class.
The Chinese educational system destroys creativity, Chinese are not taught to dream, they are taught to follow orders, there is little you can do to counter this phenomenon.
From secondary if you want respect and attention from your students:
-Dress professional, business or casual business.
-You are Mr./Ms. Smith, not John/Jane.
-Prepare your classes, don't improvise.
-Follow a curriculum with clear goals.
-Be firm with them, they are your students not your friends.
-Make it clear that class time is for learning.
How to get rid of annoying elements:
-Warn once, not twice.
-See a cellphone, take it away, give it back next lesson.
-Students chatting? Please share it aloud with the rest of the class.
-Sleeping in class? Throw chalks at them.
-Won't respect the class/teacher anyway? Kick them out.
I don't teach anymore but when I did this always worked for me, I managed to change students from awful and disrespectful to excellent and attentive. Sure I had to work harder than the average drunken fool teaching languages here and I had to be strict but at the end it was worth it, I was thanked by the students, their parents and the principal for my excellent work.
This does not apply to kindergarten or primary students.
nzteacher80:
I think certain elements of it do apply to primary students. It's easy to step forward and be very friendly with students. It's very hard to step back and try and regain the respect that students have for an unfamiliar, foreign teacher. Familiarity breeds contempt.
laowaigentleman:
I taught high school two years ago, university last year and primary this year. Your methods are excellent and your description of a small minority of teachers being drunken fools is quite correct, although where I was teaching last time they were the majority. I thought primary school teaching would be better because there would be less pressure, but the final two grades are absolute zombies. The greatest perk is that I don't have a bunch of thick foreign wankers trying to drag me off to the crappy pubs in this place.
Coming from an isolated English speaking country with a poor reputation for language learning, I can tell you I learned two languages inside of four years to a higher standard than they learn here in excess of ten years. This place is a joke.
Do you have any advice for dealing with primary school kids or are they so over-indulged by their parents that they're beyond help? - One kid's mother once told me she would ask her son whether he wanted to have lunch with me to discuss his performance in class and how to improve. The lunch didn't happen because he wanted to play. That about sums up Chinese parenting. The school doesn't help either, they just want bums on seats.
The students are over-worked. They have no free time. When I was young I did no homework and stayed out playing in the neighbourhood with my friends until hunger forced me to come home for dinner.
China has too many people. If you want to go to a good university then you have to do well from very early on. Count yourself lucky that you didn't have to endure a sausage factory of an education system like China's.
I push kids hard in my classes and I get results. I make my classes fun. I try and communicate with and understand the students. A little empathy goes a long way.
laowaigentleman:
I'm trying, but I'm getting sick of having to. I empathize, but I can see them becoming like the vulgar young adults playing with their iphones and pushing to get on the bus.
laowaigentleman:
Even the tinny house and p-lab proprietors in Hastings and Woodville don't push to get on the bus. 
If your beard is on fire?
the strange thing is, Chinese culture places a high value on education. yet they couldn't muck it up worse than this if they were deliberately trying to make things worse. which is what i suspect is happening here. make the average public school education so horrendous, that anyone with money is forced to pay through the nose to private schools. this is either a price-gouging marketing ploy, or the old garde Red Guards are really still scared of intellectualism and free thought. considering all the nationalism in schools, it's probably a bit of both.
laowaigentleman:
I think it's a bit of both, but Chinese are so incompetent at planning that I don't think they've put too much thought into the latter aspect of the plan.
The private system is really shitty too. People might brag about how great international schools are, but they're really the equivalent of going to a state school in Dunedin or Invercargill if even that.
It's exactly as you say though: parents send their kids to shitty private schools solely because shitty state schools are even shittier.
I would never in a million years send my kid to a Chinese school and I would go out of my way to accommodate any Chinese friends whose children my family know to get them the hell away from it.
The emphasis on education comes from the status that comes with a diploma. Now that people can learn for free from the internet, many Chinese disdain knowledge and talk like bogans, chavs and rednecks do about life experience and the "real world" etc. Cynical, narrow-minded, soulless, superficial and vain cash whores.
They don't care about education...they care about paper and the good job it brings. The very idea of a classical liberal education, which lasted almost 1000 years in the west, is the exact opposite of the chinese attitude. They don't even care about Harvard, just name recognition (face) and money.
laowaigentleman:
Maybe they should take up eating cereal the way us westerners do and they can randomly put Harvard and Yale diplomas into the boxes.
The problem with that is there's bound to be at least 100,000 Chinese Veruca Salts who'll make their dads buy up all the cereal.
rasklnik:
Are there still cereal prizes? I thought only cracker jack still has stuff in there.
laowaigentleman:
Maybe they could put the prizes into the rice. It could get even more contaminated as loads of Chinese peasants who've had their fingers up their bums, in their noses and in their ears go fishing down at the supermarket.
Who knows: bogies, pooh particles and ear wax might go well with lead and cadmium.
laowaigentleman:
The rice idea is a bad one. They can make a lot more money putting the diplomas into those stupid gaming machines in the arcades. You can operate the little metallic claw and try to pull out an ivy league diploma just like Otto did in The Simpsons.
It would suit China down to the ground.
