Education (Part two)

the second major problem with the Chinese education system that I have identified may be a product of or stem from the first problem... The second fault is the complete stifling or lack of creativity... Due to the fact that success is determined by a students ability to regurgitate some memorized information, no attention is paid to whether or not a student can think for him/herself... This, I think, is completely tragic... Not only is it sad, but it is also detrimental to society... No creative youth= no innovation...

this week, I witnessed this plague first hand... I collected my first writing assignment this week. It was only a journal entry with the topic: "who is your favorite writer an why?" To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect... prior to assigning this, i had done a brainstorming and outlining activity with the students to show them how to come up with and organize ideas... (I used JK Rowling, since i thought they might also know a little about her Harry Potter Series) I told them that I would not require them to follow the model that I gave them and encouraged them to write freely...

What I received was anything but free writing... The majority of the students chose to write biographies of their chosen author. Most of these entries were either directly or partially copied from articles on the internet! STRAIGHT PLAGIARISM! This completely shocked me. At first, I did not recognize it for what it was. After grading several journals, I began to realize that most of the students were giving me really detailed and really well written backgrounds of their authors... When one entry read like a wikipedia article, I got suspicious. I decided to type the first two sentences into Baidu (Chinese google) to see what would happen. I found that the article was copied verbatim from baidu zhidao (like a Chinese wiki)... I was so upset... It ruined my whole day (this was last Monday)

Later, I was able to pick up on the plagiarism more easily when students would use difficult vocab or complex sentence structure, I was immediately tipped off! But somewhere in the middle of 250 journals, I became a total pessimist: I would think that any coherent sentence or well-though out analysis must be plagiarized... This is terribly sad. I don't know how I am going to deal with it... I do not have the time to look up every sentence that I think might be copied! It already takes me about 5 hours to grade one class of journals (I have 5 classes with 50 students each and a 300 word assignment-- do the math!)! I would not be able to sleep if I tried that... So I am not sure what I am going to do...

I have, however, resolved that I will give a lecture on plagiarism next week in class and hope that resolves some of the problem... But I am doubtful it will... The idea of internalizing the right idea is so endemic in this country (what better way to show that you know the right answer than to copy) , that a lecture on composition ethics is unlikely to reverse it... 

I just hope that I can make a small difference in the lives of these students... I hope to not only help them improve their English skills, but also help them open their minds and encourage them to think for themselves... In a country with 1.3 billion people, there is no doubt that the creative potential is here, it is just that it is being crushed by the system... So tragic... If you were to ask me what the difference is between American and Chinese education (and many people have asked this), I would say: "In China, students are taught what to think. In America, students are taught how to think!"