China bans exams for six-year-old school children
The education ministry says excessive exams are affecting the physical and mental health of pupils.
www.bbc.com
Let me take the written exam if old.
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China has announced a ban on written exams for six and seven-year-olds.
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Let me take the written exam if old.
And to think that, in some countries, they don't grade school courses until something like 7th or 8th grade...
EDIT:
I <3 Zoe.
EDIT:
I <3 Zoe.
Yeah at a certain point it's just more efficient to train yourself to pass the test rather than fully internalize the material.
Also banned this year in China: evening classes.
This was a huge business in China where almost every little kid would take additional hours with personal teacher after school or during week end.
This had a huge impact on parents financials and time spent on their kids education (not too mention kids well beings). Government banned it as they believe the money and time will encourage families to have more children (since they stopped the one child policy, they are now encouraging families to have 2 or 3 kids)
This also now has a huge impact on the companies that were built on this business and teachers that were also earning side salaries
Cynical me hope this is not a move thats aimed at reducing any learning done outside of state
sanctioned programs.
Banning is strong but in China those evening classes were not a mean for students to catch up of they had difficulties, they were a necessity for student to be learning at 10yo things that you would learn at 18 in the rest of the world.. due to the competition to enter schools.
For me that's a good thing.
I was def doing at least 1 h of homework every night since as far as I can remember. And that was in france where school already finished at 5.50pm for me.
During week ends i had like 3hours of homework too. And i was always top of my class, kids with difficulties would either spend more time or not do all of their homework
This was a huge business in China where almost every little kid would take additional hours with personal teacher after school or during week end.
This had a huge impact on parents financials and time spent on their kids education (not too mention kids well beings). Government banned it as they believe the money and time will encourage families to have more children (since they stopped the one child policy, they are now encouraging families to have 2 or 3 kids)
This also now has a huge impact on the companies that were built on this business and teachers that were also earning side salaries
Cynical me hope this is not a move thats aimed at reducing any learning done outside of state
sanctioned programs.
Banning is strong but in China those evening classes were not a mean for students to catch up of they had difficulties, they were a necessity for student to be learning at 10yo things that you would learn at 18 in the rest of the world.. due to the competition to enter schools.
For me that's a good thing.
I was def doing at least 1 h of homework every night since as far as I can remember. And that was in france where school already finished at 5.50pm for me.
During week ends i had like 3hours of homework too. And i was always top of my class, kids with difficulties would either spend more time or not do all of their homework
What the fuck??
School finished at 3:30 here and I didn't even have homework every day...
Good. Exams shouldn't be taken that early and standardized tests in general aren't very good at predicating anything.
Seems like it yes.
Seems like it yes.
Nothing on here thankfully, but ive already seen people saying stupid things on twitter.
With additional stuff like Latin , we had like 32 hours every week if i remember.
In middle school, we were starting at 9am, had 2hrs for lunch and didn't work Wednesday afternoon. So days were ending late. A typical day has 7hours of classes
Primarily meant to align on parents work schedule i believe. This is not the same for every school.
Highschool i think we had 36 hours? And the worst was prep school (18-20yo) where i had 42hrs a week + 2h homework/day.
Still we have it good compares to Chinese students
I'm French too and I was always so envious watching American TV shows and seeing kids hanging out after class during day time. School in France was tough. The nice thing is when I went to college in the U.S. afterwards, it was a walk in the park. I was studying considerably harder in sixth grade than in freaking college.
There's this, but then there's also banning minors from playing video games for most of the week.
Do you know what you want, CCP?
Do you know what you want, CCP?
Yes, from the CCP's POV these are both moves to increase the health of young people.
The game thing is dumb and an example of bad nanny state overreach, but these recent education changes are very good.
Growing up in Belgium I don't think I ever studied 3 hours any day of my life until I went to university. School finished at 4:00 and of course we were encouraged to study for hours every day but I always thought it was a thing they say but don't actually expect you to do so. I usually forgot to do whatever the teacher asked, or quickly did it before the teacher arrived (or failed at that). Suffices to say I wasn't the best nor most motivated student. Still, I wouldn't want my kids to spend 3 extra hours a day doing homework after returning from a full day at school already.
My gut feeling also align with your cynical side. It makes me think this is the government wanting to reign in control over young children's education so they get taught the "right material". Starting from a younger age, they are now studying "Xi's Thought" and all that typical stuff about loving the party, the country and nationalistic jingoism. This has a great effect on the educational industry and by extension, a lot of other industries that are indirectly affected. So it's going to be interesting to see how this affect the middle income families in China since these are very traditionally good middle income jobs that helped raised living standards there.
My perception is that this is again... a really harsh and overly aggressive action taken on something that certainly needs fixing. For whatever reason, the Chinese governments tend to do things really aggressively when they set their minds to it and then try to fix the side effects afterward. A classic example of that is the one child policy to "solve" overpopulation. Well now you have a gender imbalance and a demographic time bomb. Not only that, a lot of the ultra competitive nature of jobs now are also directly related to the one child policy. If you only have one kid, you are going to put every resource into making that kid successful, which includes after school cram school. The kid will also feel the pressure of being the only child and try harder to become successful. That contributes to the current competitive nature of the Chinese society, I feel. So now you are trying to solve that by unilaterally banning after school cram school and limiting video game time... etc etc. These all feel like temporary bandages in my mind and may cause additional issues down the line (like the huge shock to their middle income economies). Time will tell, of course.
My friends who came from the Chinese education system have told me they were taking exams every day in high school with publicly posted scores. That amount of stress can't be healthy.
I mean, I don't think the US is doing particularly well either, but there's surely a middle ground between teaching nothing and teaching everything.
I mean, I don't think the US is doing particularly well either, but there's surely a middle ground between teaching nothing and teaching everything.
I don't think there should be any homework.
The kids spend enough time in school as it is, if there a subject where students need to practice to get a good grasp of, do it in school. That way actual paid professional can help them with their math problems instead of giving parents panic attacks thinking about their kids asking them questions about quadratic equations.
Part of the reason for homework is to train the student to be able to do work on their own, budget their time, prepare for college where it's almost *all* homework. Another part of the reason is so the school can try and cram more learning into the 12 years, moving classes a bit faster.
It's only online games.
China government's definition of online games is ANY game distributed through internet, so...
At least switch cartridges are safe for now lol
When taken out of context, this particularly policy is good. But it's only a small part of a huge waves of education reform.
I'm guessing because the ultimate reason they're doing it because they know their #1 threat to economic power is their declining birth rate?
After 3 modifications to their child limits in the last 8 years to no effect...now they've resorted to trying to improve the lives of parents and children.
Coming from an area where they're taking about rejecting free school lunch funds so kids don't get used to eating ... doing the right thing for the wrong reasons seem like a luxury.
In general I think tests are a necessary evil, but I see no problem holding off on them until kids are 9 or 10. Or at least any exams they're taking at that age should be for diagnostic purposes only, not for any sort of placement or real stakes.
i remember talking with some pedagogy students they talked about systems of education etc, and they usualy criticized grades and written exams, school should care more about emotional devolopment etc etc
i dont remember which systems they talked they thought it was better, if someone is from pedagogy could tell me
i dont remember which systems they talked they thought it was better, if someone is from pedagogy could tell me
I think this is due to stress we bring to them along with the exams.
Kids don't care for "grades" they get when playing video games and the sense that they have to improve to get better. Like you play Mario kart, you suck and you're 6th place. Next time you'll do better but you got to practice.
Same things with maths, you suck, you get a C, then you got to practice.