TRUE or FALSE?

The girls tell me that there are tests for everything here. I always knew there would be lots of tests (at least once a week) for the basics like Chinese, Math, and Social Studies. But I was surprised to here that there are tests in all the other fuzzier subjects too. In music class, the teacher tests you for singing. She grades you on how loud you are, not on how well you hit your notes (which is good as I suppose, as some may be tone deaf). There are tests in PE, too. Chloe said that there was a paper test on basketball rules: “TRUE or FALSE: if your’e on a three-pointer line and shoot the ball in, it counts as a three-pointer” (I must confess I did not know the answer to this question; Chloe said it’s FALSE). Zoe said there was a test in health class, and one of the questions was “TRUE or FALSE: you are not supposed to roll up your maxi-pad before throwing it away.” I think the answer is TRUE; Zoe said the teacher had demonstrated how to throw away a maxi-pad, with red ink paste on it and all. She also confirmed that boys and girls get different tests; and mentioned that one of the boy’s questions was on how a boy should take care of - in her words - “what’s down there.” There are tests on what to do in an earthquake, where you should go and what you should do. But what gets to me the most are the tests in art. Zoe said that the teacher gave them sewing kits, with holes that had been pre-punched into the fabric. The goal was to sew up the doll. Zoe had some extra time so she used the leftover fabric to make a hat. The teacher gave her a disapproving look, as if that would hurt her grade. Your goal is to just make the doll as you were told, and not be creative. For someone like Zoe, who love art, it’s disappointing to her that there’s really no room for creativity. It’s all about following the rules, coloring in the lines. Zoe said when she decided to shade something, her classmates were like, “Whoa, that looks so cool.” The expectation here is to just draw cartoon like two-dimensional characters (the irony here does not escape me).

As you’ve read before, we’ve told the girls not to care about their grades, especially not in art. 

But I can’t help and wonder - if you are not encouraged to be creative, how can you be innovative? If you’re told to color a certain way, how do you mix colors? If you’re told to build a doll from a kit, how do you build one from scratch? 

The good thing is that the girls still remember what it was like to take art back in the Bay Area. They had fond memories of their art teacher. As Chloe said, “Susan was just there to give you advice, not to tell you what to make.” They also had fond memories of their old US hippie school, with its no homework, no tests, no grades policy. The school was required to administer one standardized test a year so they could see how the students performed relative to other kids in California. But that was it. And they still managed to learn.

Chloe was excited last night because she remembered that she had gotten “picked” to go to coding class. The teacher had only two spots and had asked if she was interested in going during nap time. She couldn’t wait. In the limited amount of coding she’d done in the US, she loved the freedom to be able to think and solve a problem in any way she wanted. She loved making the cat in Scratch walk around a maze. There were set semantics and rules you had to follow, but ultimately, the test was on herself: how could she create something from scratch?

Because of this culture of valuing tests, I wonder if kids here are inherently motivated to do better, or if they just gun for the best score so their parents will not be upset. I’ve heard of kids getting beat when they don’t get 100%. When I was back here for local school in 5th grade, I remember a kid getting beat for getting a score below 50%. The whole class winced as the teacher used his bamboo stick and beat him on the butt. I was glad to not have attended the local junior high school here, as I heard stories about kids getting beat for the number of points they missed. If you got a 40%, then you’d be beat 40 times to get up to 80%, since that was the bare minimum level of “good.” If you got a 50%, you’d only be beat 30 times. The teacher would start with a fresh bamboo stick on Monday. He’d have to toss it out on Friday as it would be falling apart by the end of the week.

For some reason, the kids here have a hard time being motivated to learn in English class. Chloe and Zoe both observed how the English teachers are constantly trying to get them to learn more; they motivate with presents, candies and snacks. It’s gotten to a point where the girls are even tired by it, commenting that the kids seem to just want the prize and not care about really learning the language. My hypothesis is that the parents also don’t care about English as much as Chinese or Math (why would they?) so they de-emphasize whether or not they need to test well in it, thus creating a culture where kids have a hard time with it. I’m also seeing this with Phoebe in the music class I take her to every Saturday. She’s highly motivated to accumulate enough stamps on her card so that she can exchange it for a prize. Last week she got to go through the treasure chest to pick something; I was reminded of going to the doctor’s office in the US, where you get a prize for surviving the flu shot. Except here, she’s picking a prize for doing her music homework. She’s only five, so I don’t blame her for finding great amusement in accumulating stamps on a card.

To show you how much the Chinese culture values tests and rewards, you even get a free ice cream sandwich if you score well on a test. We went to a very popular ice cream sandwich stand the other day, after coming back from summer break. There was a flyer that said the following: “Have you eaten this since the start of school? If you get 100%, you get 100NT off. Ice cream sandwich will only cost you 20NT. Get 98% and get 98NT off. Get 80% get 80NT off.” It’s a pretty nice promotion given that a sandwich would only cost you $0.67 USD if you got 100% on a test. Note that if you get less than 80%, you don’t get any discount. There’s no “A for Effort!” here. But the promotion was offered right at the start of school, which felt a bit hollow since kids weren’t really testing yet. 

Promo on getting a sandwich for just 20NT, if you get 100% on your test.

They are starting to gear up for midterms. I don’t even need to look on the calendar and I can feel it. A couple of weeks before the tests, the teachers start to cram in as much homework as possible. They have small quizzes. The kids start to get anxious. I can only repeat myself and tell Chloe and Zoe not to worry about grades and tests. TRUE or FALSE? Tests suck! 

They all got sandwiches, even without test scores. Yay.