Loads of homework make Jack a dull boy

Opinion / Li Xing

 Loads of homework make Jack a dull boy
By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-22 06:43

A friend of mine has a teenage son, who will take the entrance
examination for senior middle schools next June.

That exam is considered the first important test in teens' lives in China.

Those who score high will be able to enter the best senior middle
schools. They then have the prospect of going on to attaining good scores
in the national college entrance examination and entering one of the best
universities in the country.

A diploma from a leading university is supposed to provide a head start
for a good job, a successful career and a fruitful life.

But this has thrown my friend into a dilemma, as it has done many parents
with children of the same age.

She must force her son to conform to conventional school norms, but that
will likely lend a hand in diminishing the boy's independence, creativity
and imagination.

Or she must continue to give her son the freedom to make his own choices,
but faces the consequence that her son may not be able to earn enough
points to enter a good senior middle school.

All because the current conventional school education has offered too
little beyond textbooks and given students too little time to explore the
sea of knowledge on their own.

The entrance exams, whether they are for senior middle schools or
colleges, dictate whatever the students learn and exercise both at school
or home.

I myself have a teenage daughter. However much my daughter envies Harry
Potter, Hermione and Ron, who are able to explore for additional
knowledge in the huge library in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, she has
not had an opportunity to do a single research project of her own choice
in a library.

I have heard her teachers say numerous times that the students do not
have time for whatever will not be tested in the national college
entrance exams.

As the tradition dictates "practice makes perfect" students are made to
do exercises from piles of exercise books.

Because of the limited things the schools provide, it is only natural
that teenagers like my friend's son hate doing the heavy load of
schoolwork after school.

The boy says the assignments, especially the English exercises, are
repetitious and boring. He doesn't like rote training but he is required
to memorize by heart ancient poetry and prose dating back to the third
century AD.

As a result, the teenage boy, in the eyes of his teachers, has not worked
hard enough. He is considered "not having laid a solid academic
foundation" for his future development.

Although he hasn't "worked hard enough" at required school work, he has
read and learned widely of things and knowledge that are not taught in
textbooks. He chooses to join a small extracurricular English class every
Friday to listen to the teacher telling stories of the world's history
and the Bible.

Few can dispute his learning. Even his teachers say he always has shining
ideas in his composition. However, the teachers are reluctant to give him
high scores, because "he makes grammatical errors."

The boy has asked a lot of questions and commented on a lot of things
that show he is a good thinker with a good imagination. When his grandpa
died last year, he summed up the life of the senior revolutionary in the
only classical-styled poem, among all the eulogies.

Few adults with good conscience would want to see these sparkles burn out
in the boy under the load of exercises, for which he will have little use
in his future.

It is now difficult to help my friend get out of her dilemma, as the
country's education authorities have yet to come up with better schemes
to reform the current education system as a whole that first of all
should provide equal education opportunity for everyone.

But the authorities should also place high on the reform agenda how best
to cultivate originality and imagination in children, and how to avoid
making the next generations follow the set ways.

The country's humanistic and scientific development for further
prosperity rests upon the young people who have creative, independent and
scholarly aptitude for exploring new things on their own, not those who
walk on the beaten path.

Email: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/22/2005 page4)

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