As I write this post, I have just come out of teaching my M1A class. That's the first year of middle school, so the kids are about 13 years old.
One of the lads, Peter, a good kid, had left the class and joined another class, because he's moved schools... You know what, I'm doing this arse about face.
In China, schools are graded - kind of like the prestige that we assign schools, but formal - and among the best schools (certainly in Huizhou) are boarding schools. Not, however, like the boarding schools we know back home. In these schools, you live at the school 6 days a week, you have to get a special pass to leave for any reason at all, and all of the students live there. Their entire lives are regulated according to the schedule of the school. Ok, so maybe a bit like boarding school back home. When kids go to these schools, it means that they are only allowed out from Saturday afternoon until Sunday midday, and so they can't come to us for their usual mid-week lesson. We therefore have special once-a-week classes that last 90 minutes, which they come to.
Anyway, back to Peter, and the reason for this deep funk I find myself in. Peter had left our class because he moved to one of these schools, but he found the new class too easy, and so his mother made a special arrangement with the school to allow him to come to class mid-week with us.
Today, Peter hadn't done his homework. Why not? Well, Mr. Wood, at my school we have to study schoolwork until 10pm, and then it's lights out, no option. But that's not enough time to finish all of our homework for school, so we get up at 5am to try and finish it before 6am, at which time we have breakfast (during which we have to read), and then start school. At school, we break for lunch, and dinner, and otherwise we are in class or doing homework.
I want you to think about this. Peter, who is THIRTEEN FUCKING YEARS OLD, works almost all of his 17 hour day, 6 days a week.
I can't remember when last I felt so gutted.
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It won't surprise you to know that in my experience, life inside these schools is much sleepier and loosely structured than it would like to be seen as.
When I worked at TSL, I had never seen the inside of a regular school in China, so everytime I couldn't explain a Student's behaviour, I would form a more vivid picture of what kind of life they had outside of their English class.
Immediately after leaving Huizhou, I taught in 2 high-schools, and no matter what hour of the day you walked through campus, there would always be a number of students who had enough free-time to not play basketball, and stand on their balcony and shout things.
I've asked hundreds of young Chinese people "Have you ever fallen asleep in class?" and they've all exclaimed yes.
I have just started a relationship with a girl who I can't see during the week because at 22 years-old, she's not allowed to leave her place of study.
It's authoritarian, closed-minded, irrational but the more I live in China, the more I realise that it's done because they place all hope on the little shoulders. It's amazing how many intellectually-curious individuals actually come out at the other end
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