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Teaching in China provides as many lessons for the teacher as his students
By Dr. Paul Weinstein, Professor of History at Wayne College
Hello from Kaifeng, China.
As part of its affiliation with the Confucius Institute, The University of Akron is strengthening its decade-long partnership with Henan University. The university serves China's most populous and poorest province. There are two campuses, a new generic expanse of concrete on the northwest corner of the city that houses the sciences and the old one inside the medieval walls. The latter is home during this faculty improvement leave semester.
It's a mark of prestige among Chinese universities to boast some foreign professors, and Henan has had a difficult time recruiting them. The link with UA is very important to it.
I'm in the happy position of being the first foreign Ph.D. to teach here, and Henan is getting as much as it can out of me. I've got double-size classes, seeing every English major in the freshman, sophomore and junior Foreign Language Department classes (here called grades 1, 2 and 3). I'm trying to satisfy their enormous curiosity about the West with two American Popular Culture classes and four History of Western Culture sections. In addition, I've got more than 100 postgraduates (we would say "graduate") and a few faculty in my History of Western Philosophy and Theology class, which meets every other week.
The Chinese accord high respect to teachers, all the more for an exotic such as myself. While I enjoy my unique status, it is the classes that make this a truly delightful experience. Imagine students who thank you after every class for simply showing up. Who ask you for more readings! Who tell you what an honor it is to have you at their university. Who applaud at the end of class.
I'm also learning a very valuable lesson, one that I look forward to communicating to my Wayne College students. And that is, very simply, look out. They're coming.
Chinese students work hard, and I mean HARD. They typically attend about six hours of class a day, often six days a week. Yet they are cheerful and friendly and enthusiastic. They do their assignments diligently.
The Chinese are a bit behind us in areas of critical and analytical thinking. The instructional style tends to be didactic. The students spend so much time studying they don't have a lot of time for research or creative thinking. But the work ethic is unbelievable, the mutual support among class groups is palpable, and the determination to succeed for self and country is extraordinarily strong. The Chinese are putting their shoulders to the wheel and that is a lot of collective power. We're going to have to work very hard to stay ahead — or even.
The students today at The University of Akron and all across the United States should heed the words of baseball legend Satchel Paige: “Don't look over your shoulder. Someone might be gaining on you.”
Teaching in China provides as many lessons for the teacher as his students
By Dr. Paul Weinstein, Professor of History at Wayne College
Hello from Kaifeng, China.
As part of its affiliation with the Confucius Institute, The University of Akron is strengthening its decade-long partnership with Henan University. The university serves China's most populous and poorest province. There are two campuses, a new generic expanse of concrete on the northwest corner of the city that houses the sciences and the old one inside the medieval walls. The latter is home during this faculty improvement leave semester.
It's a mark of prestige among Chinese universities to boast some foreign professors, and Henan has had a difficult time recruiting them. The link with UA is very important to it.
I'm in the happy position of being the first foreign Ph.D. to teach here, and Henan is getting as much as it can out of me. I've got double-size classes, seeing every English major in the freshman, sophomore and junior Foreign Language Department classes (here called grades 1, 2 and 3). I'm trying to satisfy their enormous curiosity about the West with two American Popular Culture classes and four History of Western Culture sections. In addition, I've got more than 100 postgraduates (we would say "graduate") and a few faculty in my History of Western Philosophy and Theology class, which meets every other week.
The Chinese accord high respect to teachers, all the more for an exotic such as myself. While I enjoy my unique status, it is the classes that make this a truly delightful experience. Imagine students who thank you after every class for simply showing up. Who ask you for more readings! Who tell you what an honor it is to have you at their university. Who applaud at the end of class.
I'm also learning a very valuable lesson, one that I look forward to communicating to my Wayne College students. And that is, very simply, look out. They're coming.
Chinese students work hard, and I mean HARD. They typically attend about six hours of class a day, often six days a week. Yet they are cheerful and friendly and enthusiastic. They do their assignments diligently.
The Chinese are a bit behind us in areas of critical and analytical thinking. The instructional style tends to be didactic. The students spend so much time studying they don't have a lot of time for research or creative thinking. But the work ethic is unbelievable, the mutual support among class groups is palpable, and the determination to succeed for self and country is extraordinarily strong. The Chinese are putting their shoulders to the wheel and that is a lot of collective power. We're going to have to work very hard to stay ahead — or even.
The students today at The University of Akron and all across the United States should heed the words of baseball legend Satchel Paige: “Don't look over your shoulder. Someone might be gaining on you.”
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