After lunch we returned to the faculty of education to sit in on a graduate level class about Western civilization. This class was taught in English, as the students in the class are training to be English teachers.
On the way into the building, we saw some students pitching in to clean up the campus. I’ve seen that a lot — students washing the windows of the university president’s office, sweeping the campus, etc. I think this may be a part of their educational requirements, but it’s an interesting observation as it reflects the collective sense of pride that is important in China, and individuals’ contributions to the collective.
Students pitch in to keep SDNU clean
We arrived in the classroom of the class we were to observe about 15 minutes early, and there was only one other student in the class. We sat near him and spoke with him a little. He told us that he has been teaching English in Yantai for four years, and has taken one year off to return to school and upgrade his education. He will live here in Jinan for the year, and then return to Yantai, which is about a 7 hour train ride from here, when he’s finished the courses. We told him we were from Canada, which got an interesting response. He said he thought Kristen came from Canada, because a Canadian teacher who had taught him before looked like Kristen (I’m assuming he was speaking about race), but that he didn’t think Marcia and I were from Canada. I think Kristen had quite a different experience from me at times, as many Chinese people often wondered allowed where she is from.
Sitting in on the class was quite an experience! The class topic was Western culture and education, and today’s lecture focused specifically on the Middle Ages and Germanic culture. We sat at the back of the classroom, each of us in semi-cubicles with a computer screen, headphones, and a sound box/hearing unit. There were maybe 25 students in the class, and they were all dead silent even though the bell to begin class just rang. All but two or three students came into the class at the last minute, and the class began abruptly upon the bell ringing, with no introduction to the subject or lecture — the teacher simply jumped right into the lecture. The lecture consisted of the professor reading aloud from a document posted onto the individual screens in each student’s cubicle: riveting topics such as syllogism. One thing that I found to be strange was that none of the students took any notes — we were were the only ones that wrote anything during the entire class.
After about 15 minutes of reading from the screen, the professor asks his students if they have any questions for us about western culture. Nothing. He asks again a few minutes later, and then again, each request being met by his students with absolute silence. Finally, he jumps in and asks us to speak about religious beliefs in western civilization. I let Kristen and Marcia field this one.
It was certainly an interesting experience — it was a graduate level class, but the students seemed totally disengaged. The student sitting directly in front of me spent most of the time studying a map and text messaging.
Kristen expresses her enthusiasm
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