The notion of a teacher as an all-knowing dispensor of information may account for the high regard in which teachers are held in China. Students constant studying does pay off in some ways. My daughter, Rebecca, is teaching English in a relatively low-status college. At the beginning of the school year, she gave her students a riddle, I come from the only city on the mainland of the United States which is not in a state. The students responded, Then you must be from Washington, DC, of course.
Chinese students know far more than most American students do about other countries.
Chinese students find it very difficult to give back anything other than the facts they have learned, however. One American teacher told me, I have to give some credit for well-done plagiarism. Otherwise, many students would never be able to get through my class. In the teachers college I visited, terms like student-centered learning were beginning to be used. To faculty, however, student-centered learning meant that students would be allowed to ask a few questions during the teacher s lecture.