In one of my kid’s Chinese exercise books, he was asked to write a composition in Chinese. My wife and I encouraged him to write as much as possible, fill out the entire page and while trying not to make mistakes, don’t sweat it if he did. We’ve always taught our kids we don’t care what their score is as long as they learn and understand the concepts.
Naturally, he made several mistakes but was penalized heavily for it. Each mistake causes him to lose marks: -5 here for grammar, -3 there for hanzi, etc. In the end for a long composition with relatively complex grammar, he got like 34%. Longer compositions = more opportunities for errors.
He said other kids in his class just wrote a few sentences and left most of the composition page blank. They just use example sentences from the textbook and changed the nouns. They got 100%
Essentially, my son got penalized for taking the initiative, trying to learn more and taking risks by applying what he was taught in unfamiliar situations. Other kids in his class just parroted the example sentences in the textbook and got full marks.
Is this an example of how the Chinese “不錯” culture is indoctrinated into kids here at an early age; i.e. don’t take risks and you won’t make mistakes?
“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” - Aristotle.
It seems to me that you’re thinking too much out of the box, and trying to get your kid to do way more than what is expected in the assignment. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Just because there is space to fill, does not mean you should fill it. I’m sure the teacher isn’t too thrilled about having to grade an entire page.
Trust me, your kid will have plenty of opportunities in the future to fill out entires pages. Take it one step at a time.
In any case, at least your kid didn’t get negative marks! I used to get negative marks all the time because I made so many mistakes, and the number of words in the composition added up to way more than 100%. Because of me, the principle got involved and had to make a school-wide policy to ban negative marks.
The kids at my daughter’s school still get below 60 on tests. All that happens is that the teacher won’t announce your score. The kids still receive scores way below 60.
My daughter just told me that the teachers will bump some children’s scores for homework, participation etc or they won’t be able to graduate. Not sure what that means, can kids not graduate? but that is what her teacher told her.
Always told my English composition students in Taiwan to concentrate on not making mistakes. You can write the best essay in the world, and you won’t get extra points; any mistakes you make will be deducted from the total. And for God’s sake don’t try to write something with an original idea- just copy a standard example and worry about punctuation and grammar. .
kids should get average grades of 60 or more to graduate, if not they just complete school. the grades include non exam factors a lot to let thrm graduate.
Seems like teachers just fake it anyway. My kid was telling me one classmate just sleeps but the teacher gives her extra credit for classroom performance. His reasoning is that she couldn’t graduate otherwise.
Not sure why he is sharing that info with everyone.
they will just get completion certificate, instead of graduation certificate. they can still go to middle schools with no problem, and high school with the condition of equivalent academic ability to middle school graduates. but if they don’t graduate, it won’t be counted for education history.
so, as far as kids attend to school enough days, schools do their best to let them gtaduate.
In junior school with the “new” curriculum my kids total score has some from big exams, small exams and homework and they have different weights so if they pass or fail is a mixture of all these things.
My kids are not graduate yet but if the end of year score is too low then they need to go to special classes in the summertime and maybe do another exam before they can go into the next year, this is elementary school with the new curriculum.
And this is why traditional education sucks. And why the majority of adults who are willing to speak to me in English (that didn’t get private tutoring and go to high school and college in an English speaking country) are the ones who all but or actually failed in school. They eventually said “whelp, I can’t do anything right so I might as well go do stuff”. And they go on to do all sorts of cool stuff their straight A classmates never dared do. So their straight A classmates who never made mistakes have no social or life skills but are always right, but the ones who failed are amazing artists, musicians, DJs, etc. and some of them turned around and got degrees in architecture and design, but only after struggling along for a while and not really knowing what to do.
I was reading something about how the growth mindset concept is B.S., but I feel like it’s just taking off in Taiwan. The problem is that teachers can’t enforce “the power of yet” while nitpicking everything and deducting points for it.
Based on studying Chinese here and getting just a taste of the school system I really feel bad for the kids here.
I hope parents would complain. I constantly complain at my Chinese school for the things that make no sense - I’m sure it doesn’t make any difference but I ain’t taking this shit laying down that’s for sure.