The Classroom Part 1

The college classroom in China is very different than college in the.....well...anywhere. The culture difference in the classroom is a huge problem, but this post focuses on just the difficulties and differences without even taking personalities into consideration. University in China, I think, is helping me understand a bit of what going to college sixty years ago must have been like. Obviously, truly that is a bit of an exaggeration, but, not by much. The buildings themselves are more akin to what we would expect to find in a particularly poor funded inner city school. They are dirty, nothing is in good shape, and everything is in one stage or another of "broken." What we would consider broken beyond use in the United States is still good for another year or two in a Chinese university. It is little stuff, dirty foot marks at the base of the wall, a broken chair in the corner that NEVER gets removed, desks and tables that are falling apart. Everything is always mismatched and paint is always flaking off of everything. Anything that is white turns a nice dingy shade of smog. However, this stuff you get used to. I don't even notice this anymore. Use, I miss the fact that my colleges in the United States provided a much more comfortable and clean environment, but I was really surprised how quickly I stopped noticing that. However, there are some other things that I am not so quick to forget. One, the buildings are not really classroom buildings like most Universities. They are open buildings, kind of designed a bit like a motel, with every door and window facing the elements, not a series of classrooms that open up into the building. There is no hallway, there is just a series of doors and stairs all of which is exposed to the hot or cold or rain. This takes some getting used to. Every time the classroom door opens it opens into the freezing cold wind in winter time. Which is not a good thing because the door does not shut snugly and the windows let in so much air they may as well not even be shut. This brings up another problem. The classrooms are not climate controlled. There is no cool air to keep us from sweating when it is 100 with 100% humidity. There is also no heat to keep us warm when it gets cold. The climate here is exactly like Arkansas, so, you know that means we get all the nice temperature extremes. The building design is really good in the hot but bad in the winter. When it is hot outside the open building design allows for a nice breeze to circulate and lets the heat escape so it doesn't get to hot. In winter however, it kinda sucks. Since it allows for a nice breeze to circulate and lets the heat escape so it doesn't get to hot. See, great for summer, bad for winter. Fortunately I am generally not impressed with cold weather. Alright, next post will address the really bad stuff, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Until Next Time, J