I received high school education from three institutes: firstly a traditional Chinese high school, then an international school in China, and finally an American public high school. The three systems are very characteristic in their own ways. Traditional Chinese high schools seek excellence – a system that mold every teenager into the exact perfect figure of an “A student.” International schools encourage individuality, where students create their own study routine with minimum school interventions. American high schools aspire for balance, where students follow a well-rounded class schedule that covers everything from science to physical educations. During the four years of high school career, it took me sufficient amount of efforts in transferring …show more content…
D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, he claims that ELHI education should focus more on the mainstream culture. To support his statement, he introduces the idea of cultural literacy, “The network of information that all competent readers possess.” In Hirsch’s view, cultural literacy is essential in today’s society because it helps to establish effective communications between people. It also enables people to read and comprehend formal articles and deal with more complicated thoughts. Moreover, universal literacy is associated with politics. In a Democratic society, for example, people lose the tendency to vote when they do not have the capability to understand the political newspaper. Hirsch, therefore, advocates “educational formalism” to all American high schools. In Hirsch’s ideal education system, every high school institution should cover the same set of material that is culturally and historically significant. In such way, he argues, a more sophisticated society could be …show more content…
What he did not realize is that an exhaustive study list leads to excessive burden to our students. My cousin was in an elite Chinese school at ninth grade. Her school classes ran from 7:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m. with less than an hour’s lunch and dinner break. By the time she went home, she would have tons of homework from each subject lying in her bag pack. So I asked her, how could she handle all these? She replied, “I will take a bath first, and then keep working until two. Whatever is left, I go to school at 6 the next morning, and that is when everyone is at school to copy each other’s work.” I have personally experienced these, and I acknowledge that the workload in the International school and American high schools are not even close to a 9th grader’s in China. Both in the international school and in the American high school, lessons end at 3 p.m. Whereas personal interests and extracurricular activities are luxuries to my cousin, other students in those institutions have plenty of time to pursue. I continued asking her, “Was there a particular subject you liked? Or you felt better at?” She answered me with silence. Though my cousin was at the very extreme situation, every Chinese student has some anecdotes to tell about his or her arduous years in high school. Under high pressure and endless work, students lost the intrinsic purpose of