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Teaching Chinese Kids to be Creative

Submitted by Nick Souter

The Chinese have a traditional teaching method that has developed over the last 5,000 years. Ba zhe shou jiao - that is, 'teaching by holding their hands'.

The idea behind this method of teaching is that the child will happily continue to come back for more by carefully molding and shaping absolutely everything they do throughout their childhood and adolescence.

As a result of this careful molding and shaping however, the child does not learn how to be creative, the child does not learn how to think independently or creatively for themselves. To be totally honest, the child actually doesn't learn how to do ANYTHING!


Teaching Chinese Kids to be Creative

Suddenly the child becomes an adult and they have no independent or creative skills whatsoever. Unless they have everything carefully written and programmed out for them just like you would program a computer, they simply cannot do it.

From the simplest of daily tasks such as tying your shoelaces and brushing your teeth, to more complex tasks such as playing the guitar or eating dinner in a Chinese Restaurant (one of the most complex routines you can experience!), a Chinese adult relies on straight up rules and routines. Without these rules and routines they are completely incapable of functioning on their own, in the same way a new born baby is incapable of functioning on their own, even for the most basic of basic, simple tasks.


Once upon a time there was a very beautiful
but very lonely young girl

And the ironic fact about this whole method of learning is that all of these Chinese adults are walking around with more general knowledge in their heads than your average fully qualified western brain surgeon would have in his head back home! But a lot of it is completely useless knowledge they'll never use and don't need to know, knowledge they simply don't know how to use anyway without the creative skills to be able to think for themselves in order to make some use out of the enormous volumes of information that have been pounded into their heads from studying 30 hours a day.

1 + 1 only equals 2 if the book they read it from or the teacher they learnt it from says it equals 2, not because they counted it for themselves, by themselves, on their own fingers, and came to realize on their own that it actually DOES equal 2! (How about that?)

In fact this ancient Chinese learning method goes a long way towards explaining how Chairman Mao managed to obtain such mind-boggling control over the population as well. He wasn't stupid, he saw what was going on and he capitalized on it, he created his own Clone Army, but that's another story...


One day the beautiful young girl
met a handsome young boy...

For this reason, I have felt obliged to teach the youth of China some methods of creativity during my time in this country. I tell the children (and some adults) not be afraid to think for themselves, I teach them to draw pictures and write stories every day, I set up projects for them at the English school I am teaching, and also in private tuition.

I tell all the teenagers with overbearing parents to go home and tell their mothers to 'go to hell and leave me alone!' and to slam their bedroom doors in Mama's face if she is being a pain in the arse. I've witnessed first hand the problems these traditional Chinese Mamas can cause, the guiding hand and the watching eye of mother simply won't get off their child's case sometimes. After all, telling your mother where to go is all part of the natural rebelling process that we all go through and take for granted in our western adolescence. But it's a stage that Chinese kids simply do not go through, and they remain children with no independence or creativity their whole lives as a result.


The boy and girl married in a huge church
and lived happily ever after!

And you should see their eyes light up!! I look at them and I can tell that they feel alive! They hang out for the two hours a week when they can come to my class and just be normal independent creative kids doing their own thing! I play games with the kids and get them all laughing and going crazy, I tell the teenage boys all about how they should be out there chasing after all the girls and get them all revved up and teach them all the dirty words that you need to know in order to survive as a normal teenager.

In fact I hardly teach anyone any actual proper English, but there are enough boring middle-aged middle-class Western English teachers around to take care of that for me, I'm on a much more important mission in China! I'm giving the youth a chance to have a taste of freedom!

And I'm telling you this as a fact, they've never felt more alive in their entire lives! And it gives me this huge feeling of satisfaction to know that I have changed the monotonous boring repressive routine of all of these innocent Chinese kids who are having their childhoods taken away from them, because that's the kind of stuff that sticks in a child's brain and can go a long way towards improving their adult lives. They come back to my next class all excited with drawings and stories and tell me their latest tales of evil rebelling against their parents! Stories such as Mama called me for dinner and I waited a whole two minutes before coming out of my room!!! (It's not much, but it's a start!)


The final result: Three Creative Chinese Kids! They didn't copy it from a book, the teacher didn't guide their hand for them, they completely drew it themselves from their own thoughts and ideas! And these kids can draw too!! Just you try and get the smile off their faces!

One of my students in class the other day, a young man about 15 years old, actually hung up on his annoying mother who was literally calling him over and over every five minutes to check up on him (most likely to check if he was hungry!). Before hanging up he told her to Gun! Gun! (Get lost!). I praised him with a big thumbs up and a Hen Hao! Hen Hao! (Very Good! Very Good!) And he just put down his mobile phone and sat there for the rest of class with this huge amazing look of satisfaction, as though the whole weight of the world had suddenly been lifted off his shoulders, I couldn't get the smile off his face for three days afterwards!

The youthful spirit is growing strong in the youth of China today, and this is a crucial time for them, a crucial time for the youth of China to hold onto their strong developing youth culture before their robot parents and the controlling government crushes it out of them all over again. Otherwise the development of China is going to simply collapse in one giant heap.

Because if China collapses, the world is going to know about it big time!

Submitted by Nick Souter

Posted by Matt at 20:28 /writing #