The Classroom Monitor and Eye Exercises.

I went to a primary school this morning to teach a grade one and grade three class.  It was essentially chaos.  The Chinese teachers run very regimented classes where the teacher talks and the students listen.  If the students do talk, they talk as a group.  Being from the West, I like to encourage individual participation.  However, the students will quickly do their own thing when I try to get individual students to answer questions.  They act like the noose has been removed.

Before the start of one class, I saw the students doing eye exercises.  They all massage their eyes with their fingers as ordered by a recording over the school's P.A. system.  I have seen this done in primary, middle and high schools in Wuxi. 

I saw a new wrinkle on the activity this morning when I saw a class monitor making sure the students were doing their eye exercises.  A class monitor is a student chosen to keep the other students in class  in line and to help the class's teacher.  This morning, I saw the monitor supervising the eye exercises, prodding some students to do it properly as well as writing names on the board of either the offenders not doing the activity properly or maybe the students doing the activity well (my Chinese guide wasn't sure why the names were put on the boards).

No student in Canada and America would want to have a job like that.  The student would be considered an enemy of the class.