I still remember how shocked I was when I first joined an American class five years ago. Desks were arranged in a curved shape, and students

were on all fours or sitting on a hanging basket. That’s totally different from what the classes are like in China. I, myself, grew up in Beijing, China. I experienced the traditional Chinese education system in elementary school and junior high. While learning in Chico High, I experienced a typical American high school and found that in this aspect of school, there are great differences between China and America in classroom decoration, teachers’ office arrangement, and school uniform rules.

Classroom settings in China are different from America. In a traditional Chinese classroom, there is a blackboard in front of the classroom with bookshelves beside it. There are about forty to fifty desks and chairs being arranged in lines and rows. In some schools, two rows of tables and chairs are placed together, while in other classrooms, each row of tables and chairs is placed separately. 

However in America, students are free to move their desks and chairs anywhere. Even in some classrooms, there are different tables. The difference in desk arrangement can reveal the difference in teaching methods. Though some teachers in China have group discussions in China, most teachers only output knowledge and ask students to receive it without letting them have their thoughts first. In Chico, as I experienced, group discussion is an important part of classes. In the American History class, when teaching the Civil War, the professor almost nearly replaced the explanation by group discussion. Each teaching method has its strengths and drawbacks. For students who are good at analyzing information and expressing themselves, group discussion fits them more, but for students who can integrate existing information from others’ narratives and form a system, listening to explanations is a good way to learn. I believe the use of a combination of these two teaching methods promotes students’ development, otherwise, one can be lazy to think if he always receives explanations, and one can get wrong information if his classmates are his only resource source.

The arrangement of teachers’ offices is also having great differences in China and America. In the US, each teacher has their classroom as an office, which means that they have the right to decorate the classrooms to any style they like. It can be schematic, with desks in rows and books full of shelves; it can also be interesting with plants, paintings, and even instruments. In most of the American classrooms, I saw posters and cards that related to this subject or the teacher are pasted on walls. There are elementary Spanish words on the walls of the Spanish classroom, and there is also a chemical periodic table on a physics classroom wall because the teacher had a chemistry and physics double major. In China, teachers of the same subject share one large office. There are usually five or more teachers in one office. Papers and other stuff pile up in offices so it’s hard to decorate the offices. I believe whether teachers are sharing an office with others can affect their teaching mood. Not only because they can have more privacy when having their own office, but also because working in a room you are familiar with and like can inspire you to have performance while working. However, the education system of students in the same class having the same subjects and the same teachers in China makes it impossible to let each teacher have their own classroom. The reason why China has such an education system is because China focuses on the general learning of knowledge in high school but not the development of unique individuals. Students will develop themselves uniquely when they step into universities.

Clothes-wearing rules are the third main difference between China and America in school life. Students in Chico High are allowed to wear their clothes every day including jeans and slippers. I have seen different dressing styles; with earrings, rings, necklaces, and other unique ornaments, you can feel everyone’s characteristics and realize how unique they are. In China, students are asked to wear school uniforms every day. In some schools, they have school uniforms in a hoodie style or a T-shirt style, but in most other schools, they just have uniforms in one style. Usually, school uniforms in China are loose, which can prevent students from comparing their figures and becoming unconfident. In Chico, I saw students in different figures. It seems that none of them are worried about their shape, and none of them are talking about this. It’s easy for you to feel their confidence in being themselves, which most Chinese students lack. The root cause of students’ lack of confidence can be traced back to society, which is related to gender opposition, gender stereotypes, history of the country being aggressive, foreign culture invasion, and other factors.

There are great differences between Chinese schools and American schools, three main them are classroom setting, arrangement of teachers’ offices, and students’ everyday dress. We can easily realize that the fundamental cultural, habitual, and conceptual differences between the two countries have caused the differences in their schools. We can also realize that the differences in school life reflect the overall differences in life between the two countries. Most of the time, it’s hard to evaluate something by simply describing it as “bad” or “good”. Critical thinking brings us overall recognition of things as well as the world. Both the education system of China and America have their strengths and drawbacks, as well as both China and America have their strengths and drawbacks. Only learning from other’s strong points to make up for one’s deficiencies leads one to success.