Hands up who wants to be a Chinese student!! (Marcus)

While we were on holiday, I recieved the following email from one of my students, Charles. This student happens to be in one of the two Senior 1 gifted classes - class 1 or 2. To be in that class means you're up there amongst the smartest kids - hence the name gifted. Check this email out for an example of how bad the level of homework they are given on their 'holiday'.

Hi Marcus,
Now the summer vocation comes! But this summer will be very very busy for me. I wish I could finish my homework - we have 30 pages of Chinese, 30 pages of English, 30 pages of Physics, 30 pages of Chemistry, 10 pages of Politics, 10 pages of Biology, 10 pages of History,10 pages of geography and 20 Maths papers. It could be a piece of cake, but I have many other things to do.
Tomorrow I will be in Nanjing for the chemistry competition. And I'll e-mail you again after that.

yours

Charles

Now I don't know about you - but to me, that's just ridiculous. I thought this was perhaps just a China wide thing, but one of the Chinese girls on our recent tour said her schooling in Beijing(and she's not so old that her schooling would have been years and years ago) was nowhere near that bad - the amount of homework and things such as here, they start school at 6am, finish at 9pm and the best part, they get approximately 2 days a month. 2 days!!

Poor kids. They're being taught everything except how to be kids.