Category Archives for World School
Some Thoughts on Chinese Algebra
Watching Family Guy last night, we hit the episode where Tricia Takanawa says: “Hi! I’m here with Stephen Hawking, the only white man I’ve ever met who knows math better than me.” We laughed. And then we almost cried. Because here are some (translated) examples of the algebra that my son’s seventh grade (Year 7) [...]
5.30am Is No Time to Wake Up
For the first week of Chinese school, our routine has been: wake up at 6am, breakfast, dress, and leave the house at 6.40 to make the bus at 7am. This is a routine that Zac adapts to better than I. He is not a morning person, but he is adaptable. I am not a morning [...]
Handwriting has never been a strength of Zac’s. He’s a lefty, and started writing aged three. Then, because current British thinking is that young children should be left to “experiment with mark-making” by themselves – which is ideal if children are “mark-making”, rather less so if they’re actually writing – he wasn’t taught how to [...]
On Doing Maths in Chinese
I knew, of course, that maths as taught in Asia is some way ahead of the UK (and, for that matter, most of the West). I had vaguely suspected that maths as taught in mainland China might also be some way ahead of maths as taught in the rest of Asia. But I’d expected that [...]
First Day of Chinese School
We’re both fairly quiet in the taxi to the school. What had seemed like a really good idea at the time – put Zac in a Chinese school for a term or so so that he could improve his Chinese – now seems more and more unnerving. Not least since Huaze, out of the goodness [...]
We Find a Chinese School
A bit of English language Googling around bilingual schools in Harbin finds a site for teachers of English as a foreign language, and a job advertised at a bilingual school. I Google around the school’s name in English, plough through a lot of investment sites, and eventually dig up the Chinese language site for the [...]
The Quest for Chinese School
“I called the school for you,” Huaze reports back. My Chinese really isn’t good enough to do anything but the most basic of basic conversations over the phone, and I’m figuring that, when trying to talk a laowai kid into Chinese middle school, in a city that’s not used to foreigners, it’s probably best to [...]
The Best Laid Plans…
There are still two important projects outstanding from our plan for winter in China. Project Visa and Project Apartment have been concluded. We have seen the Harbin ice sculptures, and found them wonderful. Outstanding items? Project School: get Zac into a Chinese school so he can get to a reasonable level of fluency in Chinese. [...]
It’s All About The Cross-Hatching
“Bwahahaha,” I say. “Did you know the Chinese for ‘writer’ is, literally, ‘sit-at-home’?” “No,” says Zac. “NOOB! The ‘zuo’ in ‘zuo-jia’ is a different kind of ‘zuo’ from the ‘zuo’ that means sit.” “Oh,” I say, racking my brains to find out how many Chinese characters for ‘zuo’ I actually know. “Is it the ‘zuo’ [...]
A Very Small Atheist Does the Holy Land
“You know, I think the least workable argument for the existence of God is the ontological argument,” spouts my spawn from the back seat. (He has abandoned all the kids’ books on various religions I bought him in favour of The God Delusion, which he borrowed from his grandparents, and has now read several times.) [...]
