The memories of my k-12 schooling experience were filled with warm, gentle, and happy emotions. I can best describe the feeling as the soothing, warm, yellow light in the living room. Not too bright, but felt really nice and just right. My family migrated from mainland China to Hong Kong when I was four years old. I grew up in a poor neighborhood in Hong Kong, probably quite similar to the project housing in Manhattan. We had drug dealers and prostitute houses as neighbors on our floor. We had a tiny kitchen in our 180 square feet apartment, but we had to share the bathroom with another unit on the floor. My mother was a strong woman. She told us that it was most safe to live next to trouble-makers because they would not mess with their own people (neighbors), but we were forbidden to interact with them. And she was right. We lived peacefully and respected each other’s lifestyles.
My parents valued education highly as they were high-school graduates, which was very rare in the neighborhood. Most adults who lived in our community were illiterate, never went to school. My kindergarten experience was the most unforgettable. Freshly moved from Shanghai, I did not know the local language at all. My mom could not help either. I remembered I could not understand anything at all during the first semester of kindergarten. There was this beautiful, popular, and smart girl who was first in class always for all the tests and examinations. I admired her so much and so wanted to be her friend. But, she did not want to be. I was not too hurt, just a little. Alone, I progressed very quickly in school.
By the end of the school year, I was the first in class. I made friends with a few girls and did not miss the pretty smart girl that much. That was the first year of my kindergarten.
Looking back, it seems so terrible and possibly so isolating to be in an environment where you did not understand anything and had no friend. But, I think aside from the fact that I was a very positive little girl, the kindergarten teacher was very patient. I did not remember much of her, other than her patience and the sense of good feeling and security I had when she spoke to me. I transferred to a different kindergarten in the second year and then to an elementary school in subsequent years. I remembered the teachers in the second year of my kindergarten and the class teacher of my elementary school quite well. The memories of them always brought the nicest warm, loving feeling with much sense of security and assurance. My elementary school did prepare me well, academically. Although the school stood in a poor neighborhood, it provided us with a well-balanced learning experience. Teachers gave very challenging assignments. I remember in my first grade, we were already given a lot of homework. 100 math problems a day was not uncommon. Although I understood the subject and be able to do all the assignments, I could not finish them due to the sheer volume. My mom often did half of my homework so I could go to bed by 11 P.M. Eventually, I learned to write very fast, think very fast, and do math really fast so I could finish my homework without help.
From first grade to fifth grade, we have the same classmates in all five years. For our final year in primary school, all Hong Kong primary school students had to take a public examination. Thus, for the sixth grade, our school selected 40 students with the highest scores and assigned them to one class. This was the class the teachers will challenge the students for better performance both in speed and accuracy in the preparation of the standard tests. We were also taught to solve more challenging problems.
My memory of my primary school was filled with happy moments with my friends in the playground, running up and down of the staircases, chasing after each other in every corner of the school. The teachers were all very caring. Many teachers were stern and demanding, but they were also very caring and loving. I only had fond memories from my primary school (1-6). I would consider my primary school was very effective. I learned basic skills, which I still remembered today. I had countless happy memories and long-lasting friendships, and I did very well in the standard tests, which determined my placement at the secondary school (7-12).
I performed very well in my standard tests and got placed in the best secondary school in the district. The high school experience was very different. I still made wonderful friends and had lots of great moments. But, the learning environment was very different. We were encouraged to participate in many extra-curriculum activities. The students were divided into four houses, and throughout the school years, we have many competitions among the houses, such as drama, folk dance, chorus, poetry, basketball, volleyball, soccer, swimming, and various field games, endless competition days. Academically, all of a sudden, we had to study many more subjects, such as Chinese and foreign history, geography, physics, biology, chemistry, English, and Chinese literature. The books were thick, and the majority of them were in English! I spent most of my time looking up the dictionary and tried to understand the sentences rather than the subject. It was a culture shock to me.
The teachers were very different too. They were no longer the loving, caring type. When I was in high school, a Chemistry teacher told us not to ask too many questions because he was only a few chapters ahead of us. Classes were generally very dull. Teachers read from the book, or ask each of us read a paragraph. By ninth grade, we pretty much knew that we had to be independent. Learning in school is no longer about acquiring knowledge or exploring the world and the people living on earth. For this, we had to study by ourselves. Teachers spent more time teaching us what to study for the public examinations, how to answer the essay questions, and time ourselves perfectly to score high. Even though we studied the history and culture of different countries, the teachers never used the opportunities to teach us various political systems and their pros and cons. We were not even taught how the Hong Kong government structured and operated. There was no particular effort to prepare us to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. For me, the joy of secondary school derived from all the extra-curriculum activities and long-lasting friendships I made in school. I consider my secondary school failed to develop me as a person. I did not remember much of what I learned, even though I performed very well in tests and exams. Only one English teacher, who was considered a rebel by the school, had made some impacts on me, as he liked to talk about his thoughts about life and various topics that were not on the book or syllabus. While most students did not like him, as he added no value to our public exam performance, I liked him a lot. I treasured the thoughts he guided me through his discussions. I enjoyed the composition class, where he always let us write whatever was on our mind.
Looking back, I felt strange about my high school experience. I learned to work hard to compete, had tastes of successes and failures, experienced the pride of belonging from the extra-curriculum activities I participated in. I pondered about the meaning of life with my close friends. I performed well in the standard tests. But, I did not build strong connections with my secondary school teachers as I had with my teachers in the kindergarten and primary schools. The schools prepared me for my growth and my future as they provided the environment and the setting for me to learn. But, there was something wrong about the secondary school teachers. They were too focused on teaching us to score high in the standard tests, instead of teaching us how to think critically and to inspire us to do great things and be good citizens of the world. They did not make us excited and engaged in learning. They did not inspire us. But, the diversity of the school and the various competitive activities and interest groups, the concept of community, and the bond we built inspired by the houses, all contributed to the colorful high school experience. The teachers served to get us an entry ticket to the college. But, it was undoubtedly a standard test focus education rather than a learner focus teaching.