No Break for You!

In just a few weeks, inspectors are coming to evaluate the English department at our school. It’s a big deal – the higher the rating the more money the school gets and the better the students who will want to come. So the department has been preparing all semester. They reduced all the class sizes to 30 (rumor is, it will change back next semester). The sophomores have been loaded up with extra classes in every spare moment since they will be doing some sort of performances for the inspectors. The teachers are teaching the extra classes (not us, but the Chinese teachers) on nights and even weekends. Some classes for inspector week are even scripted and practiced beforehand. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like a big show, and then everything goes back to normal.

And my freshmen just found out that they don’t get May Holiday. The week-long holiday is most similar to Spring Break, right about the middle of the semester. It’s different though, because the whole country has holiday at the same time – students, workers, everyone. Only this year, English department students (and English department teachers – once again, fortunately not the foreigners) are told they have to stay here for extra classes.

The freshmen have been talking about May Holiday for a good month. They have been looking forward to visiting their families all semester. I feel quite bad for them. Can you imagine if that happened in America? A week and a half before Spring Break a school suddenly said – sorry guys, it’s cancelled. Mutiny – that is what would ensue. It’s just baffling, how they can do that.