The second day of school, Rainey came home with a story. Four times he found egg in his mouth. He hadn’t placed it there himself; instead, his most hated food made its way past his teeth by the hand of the fearsome Teacher Chen.
‘ She put it there,’ Rainey told me, mouth wide, finger pointing inside. Then what happened,? I asked.
“I cried and spit it out.”
Then what. She did it again,” Rainey said….”I cried and spit it out again.”
Rainey is three years old and enrolled in one of the best Shanghai kindergartens in the city. Lenora Chu, Mom, journalist and author of Little Soldiers: An American Boy, A Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve,(2017) from which this incident is taken, decides to meet with Teacher Chen to discuss force-feeding egg to her son. Chu describes the conference with Teacher Chen:
“We don’t use such methods of force in America,” I blurted in Mandarin, my son clutching my hand. (I was born and raised in America but grew up speaking Chinese at home.)
“Oh? How do you do it?” Teacher Chen challenged.
“We explain that egg eating is good for them, that the nutrients help build strong bones and teeth and helps with eyesight,” I said, trying to sound CONTINUE READING:
The “Little Soldiers” of Chinese Education | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice