Why China Banned Homework

Audio Editing by Donovan Bullen
Editing by José Gámez
Motion Graphics by Vincent de Langen
Writing, Thumbnail Design, and Direction by Evan

This includes a paid sponsorship which had no part in the writing, editing, or production of the rest of the video.

With video from Getty Images
With video from Reuters
With maps provided by MapTiler/OpenStreetMap Contributors and GEOlayers 3

[MichaelSmith-ijut]

"Why China Banned Private Tutoring" would be a better title bud

[freeman]

I lived and taught in China for ten years and came face to face with the harrowing reality of the Chinese education system. The Children of China spend so much time in stressful, ultra-competitive education they end up having no real childhood and for what? The opportunity to fight for an ever dimminishing pool of work where they have to work long hours for low pay.

[bkbroiler]

clickbait title, should be "Why China Banned Private Tutoring"

[ChenAnPin]

The Taiping Rebellion was started by a guy who had a nervous breakdown after he failed the standardized imperial examination thrice and caused him to go insane and see visions and proclaim himself to be Jesus Christ's brother that would result in 20-30 million deaths.

[JA-vznl]

As a teacher in China, lots of this info is true. The double reduction act back in 2021 wrecked havoc on training centers everywhere in the country, and many tutors I know have had to go into hiding or stop their group classes altogether. However, homework hasn't been "banned", just reduced, but it depends how many extracurricular activities you still enroll your kid in after school. If they don't have many others, then this helps the students have a bit more free time during the week. The policy also actually helps teachers like myself have a more free schedule on the weekends, so I personally see it as a win-win.

[Charlie-phlezk]

They absolutely did not ban homework.

Thanks for playing along with my engagement game, folks.

[kwykwyk]

Worst part is that these students go at break neck speed through school only to fall off a cliff after they graduate with lack of work opportunities that fits their education achievements

[raphaelrossi]

I sat in for a friend to teach an English class. To help the post high school kids converse. I asked them to tell a story from their childhood. None of them could. They were all nice kids, and bright and intelligent. But it was like they had no memories of their childhood.

[pradhyudh]

If u have 14 hour schools, do u also need homeworK????

[alexpyattaev]

The saddest part is that students comimg from these 20hour/day nightmares to a finnish university are still quite average, i.e. all this force-feeding of information is gloriously wasteful (and, arguably, even harmful to their capacity to learn efficiently).

[BirdEgg]

Waiting for the video to mention homework

[valetudo]

This is not quite accurate - Homework is definitely not banned in China.

It's been "banned" for the lower grade levels, say 1-3, however... The children are still expected to know the same material for tests and parents still have massive anxiety due to the insane competition. So the result of this is parents have taken on more responsibility and still have their kids study and do homework at home. Effectively, nothing has changed and if anything has burdened parents more

[atharvkurdukar]

1:27 This is eerily similar situation to the one in India. The tuitions in my area have batches of 600-700 students each, being taught by a single professor.

[robertreynolds]

All Chinese parents literally want their kids to be Professors. Their system literally looks down on any form of manual labour, be it electrician, mechanic, plumber. They'd do better creating "opportunity" rather than a "prestige" system.

[Hanakooh]

I am a bit not sure what happened when literally in the first second Polymatter went "wake up at 5.30 in the morning" but the graphic shows 4.30am. Was that wrong or did I get it wrong? XD

[chrisbarber]

I teach in China at an international school and, due to the high tuition, only students from wealthy families can attend. Overall, these kids are horribly behind the students I had at grossly underfunded schools in the US in terms of thinking skills, independence, and desire to learn (grades are the only motivator). At the same time, they will be able to attend universities in the West because they've attended a prestigious English-speaking school; it perpetuates the inequalities mentioned in the video.

[prdproductions]

Leave it to polymatter to mess up every single graph label and axes in his videos. The work schedule at the start almost gave me an aneurysm, completely randomly switching between AM and PM throughout the whole thing.

[johnl.]

One of the top reasons I’ve heard why over achieving (and rich) parents for East Asia immigrate to the west is so that their children don’t need to go through the same thing even though they went through the same system and became successful.

[Peregrine]

Finland: What about if we make all private schools public and fund them all equally.

Polymatter: Okay everyone BUT Finland can't do education right.

Like the fundamental thing this video misses is that regardless of if you tackle the problem of wealth directly or indirectly you are still going to fight the wealthy. Be it ending private tutors OR taxing the rich more to put more funding in poorer schools, the fight is no different.

The rich will oppose any decrease to their advantage, be it educationally, privligely or moneyly.

[Manto]

Evidence is mounting on Chinese social media that the girl cheated with her teacher to get to 12th place. Although there is currently no response from the organizer, the combination of various clues makes it difficult for people to believe in her math ability. So I guess our education system is still OK.

·Following is my original comment·
Our education system is a joke. The most recent case is a girl named Jiang Ping from Jiangsu province, she failed to get into high school because of bad grades, instead she's studying dressmaking in a technical school. But she successfully won the 12th place in an advanced math competition held by alibaba, many of her defeated opponents are from very famous university, even some are PhD.