The idea of going to school on Saturday to learn a foreign language does not spark interest for many students. But hundreds of teenagers attend the Minghua Chinese School every week to learn this foreign language as well as learning more about the culture. So what makes St. Paul Academy and Summit School and Minghua Chinese school different? And what aspects of the culture separate the two?

Minghua Chinese school offers many different classes, including Mandarin Chinese, Chinese art, Chinese mathematics, Chinese history, Chinese choir, Chinese speech and even a SAT class, only taught in Mandarin. Many students attend most of these classes. “Almost all students take three classes,” says Jian Hu, the principal of Minghua. “It’s very good for these kids to learn our culture.”

Class life and behavior is quite similar to SPA classes, except for the numbers in each class. Unlike SPA, the class size is quite large, ranging from 20 to 30 kids. Boys are more active and are rowdier while the girls in the classes are all well disciplined and quiet. “How long a class is can affect the students,” explains Hu. “The longer they last can irritate students. I think this affects the boys more, as their performance in class isn’t at the girls’ level.” Hu says the boys’ average testing scores are around 80 percent while the girls’ average testing score is at a higher 93 percent. Overall, the culture in Minghua classes is similar to that of SPA.

The most popular classes, Chinese Mandarin, Chinese mathematics and Chinese art, last from an hour to two hours. The Chinese Mandarin class is two hours long while Chinese mathematics and Chinese art are both an hour. In both Chinese Mandarin classes and Chinese mathematics, there are twelve levels. All students get a ten minute break in between each class to grab a snack or to hang out with friends. Students advance to a higher level every year where they are also provided a new book fit for each level. However, dialogue and teaching skills are different.

“We are very hard teachers,” said Linda Min, a level four Mandarin teacher. “If the students are listening well and are not behaving well, they will have to stand and recite something we are learning. If things get even worse, we’ll send them out of class.” Min also adds the point that teachers will sometimes personally tease the student to embarrass them so that they may improve and behave more properly in class. Min also explains how some of the kids in Chinese school are spoiled too much in America. She says that the class behavior is so much different than what it is like right now in China. “Everyone’s very, very, very quiet in the classes in China. They don’t speak a word; they know why they’re here and they compete with each other and very aggressively too so that they may reach the top,” says Min. “We are trying to bring back school life in China. We don’t want the students to disappoint our language. We are proud of our culture and we want our children to learn it well to the point that they are completely fluent.” The teachers also speak in Chinese and hardly speak English unless it is necessary. “We really want the students to be able to understand the language which in turn will help their speaking abilities,” Ms. Min points out. “We will limit to how much English we will speak.”

However, the students at Minghua understand responsibility and commitment. “I think everyone here at Minghua has learned a great deal in responsibility and time commitment,” says Hu. “They have an extra day of school which may interfere with other plans. The homework which we assign also takes a lot of time.” Mandarin Chinese has ten to sixteen pages of homework. Ten to twelve pages of homework are assigned to five to 11 year olds and the age groups of 11 and up are assigned up to sixteen pages. Math assigns five to eight pages of homework and the other classes sometimes hand out assignments as well. These assignments are assigned every week and are due the returning week.

Chinese school clearly affects the lifestyle of students. “It can be really hard to complete all the homework both at Minghua and SPA,” says freshman Rebecca Xu who attends Minghua and is currently in level nine. “SPA gives a lot of homework and so does Minghua so it takes up a lot of time. I don’t get to get out much like I used to.” According to teachers, it takes an estimate of two hours to complete the assignments, on average. Students at SPA interact with this school since, like Xu, there are other students at SPA who attend this school and take it seriously. With a high degree of knowledge in Chinese from Minghua, SPA students can teach the Chinese to the community at SPA. Minghua is also open to anyone who expresses interest in the school so SPA students can attend this Saturday activity.

Minghua and SPA are quite similar but there are clear distinctions in the culture. A major difference is the discipline at Minghua compared to SPA. As pointed out, teachers do laugh and make fun of misbehaved students publicly at Minghua. As for SPA, teachers don’t usually try to embarrass students and find other alternatives to reprimand them. The idea of suspending a student also isn’t found in Minghua. The concept and culture of the Chinese regarding the subject of discipline is to really punish the students openly. With this, Chinese students will want to redeem themselves where their work ethics will greatly improve as well as their class behavior. The Chinese community is also very, very tight. It is said that all Chinese people recognize and know any other Chinese person. With this in mind, gossip travels quite quickly which pushes a student to work harder to build a good reputation. This is similar to the SPA community too. Gossip travels just as fast and students strive to work hard as well to also put their reputation at a high level. To describe the popularity of a student at SPA is different than that of Minghua. Dedicated, hard-working students aren’t regarded as necessarily popular especially if you spend most of your time towards academics. Rather, good-looking students who have a sense of humor are looked as the more popular type. However, at Minghua, how good your work ethics are as a student determines how popular you are. Although a sense of humor is looked as an element of popularity at Chinese School, brains and dedication is valued more.

Despite the differences, the two schools are actually quite similar. In the end, both schools offer much to learn to benefit them in the future.