The Catholic University of Peking, known in Chinese as Fu Jen, had been established by Benedictines from Pennsylvania in 1925. Like many foreign projects of the time, the university sought to combine pragmatism and faith, science and God.
Whereas American education often values small classes, the Chinese system tends to focus on efficiency and specialization. A typical American primary-school teacher handles all subjects, but Teacher Zhang taught only Language. She was assisted by a teacher in training, who was also a specialist, and another instructor came to the classroom for math, another for English, and so on across the subjects. Throughout the day, children hardly moved from their seats.
Another Chinese educational strategy involves a hierarchy of academic priorities, almost to the point of triage. At Chengdu Experimental, everything revolved around Language and mathematics, which produced almost all the student’s homework—usually, a total of between two and three hours a night. These two subjects also had the best textbooks; in particular, the math book was brilliantly organized. But some of the other textbooks could have been tossed together by Little Sloppy and his cronies.
Strict safety rules forbade any child below sixth grade to touch the jungle gym. The twins found this ridiculous—they said that the jungle gym would have bored any Colorado kindergartner. Near the displays about the school’s history, there was a sign with the heading “Rules for Primary School Students.” The guidelines ran for nearly three hundred characters, organized into nine parts, from the Party to Polonius and beyond:6. Be honest and keep your promises.