I was forced to attend this school as a child and it was one of the most dreaded parts of my…read morechildhood for many reasons.
The school uses an "immersion" strategy to teach the language, meaning most of the teachers spoke only Chinese and zero English, and that the only way you could understand the teacher was if you already knew Chinese. There was no way for an absolute beginner to learn jack because all they ever hear from the teacher is white noise.
A large portion of the teachers are nagging, miserable shrews who must not have been paid enough to take their job seriously, but still lack the compassion or empathy that even most poor people have; any good teachers that exist at the school are few and far between. They do not even try to respect the dignity of children, and seemingly have no problem using shaming and humiliation as discipline. My teacher would punish the students by making them sing a song in front of the class as a punishment for forgetting their bookbags, and she would also force students to stand up in front of the class and read a text, obviously getting mad if they didn't do it with enough enthusiasm.
In contrast to most schools in the Western world, the school's outdated teaching system relies heavily on memorization and lectures with nothing even approaching active learning, which, for many people including myself, entirely removes the enjoyment from learning and destroys any remaining motivation of even the most strong-willed students. Whereas most schools let their teachers decide their assessment strategies, this school standardizes frequent written dictations and oral recitals, meaning that all students have to excruciatingly memorize and regurgitate the abstract, incomprehensible scribbles that are thrown at them often without knowing what they mean, only to forget them within hours because they're given new ones to memorize. People learning the simplified script may have an easier time with this than those learning traditional, but it would be better if the school used more engaging methods to teach the characters rather than just throwing characters at us and expecting us to somehow pick it up without explaining a thing in English.
Maintenance of the school is virtually non-existent; the building is extremely rundown, obscene graffiti is scribbled everywhere on the walls and furniture, and students are given damaged fold-up tables in the place of desks (you can see them in an image on the Yelp page). I normally would refrain from making comments concerning the condition of buildings, because I've been taught not to judge things based on their appearance. However, after going to this school, it became evident to me that the building's neglect is a very accurate reflection of how this school treats its students.
I would normally consider $250 per year a very low price for education, but in this case it's highway robbery because this school should be paying us to suffer through their services. If you want to enroll your child in a Chinese language school, I'm afraid you've got to look elsewhere unless you only care about the graduation diploma on cheap printer paper. And if you just need babysitting for your child for cheap, there are better, more humane services everywhere that do the job twice as good at half the price.
