All Work And No Play
I tutor Chinese children online. Some of them get sent to private boarding schools when they hit middle school. Most do three to four hours of homework a night and have classes Saturday and Sunday too. One boy is eleven years old. When I ask him what he does for fun, his only response is homework. He doesn’t play video games or watch TV or movies.
His parents force him to study and read all day, every day. The only time he plays with other children is when they eat lunch or have gym class. I have some other students like this as well, but not quite as bad. Some of my kids are taught that the cinema is a waste of time, that video games and cartoons are bad, and that they need to study all weekend to get into a good university.
The children can be like zombies. It is difficult sometimes seeing them have no joy. One girl said that the highlight of her week was that she didn’t get assigned a lot of homework this weekend.