high school

High school made less stressful; a roundup of high school horror stories and tips on asking your date to prom, preparing for college and much more.

The Teacher Said to Put the Pencil Down at 10 P.M. I Wish We Had Done It Sooner
The clock jumps to 10:03. The Chinese workbook is open. Two math problems are blank. The English word list has a folded corner. The child pokes the eraser with a pencil and makes a small hole. Mom stands at the door with her phone lit. The teacher has sent one line: “Just sleep. Don’t write anymore.” Dad lowers his voice in the living room: “Then what do we tell the teacher tomorrow?” No one answers. The child looks up, then down. The pencil keeps poking the eraser.
By Jinabout 16 hours ago in Education
They Opened the Dorms at -4°C. They Didn’t Ask the Students.
On the night of October 4, the temperature in Qilian County fell to minus four. The hotel front desk put up a No Vacancy sign. Tourists stood on the street with their suitcases. Staff from the Culture and Tourism Bureau arrived with a list and led them to two middle schools. The dormitory door opened. The matron stood to one side, a ring of keys in her hand. The culture and tourism director bent down to make the beds. The bedding was new. The bed boards had been slept on by students. Tourists said thank you. The director said it was what they should do. No one asked who used to sleep in that bed.
By Jinabout 16 hours ago in Education
I Had 10,000 English Words in My Head. Why Couldn’t I Speak?
You know the words. Reading feels like automatic doors. Then you open your mouth. The doors jam. You want to say, “Wire this into the pipeline.” What comes out is, “Put this new code into the old process.” The other person nods. You nod. The conversation moves on. You also move on, but part of you stays behind, staring at the sentence you did not say.
By Jinabout 16 hours ago in Education
Not Preparing Children For Life Is Preparing Them For Failure
Our world is changing by the nanoseconds daily. So are human minds and how they raise their children. I volunteer as a teacher’s aide to sixth graders who are preparing for the Primary Exit Profile PEP, which will determine which high school they attend next September. While in a conversation with a few of them, talking about which high schools they want to attend and what grade those high schools demand, one of the females said, “My mom said I shouldn’t worry about the future. Focus on now.”
By Annelise Lords about 17 hours ago in Education
AI Made Answers Free. The People Who Win Now Do 3 Things Differently.
You know the feeling. A question that once cost an afternoon now costs a sentence. The model returns a page, sometimes ten. Definitions, frameworks, examples, counterexamples, a plan you could paste into a slide deck. Answers arrive like tap water. Turn the handle, fill the glass.
By Jin3 days ago in Education
A German Textbook Tells Kids Chinese People Bow. It Also Prints Fake Chinese Characters.
A page from a German primary school German textbook has been circulating again. It comes from Klett’s Niko Sprachbuch series. The heading is “Unterwegs in China,” or “Getting Around in China.” Exercise 5 asks pupils to look at pictures, read the text, and discuss what is different in China compared with Germany.
By Jin4 days ago in Education
Who Gives Tsinghua and Peking University Their Value?
A contest-admitted student had Advanced Algebra on his desk in senior year. He did not need to take the gaokao, but he still woke at 6:30 and left the study room at 11 p.m. Some classmates had already worked in university labs. Some read English paper abstracts. Some had taught themselves general physics.
By Jin5 days ago in Education
I Chose My College Because of One Line of Poetry
When the college entrance exam scores came out, I could apply to Fudan or Nanjing University. The majors were similar. The cities were both good. I wrote Fudan first on the application form. My pen stopped. I crossed it out and wrote Nanjing University. Because of one line: “Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties, how many towers and terraces in mist and rain?”
By Jin5 days ago in Education
AI Built an Algorithm That Beats Dijkstra. Then You Try to Run It.
I found the news late one night. Vals AI used 10 Claude Opus 5.5 agents. In 15 hours, they generated 289 files, built the C-HD shortest path algorithm, and passed Lean Kernel verification. The headline said: beats Dijkstra.
By Jin7 days ago in Education
Computer Science Didn't Explode. The Job Market Did.
At a job fair, the computer science booth has a line. The civil engineering booth has empty chairs. Online, people say CS is dead. In group chats, students still ask how to transfer into it. Both things are true. They are just about different problems.
By Jin7 days ago in Education
China Has More PhDs Than Donkeys. The Joke Is Hiding a Harder Truth.
The Number That Started the Joke In 2025, China had close to 1.48 million people with a doctoral degree. In the same year, the national donkey inventory was expected to fall below 1.2 million. Put those numbers together and you get a viral line: China has more PhDs than donkeys. If Afanti were alive today, he might ride an old PhD instead of a donkey.
By Jin9 days ago in Education
The AI College Boom Is Outrunning the Teachers Who Have to Make It Work
In September 2026, the busiest thing on Chinese campuses was not opening ceremonies. It was plaque unveilings. Northwestern Polytechnical University launched a School of Flexible Electronics. Xiamen University unveiled a School of Intelligent Manufacturing. Nanjing Medical University’s Changzhou campus launched six innovation platforms at once. Earlier, Huazhong University of Science and Technology applied to add four majors, including Embodied Intelligence and Brain-Computer Science and Technology. Communication University of China sought to add Game Science and Technology, Esports, and other programs. Harbin Institute of Technology, Beihang University, and seven other schools introduced embodied intelligence majors. Anhui Normal University, a teacher-training school, launched three new engineering colleges aimed at artificial intelligence.
By Jin10 days ago in Education