China's culture is very different from Wesern culture. I expect it'll take years for significant changes in this area to occur,
I feel sorry for both Chinese pupils at middle schools and their teachers because they are studying and involved at school for long hours, respectively.
I was very surprised when Shanghai pupils came out most knowledgeable in an international survey. It appears that despite the emphasis on rote learning as opposed to how and why when material is taught pupils do well.
Re what you've been saying about leftie lecturers, my uni experienmce was that a top uni most lecturers were dressed in suits and had short hair, They tended to be aloof, Some of the younger lecturers wore jeans and had long hair. They tended to be friendly to students. I thought they were likely to be on the left, but in science, classes do not involve dissecting Owell's works.
At my college of education, the department of sociology had mainly casually dressed lecturers with long hair. Though I didn't like the subject, and wasn't used to lectures that didn't involve copying lengthy notes from blackboards, I got B's and C's in my compulsory essays, which pleased me as my background was not in the arts.
Yep, lecturers are sitting pretty - I'd have bitten the hand off of anyone who offered me such a post in the UK. Of courrse, some of them are so full of themselves that they come across ads academic snobs. I have met some like that in China. One thing about you as a uni lecturer in China is that you wouldn't come across like that to your students, a good thing in my view.