student disengagement - Information Matters

There is something brutal about the title of a recent Spectator article: “We pretend to teach, they pretend to learn”. The article describes the author’s experience teaching Chinese master’s students in a UK university, particularly students with limited English, low classroom participation and little apparent interest in engaging with the course beyond getting the degree. It is deliberately provocative, occasionally crude and very easy to dismiss as yet another piece of anti-Chinese-student polemic. But dismissing it entirely would be too comfortable.