An interesting comment from a student
One of the things I've got to teach at the moment is DNA in my Senior Year class, and I had the students brainstorm what they knew about DNA. It was this that caused the interesting student comments.
First the students in China seem to think they are descended from Homo Erectus, which startled me when I heard it a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if the idea came from a particular bad teacher, or if it's general across Chinese students, but that idea is there.
This lead to an interesting digression into "reliability of evidence." They've been told the evidence is there by Historians (not necessarily the best explainers of biology), so we had a discussion about the reliability of evidence for a while.
The other thing that surprised me is that Chinese have no idea of their boarders. I was explaining that one route that early man might have gained access to China was through India. They were convinced that China shouldn't have a boarder with India. Not that the boarder is in the wrong place, but that if India ceded it's claim, they wouldn't have a boarder at all. I ended up having to pull up a map to prove them wrong,
No offence to the Chinese, but they can be weird sometimes.
First the students in China seem to think they are descended from Homo Erectus, which startled me when I heard it a couple of years ago. I'm not sure if the idea came from a particular bad teacher, or if it's general across Chinese students, but that idea is there.
This lead to an interesting digression into "reliability of evidence." They've been told the evidence is there by Historians (not necessarily the best explainers of biology), so we had a discussion about the reliability of evidence for a while.
The other thing that surprised me is that Chinese have no idea of their boarders. I was explaining that one route that early man might have gained access to China was through India. They were convinced that China shouldn't have a boarder with India. Not that the boarder is in the wrong place, but that if India ceded it's claim, they wouldn't have a boarder at all. I ended up having to pull up a map to prove them wrong,
No offence to the Chinese, but they can be weird sometimes.