Author: Litong Wang
Born in a mountain village in Shantung, Shawn Tian vaguely remembers his first encounter with SAT: it was in an abandoned house lying on the slope that he coincidentally found an Official Guide of SAT while playing with his cousin. The house was believed to belong to a scholarly family, who probably was among the very first generation of overseas students after the Chinese “Reform and Opening-up” policy. “That wave of students was… extremely enthusiastic,” said Tian, “You’d think they view the moon overseas rounder than ours.”
As a potential successor of that first wave himself, however, Tian never went to university abroad: his family circumstance didn’t allow this kind of expenditure. Graduated from Shanghai International Studies University, Tian survived TOEFL and GRE, yet he eventually chose to become a teacher at New Oriental Education—there, he first plunged in the career of SAT tutoring. “Surely, I just went for a money-earning position that suited my linguistic speciality.” Tian laughed loud when he said this, but, meanwhile, he described the name “New Oriental” as a vessel of Chinese overseas students’ idealism of that age. He believed the point at which Chinese students first heard of “SAT” was when the first batch of SAT tutoring lessons in the country appeared at New Oriental around 2005—as well, it was the point at which he got to genuinely understand this test system. “At first, just like other rookies who first tried this occupation, I listened to senior colleagues’ tapes and blindly applied their ways,” Tian admitted, “but I found my lecture self-contradictory and illogical, simply full of loopholes… As a result, I decided to build up a tutoring system on my own. ”
“SAT is a very classic exam,” said Tian, “It contains the most authorized, professional Western recognition, induction, even judgment upon the model of intellectualism, representing the academic standards of US college enrollment.” Tian emphasizes the nature of critical-thinking cultivation which underlies the system of SAT and highly approves a tutoring system of heuristics, queries, and test replying, which he believes can lead the students to peruse and grasp between the lines by themselves, avoid subjective sentiment, and figure out their own paths of thinking, then fully concentrating during the exams. Upholding these perspectives, Tian was never tired of spreading his own beliefs and widening his own business. During his 14 years of career, he switched between 3 organizations, set up his own businesses for 2 times, and never retreated from the “frontline” of teaching. “Those selective, characteristic pedagogic products are, in fact, irreproducible—who teaches these things is certainly an inextricable factor that strongly influences the business. I’d feel my values to the students not maximized if I enter a classroom no more.” Tian concluded.
Students who go to Tian’s classes may be largely impressed by one thing: that is his SAT tutoring is always accompanied by mentions of Western thinkers and allusions, explicating the values and stands behind the passages. Toiling in his field for nearly one and a half decades, Tian himself has done numerous papers and seen varieties of readings (students are always amazed by his accurate memorization of certain words and passages in certain papers, which makes him naturally switch between classic questions appeared in different tests). As a result, he possesses a thorough insight of the fundamental correlations between typical readings and questions beneath the system. Thus, clarifying these Western beliefs and attitudes which determine the test patterns of SAT to the students has always been his goal. He talks about liberalism, he talks about anti-authoritism, he talks about revolutions, he talks about democratization, he talks about religious reformation, he talks about “all men are created equal”—everything. He talks about John Stuart Mill, he talks about Friedrich Nietzsche, he talks about Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he talks about John Locke, he talks about Henry Thoreau—everyone. “The comprehensiveness of SAT readings indicates the freedom of contacting different standpoints and ideologies; they don’t tell you which one is the righteous or which one is worth the belief—and then the whole event comes back to the doctrine of critical thinking,” said Tian, “You are then going to subjectively analyze the passages yourselves, completely seeing through the lines and, even further, the interrelated articles.”
All these remarks converge upon a distinct and indubitable essence: standing by his SAT tutoring business, “helping the kids eye the world” could be a motto for Tian. As an open-minded educator, he firmly believe that, for Chinese teenage students nowadays who’ve already acquired financial, social, and political circumstances, studying abroad should be a vital and blissful opportunity. Experience a brand new living, immerse in the birth place of enlightenment, and learn from a totally different cultural condition—what’s so bad about that? Tian acknowledge the considerably massive divergence—not just that, but probably incompatibleness—between Eastern and Western cultures, but he also pointed out the necessity of avoiding the occurrence mutual contempt. Instead, “What’s outstanding, or valuable,” concluded Tian, “is what you should learn from.” Tian said he sometimes found it quite pathetic that not all his students are capable of handling SAT: you have to overcome the linguistic gap, the ideological gap, and even the cultural gap; you even have to overcome the laxness in concentration and self-discipline, since getting a high rank among the globe requires a continuous preparation and a composed test response. “Making up a decisive mind to dive in the preparation of SAT—or, more fundamentally, dive in the affairs of studying overseas—depends on one’s sight: are you, or are you not, looking forward to meeting the world?” Tian’s tone became much solemn when it came to the discussion on this very topic. “Whatever which era it is, I can confirm, there will always be potential overseas students. Even for China herself, students still went abroad during feudal dynasties and World Wars. Endless learning from the outside world should always be a cardinal task, or perhaps an unavoidable trend, for an truly intelligent civilization.”
In Tian’s memory, the SAT tutoring market in China came to an acme after 2012–at that time, over 60 to 100 thousands of Chinese students were held per year at test centers in HongKong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and so on. This new tide towards the outside world, unfortunately, rushed into a barricade after 2019, due to the surge of COVID-19 pandemic and certain political circumstances; Macau almost became the only available test position for most of the Chinese students, and the test population of them on each test day could be nearly counted by hundreds. Nevertheless, right between the most serious phases of the pandemic, he decided to set up his current organization, struggling through all the barriers and pushing it to the top level of SAT tutoring services in Shanghai. Tian largely recognized the impact of pandemic on an industry like this, half-jokingly saying that his business’s achievement could literally double if the pandemic persisted for 1 year instead of 3–yet Tian has, in fact, never got the mind of over enlarging his company. Instead, he turns most of the retained profits into the high salary of his excellent teachers and all-round assistantship, revision, and customization services for students. “You can hardly find someone who intentionally pursues marketing here,” he smiled and says, shrugging his shoulder.
While funnily speaking, the relatively small size of his company and the continuous slump in the overall tutoring industry within the country has, indeed, made Tian’s “dream” of retirement dissipate again and again, but undoubtedly, everyone knows that he has never deliberately taken such profession dilemma into his heart. “There are many memorable moments in my career,” said Tian, “but none of them can outwit the proudness of clearly explaining a certain question or article to the students while seeing them being glad to listen to my jabbering in front of the class for hours. As for myself, I learned a lot during this 14 years—I learned to find my life’s real needs, be staunch and scrupulous in my work, and become one with the new generation.”
Witnessing him sincerely indulging himself in this job, we really can’t tell whether Tian is now over the resignation of being unable to study abroad himself decades ago, but one confirmed fact is that, maintaining an infinite faith in his own pedagogic beliefs, he must harbor a absolute happiness when seeing some of his students who are admitted to Ivy League colleges or settle down in New York City, reciprocating his 14 years of diligence, are truly eyeing and walking towards the world.