Recently, a junior student majoring in logistics in a comprehensive college in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou Province, complained online that his teacher had assigned them too much copying and the number of Chinese characters in their exercise books had reached 200,000, adding that he had to copy at least 3,000 Chinese characters in order to complete each homework assignment before the end of the term.

"Homework like this was assigned as early as October 22 and I have been doing such copying work for almost a week now, with my fingers totally stiff from such work," a student who refused to be named said, adding that nearly all her classmates felt totally disappointed with such homework assignment, as she believed that very few teachers would ask their students to write their homework with their own hands.

Another student held that assigning such homework apparently serves no purpose, affecting students' daily life instead. And some students even asked the teacher to reduce the amount of homework assigned, because CET-4, CET-6 and other tests were fast approaching. But their teacher turned down their request.

After reporters contacted the teacher, the teacher expressed his surprise at such online complaints poured out by his students, saying that he had assigned his previous students such homework and they raised no objections at all. He said his purpose in giving such homework was for his students to really learn something, as college students playing truant is so common and widespread.

Such homework assignment reminds me of the outdated rote learning methods that are so common in Chinese schools.

All rote learning is wasted effort, as we will sooner or later forget most of what is crammed into our heads and obviously, it takes so much time for the students to memorize so much information of this kind, depriving them of the time needed to build up social skills or acquire real knowledge.

Moreover, it is widely believed that the lack of creativity in China's education system is closely associated with such rote learning practice. It is not news that compared with their counterparts in the US, Chinese students lag behind in critical thinking and lack imagination.

It may be argued that nowadays many students often skip classes which they think are boring or useless and so students' minds are at least occupied with something when they are given such homework and can learn something, which is better than having nothing to do and idling away their time.

But think about it: isn't it also teachers' fault that their students are not interested in their lessons and choose to skip classes? Isn't it time for old-school teachers to improve their teaching methods and make their lessons more interesting? And are students really learning just from copying out information?

Lin Maoxian, a Shenzhen-based freelance writer and a part-time interpreter