When I was appointed to my first assignment in China in January 1991, I decided to take my elder son with me and have him continue his schooling in China. At that time, my colleagues and superiors in Thailand were almost unanimous in their opposing opinion about my decision. "...Your son will suffer because of the backwardness of China's educational system...", most of them advised me.
Against all odds, I persisted and took Bom, then 13 years old, to Chongqing Sichuan with me where he attended an ordinary junior high school along with local students. I was glad that I did so. A year and a half later, he returned to Thailand to exceed at school work, self confidence, self discipline and became a leader among his peers. The comparatively simpler life, poorer economic stage, more self demanding learning habits and educational tradition may have been responsible for the difference.
Twenty three years after a relatively slow and low key start in opening-up and economic reform, China is now well on the road to exceeding both the UK and France in GDP. What are the reasons for this extraordinary achievment?
The answer to this revolves around two factors - Culture and Education. As mentioned in my very first article in this column, China has implanted a culture of respect for hard work and knowledge acquisition in every Chinese since the days of Confucius (approximately 515-478 B.C.) Education, on the other hand, has served as the building blocks and accelerator of China's recent rapid development. This respect for education is a result of the cultural heritage being shaped and refined with the goals and determination of China's recent and current national leaders.
Having written about the awesomeness of this Awakening Dragon China for more than two years, this month I asked a guest columnist to examine the root causes behind the great awakening of this oriental mysterious empire.
My guest author for the following article is Miss Shirley Shen, a veteran nursery teacher with 12 years experience, specializing in teaching children from 3-6 years old. Miss Shen is a native of Shanghai, and teaches language communication skills, music, dance, piano, painting, ballet, and English amongst others. She has won recognition as the "Model Teacher" of Shanghai several times.
With her permission, I have translated parts of the writings by Miss Shen here to shed some light for us, outsiders, on how the dragon nurtures their young.
by Shirley Shen, Shanghai
Developing the Nation By Means of Science and Education
President Jiang Zemin first declared a national strategy of "Developing the Nation By Means of Science and Education", stressing the importance of the development of personal character, patriotism, political ideology, and historical experience in addition to conventional and scientific knowledge acquisition.
Quality Education is to enhance the quality of Chinese citizens by focusing on imparting to children an accurate and scientific view of the living world while nurturing in them desirable attitudes toward life and the social values. They must be brought up to appreciate politics, national heritage, love for fellow-beings and a commitment to advancing the nation. The young must increasingly seek to develop their talents and abilities by learning of forefront technology and innovations together with the strong feeling of obligation to repay the society with their able services. They must be aware of the need to prepare themselves to take charge of the nation's destiny when their turn comes.
Early Childhood: A Crucial Stage
As a teacher responsible for the education of young children, I felt a great sense of mission to play my modest part in Chinese Quality Education. First, we had to change our attitudes from that of traditional education which emphasized intellectual development while overlooking character development and artistic perception development. This has to be acheived by full awareness and determination to achieve these new goals while at the same time fulfilling our normal functions.
Character development is a long-term task that is both complicated and detailed. It requires continuous persistance and attendance to this very systematic task. Character development of the young is a starting point of the whole system.
We are now living in a wide-open multi-faceted society. There are all kinds of mass media emitting a wide spectrum of information and programs around the clock exerting their influences on the young children. Many of these influences are not desirable, including the depiction of violent or "adult behaviors". These have inevitably led to imitation - impinging negatively on the character of young children.
Whilst a a critical stage of their character development, young children are ultra-senstive to what is going on around them. Two to three year old children have already developed a simple sense of morality, while 5-6 year old children can recognize varied emotional states through their own comparative experiences. The childhood years from two to six years is not only the sensitive period for the acquisition of knowledge but is also the formative period of personal character and attitudes. Ignorance of a young child's character development will directly affect mentality development, thereby hampering the attainment of Quality Education.
The Character of Teachers
A Russian educator once said: "In educational tasks, all depends upon the teachers' characters. It is only through the teachers' characters that they are able to exercise their educating power. No rules, systems, or any man-made mechanics, no matter how wisely thought out or designed could ever substitute the impact of teachers' character." The teacher's character is a form of "silence education", especially on young children. To children, teachers are their idols with tremendous influence upon them, and the power of the teachers' character assures Quality Education. What this has compelled upon us, the teachers, is the need to continuously strengthen our own self-awareness and self-control. We "Teach by Being the Model", modeling to young children our own behaviors and attitudes.
Expect Of Others Not What Can't Be Expected From Thyself
Another Russian, a public critic, put it this way: "Whatever kind of a person the teachers wish to make out of the students, the teachers themselves must first be that type of persons themselves". This is the guiding principle behind my teaching career from the very beginning. I demanded of myself the discipline and motivation to make me a desirable model for the students. In return, I received respect and support from students and their parents alike.
Love
Being a teacher, I realized very early on that love is the key to the child's heart and soul and is the dynamic behind all educating power. Teachers' love can shape the children's ambition, helping them to healthy mental and psychological development. The teachers' love can give children the much needed strength to correct their own mistakes and revitalize themselves. I love every child in my every class. I try to understand each's habits and passions, try to understand each's uniqueness and try to understand their individual mental worlds. I treat all the children with fairness and never neglect any one of them. In return, they showered me with their pure love and trust.
Artistic Perception Development
Beauty is an exercise of the heart and mind. It leads to a clear spirit, a pure and clean mind, emotion and faith. The role of art education as part of Quality Education for young children is not geared toward training in artistic skills in the children. It is aimed to promote physical, intelligent, behavioural, and artistic perception development. We aim to lead them to become persons who are intelligent in their mind and capable with their hands and bodies. This is achieved through, music, exercise, dance, games, and language teaching. These direct personal experiences will lead to the accumulation of "perceptions", which in their trun come to constitute the children's behaviors, postures, gestures, mannerisms, attitudes and appreciations to serve as key building blocks of their character development.
In the past, we concentrated in loading up the young minds with "knowledge". Now, we have changed to stressing inquisitive and innovative approaches. While playing is so critically important a part of life for youngsters, we plan and organize learning around games and activities. The outcome is more open, creative, lively, socialable, healthy, ambitious, and self confident young crops. Most important of all is that they enjoy the entire process of their learning experience.
by Shirley Shen with translation by Piset Wattanuvitukul
As my teaching, training and consulting engagements in China increased, I decided to shift the center of my work from Bangkok to Shanghai last year. Like a decade earlier, again I decided to take my two youngest children to school in China with me. What I found out about education in China certainly surprised me, even though I had been working in China for many years already. I found I had to pay from 50,000 to 200,000 yuan RMB "sponsorship" for the better schools as the entry requirement for each of my children. The sponsorship requirement is calculated in US dollars if the school knows that I am from overseas. Even the less well known ordinary schools will require from 20,000-30,000 yuan sponsorship money.
Miss Shirley Shen told me quite proudly last week that she managed to help some of her graduates to enter the primary school within her group of school with a "special insider rate" sponsorship of 10,000 yuan instead of the regular 15,000 yuan. (An "Insider" is a person with links to VIPs with potential influence on a school's affairs.)
In addition, many leading schools not only charge very high rates of sponsorship fees, they will also take only students who proved themselves high academic achievers. Money alone still does not guarantee the child a seat in China's own IVY League schools.
As the old school year comes to a close and parents race to secure a place in a new school for their children, the Chinese Ministry of Education announced numerous orders banning schools from requiring any payments other than regular tuition fees. It still remains to be seen if the parents of those "little emperors" and "little empresses" can get by without any "sponsor" payments.
"Parents want their children to become dragons" is an age old saying in China, reflecting how much parents wish for the success of their offspring. As this nation of 1.3 billion prospers amidst the second decade of its "one child" policy, we can certainly understand how each child born represents typically, the hearts and hopes of 6 persons (the parents and their own parents). Those schools' sponsor money requirements are but a reflection of the strong backing and hopes behind each child, especially in the cities.
The danger for the next generation is whether this over-nuturing may well spoil the new generation of young dragons.
