UK/Chinese
Curriculum Exchange
International news travels fast in China thanks to the Internet. Access is not confined to the main cities either. Four hours coach drive away from Hangzhou, the regional capital, I logged on in a busy 24 hour Internet café in the small town of Lishu. I had been invited to Lishu by Rainbow Leaping King to meet her family over a banquet of fried cicadas and lily roots. Rainbow's uncle had carefully prepared a speech in English which began, "Please ask Mr. Blair to stop the Americans from bombing Iraq." World peace was a frequent theme of conversation with Chinese people who are as anxious as we are about world events.
China is still a very poor country. The Chinese see education as a route to prosperity. Now that urban families have only one child each, no expense is too great for "the little emperor". Some parents pay about £1,000, a huge sum in China, to give their child a year's head-start in a private kindergarten.
But Chinese calligraphy presents a major learning hurdle. Over 2,000 individual characters must be learnt by heart in order to read and write adequately. There are no short cuts. Meanwhile English is soon to be adopted as the second language. Indeed more Chinese are learning English than speak English in the rest of the world. The Internet has spurred their interest as well since this is an inexhaustible fund of world information.
The Chinese are not only learning English, but embracing active styles of learning from the West. Confucianist styles of teaching, like respect for hierarchical relationships, the concepts of face and self-effacement and passivity in class are giving way to Western approaches. For example, British students tend to ask questions 'as a way of learning' whereas Chinese students ask questions 'after learning'. Asking questions in China reflects badly on the teacher because asking questions suggests that the teacher did not teach well enough in the first place. This habit is hard to break but in experimental schools pupils are now being encouraged to question the teacher. On the other hand UK students have much to learn from Chinese students about their discipline and enthusiasm for learning.
Most classes have sixty students and computers are seen as a route to active learning. Linux is the preferred operating system for the networks. Data projectors linked to computers are common in classrooms. In one Beijing school I visited parents pay as much as £180 a year for access to an educational intranet with educational resources run by a local company - again a huge sum.
Exchanges between UK and Chinese teachers are being planned on the theme of international citizenship. Last August in Beijing Chris Warren, Actis, and I ran the first active workshop in this exchange. We were working with Chinese teachers seconded to educational software action research projects with the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences (BAES). To start with an investigation of citizenship digital resources helped us all to identify the differences between the Chinese and the UK definition of citizenship.
A whole day was devoted to a computer based activity written by Chris Warren focusing on a bicycle crash - a good subject for China. The teachers had to work out how the crash had happened and who was responsible by collaboration and co-operation. The computer provided various kinds of data and printouts to be investigated. We were prepared for reticence, but we found instead that the teachers who were keen to participate found the twists and turns in the plot exciting. It was a good time to remind the Chinese that it was Confucius who said, "I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand." Flood Alert! is the next computer activity to be planned.
In January Chinese teachers will be visiting Chafford Hundred Campus in Essex, Cheam School in Berkshire, Blue Gate Field School in East London's Domex region and Waldegrave Girls' School in Twickenham to set up Citizenship projects on the Internet. Ten UK teachers funded by the British Council will be visiting Beijing to develop citizenship projects in May (see the Mulan Web Page for more information).
All the Chinese teachers in the current project speak good English but we are experimenting with a website in two languages so that more Chinese can get involved. The power of the Internet is to give life and shape to communication between visits which is vital for success.
Zhang Tiedo, the Director of the BAES, is keen to see citizenship Internet projects developed between UK and Chinese schools as a strategy for breaking down cultural barriers and increasing global understanding. Perhaps this is a small step towards world peace between great nations.
Christina Preston
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