Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Today was a great day to learn a lot more about Chinese education at the State, University and High School level.
To begin the day I went with Mrs. Guan to the Changchun Normal University. This university is ranked the third best education college in all of China. I met with Mrs. Guan’s husband, Dr. Liu. Dr. Liu is a professor at the university and is recognized throughout the country as a leading literature professor. We were given a tour of the university’s Chinese manuscript collection. This is not open to the public and I feel very fortunate to have been able to take part in this portion of the tour. The first document I saw was a one thousand year manuscript that was written during the Tang Dynasty. What a neat experience. We saw a number of other writings and books. Additionally we saw an actual cloth “order” written by an emperor that was used during one of the wars.
Next went to the Jilin Provincial Education Department. Dr. Sun Hejuan, Deputy Director, gave a wonderful presentation outlining the current status of education in this part of China. Some quick facts about the Jilin Province:
** The province covers 180,000 square miles
** There are 27 million people in this province
** In this province there are:
o 71 colleges/universities
o 660 high schools
o 1,020 middle schools
o 6,180 elementary schools
o 2,500 kindergartens
o 45 special schools
o 60 vocational schools
o 4.2 million school aged students
The province is known for its high educational productivity and their philosophy of educating the whole child: academics, arts, character, and fitness.
Dr. Sun also discussed China’s compulsory education, the provinces ten projects for education, educational strategies and interventions, the political system at the national, provincial and local levels and funding. The presentation and questions period lasted almost three hours. Following the mini-conference, we went to lunch and relaxed for a while. Dr. Lynn Reed, the superintendent of the Salem School district, represented Southeast Indiana.
After lunch Mrs. Song and Mrs. Guan took me to the school they both worked at not too long ago. The Second Experimental High School is the high school where many of the students of Mrs. Songs and Mrs. Guan middle school students feed into. Again, it is a large high school with around 4,800 students in grade ten through twelve. The campus is fairly large and we had a very nice presentation by their principal outlining the history of the school, its academic programs and her plans for continued success. The school was built in 1948. This high school is known for its programs in science, engineering and inventions and has had numerous students receive national and international awards (They also had a young lady win the equivalent of American Idol in the past couple of years). I met one young lady who had received a national science award for her work in using water and turning it into energy. I also toured their one of their labs. Another student showed his project to me about accelerators and brakes. Also in the room were a group of students that had some robotic demonstrations. I told them about our wonderful Mrs. King and the neat things she has her students do in the areas of robotics engineering. The school also has a distinguished list of graduates in the field of politics as well. The school makes a great of effort to recognize students performing well and the expectation is that students will rise to that level. There is a student mentoring and tutoring program and because of space, no students drive to school. They either walk or take public transportation. Like the middle school, each Monday they have a flag raising ceremony to pay respect to their country and build national pride.
The school has plans to expand and we met in a seven story academic building. The school has a new arts and fitness center which was very nice. The basketball team was practicing. Last year they took second place in a tournament in Hawaii. We took a quick picture and then they did a little dunking presentation. It would be neat for them to do a tour of southern Indiana and take on the SIAC teams. Mrs. Guan’s daughter, Bebe went to school here and as I have stated earlier, she is a PhD candidate in education in Beijing.
I enjoyed the presentation and tour a great deal.
Tomorrow I will be sitting in on a conference at the Second Experimental Middle School as well as visiting an elementary school
PUMA students, keep up the good work at school and remember to always to be helpful and polite.
