Tuesday, April 15, 2010
Today we spent the morning at Beijing Normal University. This is a teacher’s preparation college with an enrolment of over 20,000 students and is recognized as the number one university in China for teacher preparation. Mrs. Guan’s daughter, Bebe is currently a Doctoral student at this university.
Dr. Wang Ying Jie, a past vice president of the university and currently a professor, today delivered our presentation. Dr. Wang delivered an exhaustive report on the many changes that have occurred in China and the impact those changes have had on education. He also discussed in-depth challenges facing educators as China continues to evolve as a society.
Some of the challenges facing China regarding education include:
1- The question of whether schools should stress more on the concept of knowledge transmission or the learning of new skills
2- The dilemma of migrating students (in today’s China Daily newspaper there was an article alluding to this)
3- The rural/city classification system of citizens
4- Distribution of resources in an equitable fashion
5- The demands of education due to social or geographical situations
6- The transformation of China from a “closed” to “open” society
The presentation was very informative and there was quite a bit more than I have listed that I will share when I get back to the States.
In the afternoon we went to visit the Hutong area of Beijing. This area is centuries old and is noted the very narrow streets people traveled on centuries ago. Beijing had many areas like this but with the tremendous construction boom over the past 20 years, much of those areas have been torn down. While we were there, we ate in one of the villager’s homes. The homes are very tiny, much like the village homes of Xian City that we went to last week. The home we ate in was three hundred years old and the family living there has had family members in the house for over 150 years!
We also went to the Pearl Market and learned about the different types of pearls, where they come from throughout the world, how to tell quality pearls and how the elements of water affect their purity. It was very interesting to say the least.
PUMA students, good luck to you as you prepare for ISTEP beginning on April 27. Follow the Simple Six daily do your best in all you do!
