Education in China by Dr. Steve Jacobson, Professor of Educational Administration Volume 4, Issue 1 - Spring 2001 This past October, I led a delegation of 12 educational administrators (professors, school superintendents and principals) to the People's Republic of China for a two-week visit under the auspices of the People to People Ambassadors Program. The primary objectives of our delegation were to examine changing conceptions of educational leadership and new ways of preparing school leaders, particularly in light of a greater reliance on site-based management in the U.S. and China. In search of answers, we visited schools and universities in Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and Beijing. We met with ministry officials, professors of educational administration, principals and teachers. For example, during our stay in Shanghai, we met with government officials from the Xuhui District Education Bureau and then visited Weiyu Middle High School, one of Shanghai’s premier secondary schools. This residential school selects from among the most academically gifted students in Shanghai (a city of 13 million!), and then sends more than 95% of its graduates on to higher education. The school’s campus was comparable in size to a small liberal arts college and was exceptionally well appointed, especially in terms of its computer infrastructure. Next we traveled by rail to Suzhou, where we met with faculty and students from the education department at Suzhou University. ‘Students’ in administrator preparation programs China tend to be current principals who have had no prior management training. Instead, they are appointed to their position based upon their teaching experience and political connections. The need for principals in China to supplement their schools’ governmental allocations has made the role more demanding and entrepreneurial than ever. To that end, school administrators at every level of education are involved in business ventures and partnerships, and we learned about university-owned restaurants and a plastic factory owned by a Beijing secondary school. Our next stop was Nanjing. While there, we visited with faculty members from Nanjing University, one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in China. We also met officials from the Jiangsu Provincial Educational Research Institute. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the whole trip was the afternoon we spent at a primary school on a farming collective in Mochouhu District, about one hour outside of Nanjing. Each grade level, from grades one to five, had from fifty to sixty incredibly lively, but well-behaved, youngsters crammed into a small room with one teacher at the front of the class. The final stop of our trip was Beijing and visits to Beijing Normal University, Beijing Education Administration College and the Special Education College of Beijing Union University. This last stop was perhaps the most revealing because it was the first and only school we visited that served the needs of children with disabilities. The Special Education College provides very prescriptive vocational training for youngsters with hearing and visual impairments. Severe hearing-impaired children take courses in either advertising design or office automation, while youngsters with severe visual impairments are taught massage. From what we could gather, the provision of special education in China is of relatively recent origin and is probably an unintended consequence of that nation’s ‘one child’ policy of population control. Since families are encouraged to have no more than one child, it appears that parents who have a disabled youngster have become quite adamant about getting appropriate educational services. Our interactions with these teenagers and their teachers was both informative and moving. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the cultural and historic sites we visited in each of these cities. These included the Jade Buddha Temple, the Historical Museum and Yu Garden in Shanghai; the canals and the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou; the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, the old Ming City Wall, and the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing; and Tian’anmen Square, the Forbidden City and, of course, the Great Wall, while we were in Beijing. All in all, it was a wonderful learning experience. And, I should add, the food was great! Return to the International and Comparative Studies in Education Homepage |
