K12 China's Department of Education
Chinese Department of Education Failure
2015 More than 130 million people have graduated from vocational schools and colleges in China since a
law
on vocational education was promulgated in September 1996, according to a report delivered by the top
legislator on Monday. In 2014, there were about 18 million students in secondary vocational schools,
compared with 12.7 million in 1996, he said. The number of students enrolled at vocational colleges stood
at
10 million last year, an increase from 1.23 million in 1996. Zhang said vocational schools and
colleges were the main training ground for technical workers.
According to the report, the annual investment surged from 114.1 billion yuan (18.4 billion U.S. dollars)
in
2006 to 345 billion yuan in 2013, posting an average increase of 17 percent annually. A project initiated
in
2009 to exempt students of secondary vocational schools from tuition has benefited 34.6 million people, it
said. Over the 19 years, a proficiency evaluation system has also been established, with five levels
ranging
from beginner, intermediate worker, to senior technician. The report showed that more than 200 million
people had participated in evaluations of vocational skills by the end of 2014, with about 160 million
obtaining certificates. Among the certificate holders, about 1.47 million were senior technicians, the
most
skilled workers, and some six million were technicians. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/29/c_134366144.htm
Reports on Rural China from Shanghai by Maizi Translated by Cathy Song
Here's a question I pose for my white collar friends: what if I never graduated from middle school,
and
had become a migrant worker? Would you sit down for a cup of coffee with me at Starbucks? The answer,
unequivocally, is that youwouldn't. That is simply not a possibility. If we compared our experiences
growing up, you will find that for the things that you take for granted, I have sacrificed and exerted
huge
amounts of efforts to acquire.
From the moment I was born, our life's path swerved away from each other. I was given a rural resident
card while you got a city one. If I grew up keeping my rural residence, I wouldn't be able to work in
the city today. I would also be denied social security, and proper medical care. You might ask: “Why must
you come to the city? Isn't the country good enough? The air is fresh, and it's never crowded.”
But
the country has no proper healthcare system. During the SARs scare our country seemed to “suddenly”
realize
that its rural healthcare was completely defunct. Plus, we have a very small consumer market. Because
farmers make very little money and can't afford much, companies refuse to distribute products in our
areas. During the New Year only a tiny percent of families can afford the color T.V to watch the New
Year's broadcast. The majority of families are still fighting for their basic survival. This is why I
want to be in the city. For the object you were simply born with, this city resident card, I have had to
fight and struggle.
College was the only way out of rural China. I needed to work very hard to graduate from elementary
school,
to be accepted into a middle and high school. I was a lone traveler on a narrow and precarious bridge
above
a deep valley, and while I was on it, I watched my friends and classmates fall one by one. Meanwhile, the
road ahead of me became increasingly narrow. Should I have been happy or worried? Because of fierce
competition, I was terrified that any misstep might drag me off course. Apart from studying, I was never
able to have a hobby or partake in extra-curriculars, not that the school ever offered any opportunities.
On
the first day in high school, our principal told us that we had only one goal during those three years-
Gao Kao.(college entrance exam) So, during that time, I woke up at 5:30 every morning, and went
to
bed at 11:00 PM. During holidays, I was memorizing test questions.
For you, there is no question that you'll graduate elementary school and go onward to middle and high
school. The competition isn't that fierce, and your homework load isn't that heavy. You can take
the
time to develop a hobby, to read the books you want, to play basketball, to take excursions to the
countryside to enjoy its blue skies. If you don't want to work so hard for Gao Kao, and your grades
aren't atrocious, you can opt for a school who's willing to recruit you without test scores. And
even if your scores are indeed atrocious, a third tier university will still accept you. Meanwhile, I have
to earn exceptionally high marks to get into that same third tier university, since universities demand
more
from out-of-state students.
We take the same test. The minimum score requirements for you and me are not the same. But once we're
accepted, our tuition fees are again the same. Every person pays 6000 RMB per year - that's for
tuition
only, which comes out as 24,000 RMB for all four years. Housing (1500 RMB), and books (1000 RMB) add up to
around 4000 RMB - and I'm only talking about eating cafeteria food the entire time. Four years of
college comes down to 50,000 RMB. In 2003, a university in Shanghai announced that it was raising its
annual
tuition to 10,000 RMB due to the “campus renovation” That means 40,000 RMB for four years of tuition
alone.
Count in living and text book costs and a university education adds up to 66,000 RMB. For families who
live
in the city, 66,000 RMB isn't much. For a rural family, 66,000 RMB is a life time's worth of
savings. I come from a coastal province that has been getting steady foreign investment. We were better
off
compared to some inner provinces, but still, after a year of hard labor, we were hard pressed to save
much.
A family of four who consume only the very basics can save 3000 RMB each year. That means to send one
child
to a four year college at 66,000 RMB a family needs to save for 22 years. That's assuming that no one
gets sick. It also means that no matter how talented the second child is the family must still deprive him
or her from attending college since they can only afford to send one.
I was lucky compared to others. By throwing together all the funds we had, and by taking out student
loans,
I was finally able to pay my first year of tuition. Meanwhile, I watched those students who'd been
accepted and the heartbreak their families experienced for being unable to send them to school. I felt a
pervasive sense of wrongness. Our education industry nowadays don't only recruit the best students,
they
recruit the students with the richest parents.
But, finally I found myself on a University campus! I worked hard and earned a scholarship. During the
holidays, I worked to save spending money. I couldn't bear asking my parents for money. Every cent
they
made was an exchange of their sweat. That money was sweat money, blood money.
Upon coming to Shanghai, I realized that compared to my classmates, I was green beyond belief. I
couldn't draw, couldn't play an instrument, didn't know who the hottest pop stars were, had
never read a best selling novel, didn't know what an MP3 was, didn't even know what a Walkman was.
To understand what our management professor was lecturing about during his class on “Warehouse style
supermarkets” like Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, I spent a day at “McDonalds” watching with astonishment.
I'd never seen so much stuff.
I'd never touched a computer, so I spent half a year sitting in a computer lab learning the skills
you'd learned in high school. My English is the English spoken by a deaf or a mute person. Neither
westerners nor Chinese people can understand what I'm saying. But that wasn't my fault. There were
never any foreign teachers in my village. When teachers don't even know the language, how can they
possibly teach students to speak? With a poor foundation, I spent an entire year correcting my
pronunciation. I admired city students for how talented they were, how much they knew. I only knew how to
study. I'd only known studying, test taking, graduating, because only by getting into college could I
study amongst you and become a part of you. Everything had to be geared and pointed towards this
goal.
I could bear the mockery of my classmates, could go weeks without eating any meat, could spend my entire
weekend cooped up in a library, could come back from studying on the weekend to see boys and girls
dancing,
could go running at the deep of the night out of loneliness and boredom. I dreamt that one day I would
graduate, and find a job in the city. I wanted to work with the city-dwellers of my generation, and like
them, to become a city resident. I wanted my parents to be proud because they had a son working in
Shanghai!
Finally, I graduated. Finding a job in Shanghai was hard, but going back to the village was not an option.
The average salary for our class was 2000RMB per month. Perhaps you think that 2000RMB is an adequate
salary, but I still needed to pay for rent, to pay for utilities, to pay back my student loans, and to
send
money home to put my brother and sister through school. What was left, I used for food. After all of this,
I
still couldn't join you for a coffee at Starbucks!
Since that time I've earned a master's degree, and currently live in Shanghai where my annual
salary
is 80,000 RMB. I fought for eighteen years, and can finally sit down with you for a cup of coffee. I'm
now a resident in this big, international city, and I'm no different from the white collar workers
here.
However, I can never forget the struggles my family and I went through. I can never forget my classmates
who
will never see their dreams come true. For this reason, I've written this in the first person. What
I've written is nothing special. It's the typical tale of those who come from rural China. Every
time I see a student who's been dealt same hand I got, I feel a heavy sense of responsibility.
I didn't write this to complain. The terrifying thing isn't that justice is relative. The
terrifying
thing is to witness injustice and to act as if one sees nothing. While I was getting my masters, I once
had
a conversation with a girl who at the time had 3 years of work experience under her belt. She is now the
HR
director of a joint stock company. We were talking about a marketing strategy for Weida's paper
industry. Her idea was to carve out a new market by advertising Weida's high quality dinner napkins to
China's nine hundred million farmers. Surprised by her cocksureness, I asked her if she knew how
farmers
wipe their mouths after each meal. She returned my question with a misgiving look. I raised my hand and
wiped my mouth on my sleeve. She looked at my graceless action with contempt.
During a macro-economics class, a classmate attacked blue collar workers who'd been laid off, and
unemployed high school dropouts: “80% of them are where they are because they don't work hard. They
chose not to specialize in something when they were young, so they can't get jobs now! Those kids are
perfectly capable of studying and working. I've heard that a lot of students use their holidays to
make
thousands to pay their tuition.” You can't find a person who knows less about the struggles of rural
China than this classmate of mine.
I was born during the 70s. People my age are starting to become leaders and our actions affect the social
and economic development. I wrote this essay for the young people who grew up in well-heeled communities,
and for those who grew up struggling but have since forgotten. Pay attention to the classes beneath you.
For
this world to be fairer, we need to do what we can for others, to be aware that social responsibility
warrants a permanent place in our thoughts and actions.
Bucking Cultural Norms, Asia Tries Liberal Arts
On a recent fall morning, students filed into a classroom at Sun Yat-sen University, whose leafy main
campus
hugs the banks of the south-winding Pearl River.
Indeed, these students, some of the university's best, are studying not just Latin but ancient Greek
and
Chinese. Also, literature, art, and the classic texts of Eastern and Western philosophy, all part of a
young
liberal-arts program, now in its third year, known as the Boya College.
Sun Yat-sen's East-meets-West curriculum is distinctive, but its embrace of liberal
education--education
across disciplines, meant to provoke broad thinking--is far from unusual. At a time when China and its
East
Asian neighbors are trouncing U.S. students on international exams, educators in these countries are
nonetheless adopting, and adapting, that quintessentially American approach to learning.
Some of the top institutions in the region, like Sun Yat-sen and Taiwan's Tunghai University, are
setting up selective liberal-education programs. Advice from Steve Jobs to Graduating Seniors
In South Korea, a declaration by the late Apple chief Steve Jobs that equal parts liberal
learning
and technological know-how were critical to the computer giant's success has kindled interest in the
humanities. This coming fall, all university students in Hong Kong will be required to take a
new, fourth year of general-education courses.
These undergraduate-education reforms, promoted by government officials and business leaders as well as
educators, stem from a basic economic calculus: The countries' current educational systems
have
produced stellar test takers but few innovators and inventors. Exams, says Edmond I. Ko, an
American-educated professor of engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and a
former member of the territory's powerful University Grants Committee, "don't measure the
kind
of student we want to educate."
The global economy is placing new demands on international hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore and opening
up
China's once-closed markets to overseas investment. Not only do new hires in these places have to
collaborate with counterparts around the globe, they're also competing for jobs. And they're not faring well, dinged for inflexible thinking, inability to work in
teams, and lack of creativity. A survey of Hong Kong employers rated local graduates far inferior
to those educated abroad. In mainland China, more than one in 10 graduates have yet to find a job a year
later, even in a booming economy.
Casting their eyes West, reformers have latched onto American-style liberal, or
general, education as a way to foster more nimble and adaptable thinkers. "These countries realize
that, in order to become a global leader, you need a creative class," says Gerard A.
Postiglione, an education professor at the University of Hong Kong.
Some take a canonical Great Books approach, others emphasize interdisciplinarity, while still others are a
hodgepodge of courses in public speaking, foreign languages, and computer literacy--in short, anything
outside major requirements.
Curriculum is just one of many challenges raised by the push toward liberal education. How do you develop
new courses with faculty brought up within the very system they are trying to change? How do you deal with
resistance from parents who fear that studying literature or anthropology will distract from job
preparation?
More fundamentally, is the very notion of liberal education compatible with China's
Communist government, or Japan's emphasis on hierarchy, or, more broadly, regional norms that
prize
group cohesion over the development of the individual? Is it possible, or even
appropriate, to graft a Western approach to learning onto a markedly different culture?
The question of how to marry East and West is thrown into particular relief at Sun Yat-sen, where Boya
students read Confucius and Plato, Xun Zi and Jacques Derrida. But Gan Yang, Boya's founding dean and
head of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, argues that the notion of the
broadly educated leader goes back millennia in Chinese culture. After all, ancient Mandarin civil servants
didn't study public administration but were tutored in music, art, and philosophy.
As recently as the first half of the 20th century, in fact, Chinese educators like Mei Yiqi, a
prominent president of Tsinghua University, emphasized the importance of the well-rounded graduate. That
changed with the Communist takeover. Top comprehensive institutions like Tsinghua became
polytechnics focused on producing engineers and scientists needed to industrialize and modernize the
national economy. Then, beginning in the mid-1960s, universities across the country were closed
for
a decade, casualties of the Cultural Revolution. Mr. Gan recalls his father, a scientist shut
out
of his laboratory, spending much of his time reading, exposing his son to the richness of the
humanities.
Elsewhere, the turn toward specialized education was less sharp but still profound. Onetime
British
colonies like Singapore and Hong Kong inherited that country's higher-education system, where
university students "read" a single subject, rather than take courses across a range of
disciplines. In China's reopened universities, college curricula slowly began to expand in
the 1990s. In addition to compulsory courses in political ideology, physical education, and English
language, several dozen top universities were designated by the government to offer wenhua suzhi
jiaoyu, or cultural quality education. The term denotes electives and extracurricular
activities
meant to give students a more wide-ranging educational experience and to cultivate the whole person, says
Cao Li, deputy director of liberal education at Tsinghua.
At Zhejiang University, on China's east coast, students study history, culture, and economics.
Huazhong
University of Science and Technology runs a popular lecture series in the humanities, bringing in
international scholars and political figures. A 10-year plan, approved by the Chinese cabinet in 2010,
calls
for introducing more students to critical thinking and learning across disciplines.
Still, undergraduate education remains fairly rigid: Except at a few
high-ranked universities, students choose their majors before they even set foot on campus, selecting from
a
list of more than 600 specialities.
In Hong Kong, where government scholarships cover the cost of higher education, the University Grants Committee sets the number of students who can study each subject based on job projections; those whose scores on the high-school exit exam aren't good enough to earn them a place in popular disciplines may find themselves studying their second choice-- or third or fourth.
Once on campus, students' courses are highly proscribed, and numerous. Brian P. Coppola, a
professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, recently returned from a year
teaching
at Peking University. He was shocked to learn, he says, that his organic-chemistry students were
enrolled
in as many as nine classes a semester and would take 45 courses and labs in chemistry alone by
graduation.
Michigan chemistry majors, by contrast, are required to take 15 courses in the field.
Students' schedules are so packed, Mr. Coppola says, few have time for nonrequired courses or even to
attend office hours. "They barely have time to think," he says.
Tang Heyu, a cheerful, ponytailed 20-year-old who goes by Ivy, says she has far fewer classes in her
studies
at Boya College than do other Sun Yat-sen students, just five or six a semester. Instead, she spends eight
hours a day or more in study groups or working in the library, where she struggles through original texts,
essays, and criticism, much of it not in her native Chinese. Like many of her Boya College classmates, she
hopes to go on to earn a graduate degree.
"Our professors don't mean to tell us knowledge. They mean to encourage us to find it out for
ourselves," Ms. Tang says, on break from yet another marathon study session. She marvels at the
number
of papers and commentaries on major philosophers like Socrates. "I sometimes feel I will not be able
to
get to all of the books," she says.
The situation was much different at Ms. Tang's high school in Mianyang, in Sichuan Province, where she
says she spent most of her time learning how to do well on China's national
college-entrance test, known as the gao kao. "I think learning in high school isn't
really
learning," she says.
Indeed, the tendency toward narrow education begins long before university. High-school students in China
and elsewhere are channeled into set academic tracks, in the sciences and the humanities, and much of the
curriculum focuses on subjects and skills measured by the all-important college
entry exam, which determines whether, and where, a student will earn university admission.
The winnowing, in fact, starts still earlier. In China, students seeking to go to
top high schools must pass the zhong kao, an admissions test.
THE TIGER MOM
Some of those parents have gathered around a crowded lunchroom table another morning at Peking University
High School. Their children are enrolled in the school's fledgling international division, which is
set
up as a liberal-arts high school with small classes, group discussion, and course offerings like drama and
journalism. Guo Li-ping is a professor at Peking University, where she sees her undergraduates struggle to
think critically. She wanted something different than the "burden of getting high marks" for her
son, Yang Daocun, or Darren, a 16-year-old with a Justin Bieber mop-top. Since enrolling at the high
school
a year and a half ago, Darren has become "happier and motivated to learn" and, Ms. Guo says
approvingly, has formed his own band. Mr. Jiang, the high school's deputy principal and director of
the
international division, Alma mater, is Yale University. Mr. Jiang says
it's important to make learning relevant: "That's why when we read a book like 1984, we try
to
draw a connection to their lives, their society." That would be unthinkable, he admits, in most
Chinese
classrooms, but he thinks there are enough parents fed up with the current system to pay a tuition of
about
$12,700. Just 43 students are enrolled in his program now, but the high school is building a gleaming new
building that can accommodate nearly 10 times as many.
All of Mr. Jiang's students, however, plan to go abroad for college.
While he says he sees some reforms at regular Chinese high schools--including more arts and physical
education, a greater emphasis on group work, and an explosion of student clubs--
he dismisses the idea that a liberal education could work for students who stay within the
Chinese
education system. "I believe that a liberal-arts approach to education and standardized testing are
in contrast with each other, and so I don't think it would be feasible," he says. A mainstream
school, he adds, "is nothing more than a test-prep center."
Incorporating liberal education into the existing system is exactly what Hong Kong is attempting. In the
fall of 2009, every high school began teaching a mandatory subject known as liberal studies, part of a
top-to-bottom effort to expose students to the humanities and general education. This fall, the final
phase
of reform will hit Hong Kong's universities.
Students in Bruno Li's class at St. Clare's Girls' School leap to attention when visitors
enter,
standing smartly beside their desks in tidy white dresses and red-buttoned pinafores. "Go-od
morn-ing," they chant in unison.
Liberal studies, which comprises about 10 percent of total lesson time, has multiple goals, whispers James
Yiu, a chief curriculum-development officer for the Hong Kong Education Bureau, who is sitting in on the
class. It is meant to increase students' awareness of their society and the world, to broaden their
knowledge base and expose them to differing perspectives, and to enhance their critical-thinking skills.
Last year, the government handed out grants of more than $41,000, to help schools build their
liberal-studies programs.
As part of the day's lesson, Mr. Li is showing the students snippets of a news documentary on the
demolition of the historic Star Ferry terminal on Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour. The pier was pulled
down
five years earlier, before many of these 14- and 15-year-olds can remember, and between segments of the
film, which features interviews with conservation activists, urban planners, and environmentalists, he
asks
the girls to go to the chalkboard and mark whether or not they support the destruction. They do,
giggling.
At first, nearly all the students indicate they favor the tear-down, no surprise in a city in which new
construction alters the skyline almost daily. But as they hear arguments about the environmental impact
and
the pier's historic significance, many change their vote. This pleases Mr. Yiu. "In almost every
lesson," he says, "we're trying to get them to see issues from multiple
perspectives."
Mr. Li leads the class smoothly through a discussion of conflict and compromise, but later, over tea and
cake, he admits that adjusting to the new coursework hasn't been easy. There are no textbooks, and
teachers, pulled from different disciplines, have struggled to master the subject matter. Mr. Li, whose
background is in biology, regularly exchanges tips and lesson plans with other St. Clare's faculty and
is also working with Mr. Yiu's agency on training materials and workshops for teachers throughout Hong
Kong. "We have had to learn new skills," he says.
If teachers are uneasy, students and parents appear even more so. More than half the students surveyed by
a
Hong Kong education-policy group said they were not confident of doing well in liberal studies. Parents
have
thronged question-and-answer sessions hosted by the Education Bureau and by individual schools; one
cornered
Mr. Yiu the previous weekend at a wedding banquet. The source of much of the anxiety? How new questions
about liberal studies will affect students' scores on the high-school exit exam.
Uncertainty about Hong Kong's liberal-education reform, and about the coming changes in the
undergraduate curriculum, have helped drive up applications to British universities by more than 35
percent.
It's understandable in a culture where a university degree is viewed as the final step in a path
toward
a career and where children are expected to provide for their parents in old age. Students and parents
suspicious about liberal education cite fears about job prospects, yet it's business leaders who are
among the loudest voices for reform.
Jim Leininger is with the Beijing office of the human-resources-consulting firm Towers Watson. He recalls
one American oil executive frustrated by the lack of participation by Chinese employees in brainstorming sessions [groupthink]. These workers are
uncomfortable
shouting out possible solutions, Mr. Leininger told the man, because they were educated in a system where
"there always is a context where something is right and something is wrong."
It's not just multinational companies that express concern about
graduates'
readiness for a global work environment. Executives at Japanese companies complain about
graduates' poor critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. "People know their own field, but
once they're outside it, they don't know where to start," says Keiko Momii, who conducted an
employer survey for the country's National Institute for Educational Policy Research. That was fine,
she
says, when companies hired for life, but today's employees need to be able to
shift jobs and careers.
Po Chung is a co-founder and former chairman of the global shipping company DHL International. From his
office above the polished office towers of Hong Kong's Wan Chai district, Mr. Chung, who hums with
barely contained energy, criticizes the current education system as out of step with the market demands.
Why are Hong Kong universities turning out graduates for a manufacturing economy,
he
asks, when more than 90 percent of the jobs are in the service sector? He enumerates the
qualities
a well-rounded worker needs to have, such as the capacity to be a lifelong learner.
"Business people would say there's something missing" in current graduates, Mr. Chung says.
"We can train skill, but we need to hire something more." If Hong Kong can revamp its
educational
system, he predicts, it can serve as a critical bridge between a booming China and the rest of the
world.
To help make that happen, Mr. Chung, who attended Whittier College and Humboldt State University, both in
California, has brought more than two dozen American academics with liberal-arts
expertise to act as in-house advisers to Hong Kong universities, through his support of a special
Fulbright Grant program.
In addition to the Fulbrighters, American and expat professors populate academic leadership
positions: The provost at City University of Hong Kong and the vice president for academic development
at
Hong Kong Polytechnic University are both hires from the University of California system. Haydn
H.D. Chen, who spent more than two decades at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has
emphasized
liberal education at Tunghai University, in Taiwan, since becoming president in 2004. The National University of Singapore has turned to Yale faculty to help start the
nation-state's first residential liberal-arts college.
David Jaffee didn't know much about Hong Kong when he came to spend a Fulbright year at City
University,
but as a former assistant vice president for undergraduate studies at the University of North Florida, he
does know a lot about the liberal arts. Like others in the program, Mr. Jaffee, a professor of sociology,
organized faculty-development sessions at Hong Kong's eight universities and helped City University
vet
its general-education course proposals. In many ways, he walked away from the experience impressed.
"We
tinker with general education all the time here, but they were doing it from the ground up," he says,
by phone from Florida. At the same time, he became concerned that a lack of familiarity with the tenets of
liberal education was leading some institutions and faculty members to construe it very broadly. Mr.
Jaffee
recalls a proposal for a course in computer security. As a straightforward primer on the subject, he
thought
it should not qualify as general education because it didn't delve into
wider social and philosophical issues like the effect of online piracy on concepts of privacy. But others
on
the curriculum panel did not have such objections: "They'd say,
'It's general knowledge that people should have. It's in a discipline not students'
own.'" At Hong Kong Poly, meanwhile, general education will have a decidedly
practical flavor, with requirements in public speaking, writing, and leadership and interpersonal
skills.
As a largely engineering and science-oriented university, Poly has historically
had
few faculty members in the humanities, points out Walter W. Yuen, the vice president for academic
development. Other offerings are more interdisciplinary. A philosopher, a biologist, and a mechanical
engineer at City University, for example, have teamed up to offer a course on the science of kung fu. At
the
University of Hong Kong, students can choose among courses such as "Blood, Beliefs, and
Biology,"
"Cultural Heritages in the Contemporary World," and "Love, Marriage, and Sex in Modern
China."
At Hong Kong Baptist University, for instance, the new director of general education, A. Reza Höshmand,
inherited an unmanageable 235 approved general-education courses. That hasn't always been the case.
Efforts to create liberal-education programs or colleges at China's top institutions have not been
universally supported by faculty, who worry that the liberal-education program could siphon resources or
lead to changes, both in instruction and structure, in their own departments. "In principle, everyone
says it's a beautiful thing, but when you put it into practice you meet many, many barriers,"
says
Cao Li of Tsinghua. "It is something added to the curriculum, like an appendage."
Others are not convinced that undergraduate-education reform is the way to go. Xudong Gao, vice director
for
the Research Center for Technological Innovation at Tsinghua, argues for new curricular models at the
graduate level. Earlier stages of study, he says, are more suited for teaching fundamentals and for
knowledge transfer.
Mr. Wu, a young professor at Boya College, stands awkwardly in front a computer screen, projecting
fragments
of text onto the wall behind him. Once he gets started, however, he speaks fluidly, even energetically,
about shifts in the philosophical traditions between the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties. But only
occasionally does he pause during the 100-minute lecture to allow a student to murmur a question or
comment.
While most in the class of 20 sit alertly, in a corner, one puts her head down and naps.
Lecturing without discussion is an anathema to many American scholars of the
liberal
arts. "What are they going to do, have the professor tell the students how to think
critically?" says Kathryn Mohrman, only half joking. But given the long history of
teacher-centered learning in Asia, it may not be realistic to expect academics there to fully
embrace the seminar-style give and take that is a hallmark of U.S. classrooms, says Ms. Mohrman, director
of
the University Design Consortium at Arizona State University and an author of a forthcoming essay on
general
education in China. "Maybe the pedagogical style doesn't move as far."
It's not just professors who have bought into this more passive approach. "Students think if a
teacher is not lecturing, they're not doing their job," says Jing Lin, a University of Maryland
professor who is working on a project to introduce more participatory styles of learning at Chinese
universities. It can be slow going. During a new general-education course at Hong Kong Poly, a lecturer
asks
for volunteers to enact a scene in which they demonstrate empathy, part of a lesson on social competence.
There are no takers. "I've talked quite a bit," the lecturer, Allen Dorcas, prods, "and
even if you're not tired of listening, I'm tired of talking." Finally, a pair of students are
persuaded to perform a brief skit in which one consoles the other after his mother's death. Lynn Ilon,
a
professor of education at Seoul National University, says many of her students are sharp,
sophisticated thinkers; it's just that they have not been encouraged to speak out. "When
they're given permission, they're incredibly creative," she says.
This raises the question: Can a Western-style educational approach work in a more-closed
system
like China's?
Can one educate liberally in a society that's anything but? Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, expresses a fair amount of skepticism that liberal education will sweep Asia. It's a way of thinking, not just a "patch" to be superimposed on an existing system, she says. "It's not just adding the humanities and stirring." For those who find Asia's infatuation with liberal arts misguided, this hodgepodge approach is indicative of the field's inherent weaknesses. Sin-Ming Shaw, a Hong Kong investor and economist, who has been a visiting scholar at a number of Western universities, including Harvard and Oxford, decries the reform efforts as "me-too liberal education, American style. Pretty mindless." "I have serious doubts about the value of a liberal education, especially when no one really knows how to define what it is," he says. But Delia Lin, a Chinese-born lecturer in Asian studies at the University of Adelaide, in Australia, says confusion about the reforms stems from a fundamental misconception. Asians might talk about "liberal education," but "they're just borrowing the brand."
To Westerners, it means creativity, critical inquiry, and self-examination. But in the East, Confucian tradition seeks to cultivate a good, knowledgeable, thoughtful individual, one who serves society and community.
The purpose of general education at Harvard, she says, is to "cultivate the whole person," while a Yuanpei education is "mainly about how to meet the demands of the society." "It's shaped by its context, by the needs of China," Ms. Wang says.
Harkening back to ancient Mandarin roots, many of the experiments are unapologetically aimed at elites:
The 400 students in Tunghai's Po-Ya School of Liberal Arts live in a separate dormitory, have faculty
mentors, and are enrolled in special courses and cultural programs like calligraphy, music, and fine arts.
At Tsinghua, small groups of engineering and management students, just a couple of dozen apiece,
participate
in gifted-education programs that combine the humanities with their major curriculum. The Boya College
selects 30 top students a year, plucking them from the pool of roughly 8,000 incoming freshmen through an
extensive interview process. Not only do the liberal-arts students have to master English, Greek, and
Latin,
but the archaic Chinese texts even tripped up a native-speaking translator.
To be sure, there are efforts to make sure all students get a taste of general education--beginning next
year, all Sun Yat-sen undergraduates will have to take a selection of interdisciplinary electives--but
such
projects require funds and faculty expertise, something in short supply in provincial or poorer
universities. The result could be a two-track system, says Kathryn Mohrman of Arizona
State. At some institutions, the reforms may be "more form than substance," says Ms. Mohrman,
who
was director of the Johns Hopkins University's Nanjing center.
"A few liberal-arts classes in college are not going to make you blossom into a critical thinker." What will it take for reforms to truly take hold? Japan, after all, has been flirting with liberal education since just after World War II, when it was introduced by American universities; such efforts have amounted to little. Universities in the region have gained international prominence for research, not teaching.
In South Korea, educators and business leaders talk about the need for more innovative graduates, "but at this stage," says Lee Seongho, a professor of education at Chung-Ang University, "it's a gesture at best." The Western liberal-arts tradition can't, and shouldn't be easily adopted by Asian universities, many say. "We have to look to the student who comes to us," says Xu Ningsheng, Sun Yat-sen's president. "If we only copy from the U.S., I don't think it will fit." In the end, the efforts to reform undergraduate education, while importing what educators in the region see as the best of the West, are likely to look unmistakably Eastern. ~ Karin Fischer