Learning to Fish
Wang, Dinghua, PhD of the Basic Education Department, Ministry of Education, PRC is telling us a story. "My daughter's math teacher told her that the new text book is terrible. 'Don't use this awful new book,' he said, 'I will tell you which book to buy in the store.'"
It is an extraordinary revelation. Wang is a key player in designing and implementing major reforms in China's education policy. He is in the midst of a presentation to us that describes in detail the problems with the Chinese system and how the new reforms are being modeled on the American system.
One of his slides reads in bold letters, WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM AMERICAN EDUCATION? Another reads simply, STUDENT LEARNING: active learning, interactive ability, hands-on ability, how to fish instead of giving fish. The last one refers, of course, to the adage "give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Put another way, "we don‚t teach students what to think, we teach them how."
As the enormity of the challenge to reform the educational system of a country of 1.3 billion is sinking in, I have asked him how well the country's teacher work force has done at adapting to these new reforms. "Has there been much resistance?" I have asked. As heads of schools charged with helping our respective schools stay on a healthy course of growth and development though external changes and internal reforms (the true charge of the head of any quality school today), this is a key question.
"About one fifth of the teachers have had some difficulty adapting to the new system," he begins. Then his face broadens into a smile and he tells us of his daughter's math teacher, who has received the new math text and is immediately dismissive of it. The teacher tells the daughter of the man largely responsible for the new math text that it is garbage.
An extraordinary moment in the midst of an extraordinary presentation. As school people with long experiences in different schools and with hundreds of teachers, we‚ve all known teachers like the math teacher of Wang's daughter (though thankfully, none at MPA!)
It is something of a self-deprecating moment in this unexpectedly honest and revealing presentation about the country's determined efforts to reform.
The presentation was not without reference to strengths in the Chinese system. Leverage the excellent cultural and educational traditions of China, read another slide on the reform process. So I asked if he would describe what he believes are the key strengths of their traditional system.
"The first is a kind of rural character training where students are helped to develop morally as well as intellectually and physically. Second, our curriculum is systematic and logical with each part building on the parts that came before. Third, there is an important emphasis on the teacher's role. Not to say that we are teacher centered, but we are also not student centered. Confucius said that teachers and students should benefit together."
But perhaps an equally important strength of the system is revealed in the very existence of this reform process, and that the ministry, at least according to Wang, is implementing reforms based on a critical self-examination
The ministry visit came after the visit to the "experimental middle school attached to the Beijing Normal University" and before the visits to the US Embassy and the central offices of HANBAN. More on those in a later posting.