Why Learn about China?

A special tour for superintendents, curriculum coordinators and other educational leaders, July 31-August 14, 2004

Tour Leaders: Huajing Maske, Shiping Zheng, and Kathy Ennis

This was a tour for educational leaders wishing to gain a first hand experience of China. Participants visited three major cities: Beijing, center of government, Xi'an, center of ancient arts and culture, and Shanghai, the leading commercial center. Huajing Maske and Shiping Zheng both are accomplished scholars and seasoned travelers. They provided lectures on history and politics and on Chinese arts, as well as on-the-spot commentary that helped visitors place major sites in context.

Tour participants visited a school for children of migrant workers, practiced Tai Chi, toured the Great Wall, and made informal connections with Chinese people from many backgrounds.

A highlight of the trip was a visit to Pang Liu village, near Xi'an. Primary Source has a long standing relationship with Pang Liu, including sponsorship of a school and library. Village families welcomed our tour group into their homes, and provided an intimate look at daily life, work, and education in the community.

“China Journal,” from the Fall 2004 issue of Commonwealth Magazine

--by Paul Reville, Executive Director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC.

You would think that traveling with a 2-year-old would be enough to discourage trips halfway around the world. But when Primary Source, a regional professional development group, invited us on a two-week tour of China for “education leaders,” my wife and I jumped at the chance.

"Trip helps bring China into Shrewsbury classes"

--from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, Sept. 18, 2004:

School superintendents don't have the summer break that their students do, but Shrewsbury Superintendent Anthony J. Bent made time in August for some work-related travel to China....

Mr. Bent, a former Spanish teacher, said he decided to go because he realized that his own education had focused primarily on Western civilization, and he wanted to get a broader view....

The trip's goal was for educators to come back to the United States and raise awareness of China in their schools, Students typically learn about the country in elementary school and in their high school world civilizations class, he said, and learning about the country isn't just just knowledge for knowledge's sake, he said.

'Simply put,' for the stability of the world, we must care about China's slow progress toward democratization, and we must care that there is no way that the Chinese can ever reach the standard of living that we enjoy today in the way we enjoy it' because their population of 1.3 billion people is simply too big., Mr. Bent told district staff at the beginning of the year.

Mr. Bent said he will be a guest speaker in some Shrewsbury classes and plans to work on other activities with the Natick and Reading superintendents, who were also on the trip.

Mr. Bent will have several allies within the Shrewsbury schools as he tries to raise awareness, including high school teacher Amy W. O'Leary, who teaches about world civilizations. She went on a Primary Source trip to West Africa over the summer and has traveled to China three times on her own. She said she uses her travels to bring some life to lessons on Chinese history and culture and how it compares to other parts of the world.

'There's nothing like being a teacher and being able to wow kids' with a picture from halfway around the world, she said. Her class raised $100 to send with Mr. Bent for the school in Pangliu, and she has started a partnership with a school in Ghana....

Jerrold I. Katz, Head of School at the Park School, Brookline, Massachusetts, offered the following commentary on the trip:

With a group of 24 Boston-area teachers and school leaders, we visited Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Besides visits to all the major sights, our tour included access to behind-the scenes museum artifacts, a number of school visits and conversations with Chinese students and educators, and contexts for open discussion about the trade-offs associated with China's rapid development....

We visited 'elite' secondary schools where 98% of students go on to universities and found the average class size to be 60. Students at these schools are present from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (with a three-hour mid-day study period) six days per week for 40 weeks per year. Every student we met appeared to be highly motivated but talked openly about being under tremendous pressure. Every student we met attributed success to hard work and failure to the need to work harder. All students in urban schools begin to study English as early as first grade. heads of schools discussed their desire to encourage teachers to invest in more professional development and to experiment with new methodology. they are eager to integrate "top-down" standards with more "bottom-up" decision-making. they expressed concern about achieving a far better balance between students' skills and their ability to think creatively and to solve problems cooperatively. the fastest route to change appears to be sending Chinese students and/or teachers for a year of experience at schools in the United States....

Grade eight students at Park [School] spend a full year studying the history, culture, and development of China in social studies. I came away from this visit with a strengthened sense of the extent to which both competionon and cooperation between the U.S. and China are likely to expand during their lifetimes.

--The Park Parent, Oct. 2004