A Lecture on Chinese Education Reform

Looking at today on the schedule previewed that it was not to be a very fun day, with over six hours of class. However, it was as good as a day can be with actually more than seven hours of class time including a lecture. I am still struggling with my Chinese pronunciation and memorization of words and characters, but I am making some progress. We did have a very interesting lecture today by Dr. Zhang from Zhejiang University here in Hangzhou. She talked to us about the recent educational reforms here in China. She gave a very candid talk about the successes and the challenges of this reform. Basically China has been trying to move from a very authoritative style of teaching to a more student-centered model. The curriculum is almost entirely dictated by the national government, with input coming from some professors and other people along the way. But, this has been met with quite a bit of resistance from teachers, parents, and government officials. Also, the government has been trying to implement this very quickly, and on the cheap. It was very interesting to hear that a lot of the same troubles that the USA is having with education, China is experiencing also. The picture below is of Dr. Zhang at the beginning of her lecture.