Yan Hongli, a high school exchange student from Beijing, was at a
loss when her teacher sent her off on a class trip to a park by
handing her a lunchbox, a ticket into the park and a letter asking
for help in case she needed it along the way. In China, Yan
Hongli's experience was that on such a class trip students would be
under strict supervision and always with the teacher accompanying
them. This is just one example of the kind of educational culture
shock that can occur for Chinese who study abroad recorded in
Experience Growth A Report on the Youth Living in the World
Community, recently published by the Tianjing Educational
Publishing House.
Study-abroad is popular all over the world today. And Yan Hongli is
just one student who has experienced big differences in education
when traveling to a different country. Study-abroad gives an
opportunity -- for people of different families from different
cultures, different sub-cultures, or even from the same culture --
to live together. By encouraging students to live with their
counterparts from different regions and different countries, study
abroad helps them to truly experience what is different about
cultures, to enhance their understanding towards other
nationalities, and to realize the cultural characteristics of
different ethnicities and the common value of being human beings,
so as to help establish a healthy international relationship and a
harmonious relation among peoples from all over the world on the
basis of equality, harmony and co-existence.
To
explore the influence that multi-cultural experience has on a young
person, China Youth Research Center in March 2000 began its
research on those youth who have lived in the world community.
Based on this research project, the book entitled Experience
Growth A Report on the Youth Living in the World Community has
been completed with the contributions of many researchers.
From details like the voice teachers use when talking with their
students to the way other children use their pin money,
Experience Growth records the impact on primary and
middle-school students who participated in study abroad. Among
Chinese students, they were impressed by foreign children's
prudence and their strong sense of environmental protection. They
also were shocked when they came face to face with the active
class-teaching style of foreign teachers, as well as the way both
foreign teachers and parents seemed to treat students as their
equals. Chinese students also came to appreciate their own merits,
finding in comparison they were more united, energetic and
persevering in their studies.
According to Experience Growth Youth Live in the World
Community, what left the deepest impression on Chinese who
participated in this program was the respect for the individual's
development found in educational practices in foreign countries.
Many Chinese teachers noticed that during an outing, for instance,
foreign teachers never reprimand misbehaving students; Chinese
teachers also were surprised to find out that very few students
were regarded as stupid children, or silly children. Instead,
teachers were all striving to find a kind of teaching method to
serve different children. For instance, to help primary students
comprehend the meaning of "watering," a teacher gave students
several daffodil seeds, and asked them to bring back a daffodil
flower back to school after their careful tending of the seed.
These Chinese participants also noted the enthusiasm with which
foreign students threw themselves into a class project and the
innovative thinking resulting from teachers' enthusiastic and
encouraging teaching style. Students were not passive recipients,
but active participants who could express themselves freely and ask
questions on whatever they wanted to satisfy their curiosity.
Some experts, including Sun Xiaoyuan, think that the activity of
study abroad offers a kind of learning process for the young to
experience growing-up, and it will definitely play an active role
in encouraging them in their later lives to continue to seek and to
receive high-quality education.
(新華社 [Xinhua News Agency],
translated by Feng Shu for china.org.cn, April 16, 2002)