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Posts tagged ‘education’

Oct 26

justice-love-scales

How to build a good public life?


This is the 1510 Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published on the Chinese web, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.

This week’s digest brings together two recent pieces which, in different ways, show the influence of the Western cannon on Chinese intellectual life. In ‘How to build a good society’, Zhant Tianpan reviews professor Ren Junfeng’s book on civic virtue and civic government, itself based on a reading of Toqueville’s “Democracy in America”. In ‘Love and Justice’, Professor Chen Hongguo proposes a ‘reading list’ of nine key texts for thinking broadly about this topic, a majority of which reflect ‘universal’ European and American experience. Read more

Oct 18

flash mob

The year of the breastfeeding flash mob in China – a father’s account

This has been the year of the flash mob in China, the breastfeeding flash mob to be exact. In May, August and September of this year, Chinese mothers bared their breasts in public to help galvanize a tiny yet growing movement that encourages natural births over Caesarian sections and breastfeeding over infant formula. Read more

Oct 17

Xinkuai Bao 17 Oct 12

Children chained to a wall by parents working at Guangzhou construction site

What do you do when you have two children but no-one to look after them and not enough money to put them in kindergarten? The New Express Daily (新快报) from Guangdong has a picture on its front page today showing what happened when migrant worker parents in Guangzhou found themselves in this predicament: they chained their children chained to a wall at a construction site. Read more

Sep 29

Haixia Daobao 29 Sep 12

Nine out of ten high school students in Xiamen have bad eyesight

Kids in Xiamen are apparently some of the unhealthiest in China. As the Haixia Daobao (海峡导报) from Xiamen reports today, nine out of every ten children in Xiamen have eyesight problems, two out of ten are obese, and rates of malnutrition and tooth decay are higher than the national average. These are some of the findings that were revealed yesterday when the education department in Xiamen released a report entitled The Physical Health Situation for Primary and Secondary Schools in the 2011-12 Academic Year in Xiamen (2011至2012学年厦门市直属中小学及区属监测点校学生健康体检情况), which reported data for close to 65,000 students. Read more

Sep 21

no brainwash web

Against national education – reflections on the Hong Kong hunger strike

This is the Thinking China Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published on the Chinese web, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.

In the first week of September 2012, a group of high schools students from Hong Kong organised a public hunger strike to oppose new ‘national and moral education’ classes – dismissing them as a form of brainwash. More protesters joined them, including a 63 year old teacher, attracting considerable attention from Hong Kong citizens and the media. After ten days of protest, and hundreds of thousands of supporters attending a wide range of events, the government finally made concessions, proposing to no longer make these classes compulsory, but leaving schools to decide whether they should be implemented.

1510, in collaboration with the news website CoChina, published a special magazine issue on this event. This week’s post proposes to follow the course of events presented in that issue, and a text engaging the questions raised by mainland Chinese internet users regarding the events. Read more

Sep 11

Changjiang Ribao 11 Sep 12

In Wuhan, Huazhong University president encourages students with ‘free development’

“Fellow students, I, like you, desire to develop freely (自由发展)!” The front page of the Changjiang Daily (长江日报) from Wuhan in Hubei province today features the story of an emotional speech delivered by the president of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (华中科技大学) to the new class of students. Li Peigen (李培根), amicably known as Uncle Gen by the students, used the word ‘freedom’ 44 times in his speech yesterday to 2,300 new undergraduates, leading to vigorous discussions among the students. Read more

Sep 7

nankai school of Chinese language and culture

Education and critical thinking

This is the Thinking China Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published on the Chinese web, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.

This week’s post proposes to look at three recent articles exploring the connection between the Chinese education system and the development of critical thinking. Huang Yufeng compares the Chinese Gaokao with overseas examination systems, Zhang Tianpan denounces the manipulation of official data, and Fu Guoyong reflects on the purpose of education, looking back at the Chinese Republic. Read more

Sep 4

Chongqing Shangbao 4 Sep 12

No ‘puppy love’ allowed for outstanding students at Chongqing school

Chinese schools opened again yesterday after the summer holiday, yet as the front page of the Chongqing Shangbao (重庆商报) reports today, when high school students at the Bashu (巴蜀) Middle School in Chongqing arrived for class yesterday, they were confronted with an unexpected new development. In addition to the conventional graduation certificate, anyone desiring to be an “outstanding” student is now able to obtain a special certificate to that effect that is unique to Bashu Middle School – as long as they refrain from “puppy love.” Read more

Aug 30

Dushi Nubao 30 Aug 2012

Spurned mothers in desperate, suicidal stand-off for their kids’ education

The front page of City Lady (都市女报), a newspaper focused on women’s issues published in Jinan (济南), Shandong (山东) province, today features two stories on two controversial issues related to education. Read more

Jul 26

Laoganma (老干妈) best friend of Chinese students abroad. It renders barbarian food edible.

Advice for friends and family of Chinese students abroad

This is the latest posting on Danwei in a series about Chinese school life. It’s a translation of a popular posting on the social network Renren. Read more

Jul 22

Listen to Dad! Listen to Mom!

Teaching children to say no

This is the 1510 Digest, a weekly roundup of recent essays and articles published in Chinese on My1510.cn, with links to translations on the Marco Polo Project.

From ‘tiger mums’ to ‘little emperors’, contemporary family relations in China have given rise to many negative stereotypes. How should good Chinese parents bring up their children? What values and behaviours should be taught to the younger generation, to protect them as children, and allow them to grow into resilient, balanced and successful adults?

This week’s post proposes a selection of recent articles from 1510 on that topic.

Read more

Sep 5

san ba xian screenshot

Kuang Kuang and the 38th Parallel

Here is another episode of Kuang Kuang’s Diary, featuring Kuang Kuang, the primary school boy with a permanent bloody nose, and his girlfriend Xiao Hong.

This episode is called The 38th Parallel, a reference to the border between North and South Korea. In Chinese primary schools in the 1970s and 1980s, boys and girls who shared a desk would often draw a line down the middle of the desk and call it the 38th Parallel, meaning it was not to be crossed.

The 38th Parallel is presented here for the first time with English subtitles. Read more

Sep 2

Classroom
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Confessions of a Chinese graduate

An essay by Danwei staff writer Eric Mu. 

When I was a kid, university graduates were as rare as unicorns, now they are more like popcorn: cheap and plentiful. No big surprise, considering there are millions of fresh ones every year to join a large pool of millions of existing graduates. All are desperate for white-collar jobs that are not easy to come by in China’s manufacturing economy. The problem of university graduates finding jobs has been debated in the media for at least a decade as a difficult social issue and it never improves.

Read more

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