State of education
and special education: ChinaBy: Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., Educational Therapist, Learning Disabilities Specialist
An overview from the Reading
Education Delegation Oct, 2000.
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed., Auburn Educational Therapist and owner of Bonnie Terry
Learning Center, was invited to be a member of a Reading Education Delegation
that traveled to the Peoples's Republic of China to meet with Chinese educators.
The delegation was formed at the request of the Ministry of Education of the
Chinese Government. Their goal was to further their knowledge of reading techniques
that have the students interacting and thinking more than just learning by rote.
Spurred by media exposure and new trade agreement with the West, the Chinese
are becoming increasingly aware and interested in the ways of English-speaking,
democratic cultures. The Chinese have realized that teaching reading, writing,
English communication, and above all, teaching their young people to think creatively
is imperative to their economic progress. Education in China is unique
in many ways. Compulsory education is a relatively new concept in China. In
fact, it was 1986 before a bill was passed to require 9 years of compulsory
education in China (1st through 9th grades). Until 1993, all of the curriculum
was controlled by the Central Government. In the fall of 1993, a small portion
of the course curriculum, 10%, became the responsibility of local areas. A result of this strong
Central Government control is great uniformity in education from one school
to the next. There are only a few experimental schools that are more 'cutting
edge' and they are allowed to try more innovative teaching technique .In these
schools, new techniques are tested, proven and then gradually integrated into
all of the schools. Suzhou Experimental Elementary School is one of the most
famous and prestigious schools in China. It has a history of experimenting with
U.S. teaching methods. Kindergarten is at the parents
discretion and is a three year program (for 3, 4, and 5 year old children).
Most of the kindergartens are in the large cities. Primary schools comprise
grades 1 - 6 and Middle Schools
and High Schools are combined together. Grades 10 - 12 are not mandatory. Students
who stay for grades 10 - 12 start making career choices; their studies reflect
theses choices. Class size for 1st through
3rd is usually about 30 students. For 4th grades and above the class sizes range
from 40 to 50 students per class. Classrooms are filled with rows of desks,
table top style. There are
usually two students per desk. The walls are quite bare except for the chalk
board at the front of the classrooms. Books and supplies are kept in an office,
one for each grade level. Books are passed out at the
start of each class period and collected at the end. Each class has a 'student
council' which consists of a group of students that are the helpers for the
class. Each of these students is in charge of a different aspect of the classroom:
sports, studies, behavior, and homework. On a typical school day,
parents bring their children to school, either by foot, bicycle, or motor scooter.
The school day starts with an out of doors flag raising and then follows with
40 minute class sessions and a 10 minute recess between the class sessions.
During recess, the children go out and play either on the playground or in the
corridors for 10 minutes and then go back into the classroom to work for another
40 minutes. There is a long lunch break since most students go home for lunch.
The majority of parents work, so the students grandparents often provide the
lunches. Each school does have a lunch room for those that don't go home.
Typically a teacher teaches just one subject all day long, moving from class
to class. Subjects taught include: Chinese, Mathematics, Natural Science, Character
Education, Physical Education, Music, Art, Life
Skills, and English. To move from grade to grade and primary to middle school
/ high schools students must pass tests. There is a very stringent selection
process for getting into the special experimental schools.
Because the Chinese are very concerned about being competitive in a world market
they start teaching English in the large cities in the 2nd and 3rd grades. By
the 4th and 5th grade, students begin to learn English
sentence structure. One of the methods shared by the delegation with the teachers
at the Sanpailou Elementary School was a hands-on color-coded game called The
Sentence Zone. By the time students are in 6th grade and Middle School they
are expected to do more complicated writing. Because of this, the Chinese teachers
were particularly interested in how we teach paragraph and essay writing. The
approach shared by the delegation was one that uses graphic organizers from
the book Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills, presented at the Suzhou Experimental
Elementary School.
Over the years the Chinese
have come to realize that only teaching reading of the Chinese characters was
creating an elite society because the characters are so difficult to learn.
In order to educate the masses, about 20 years ago an alphabetic system called
pinyin was developed. This system, based on our alphabet, gives the pronunciation
of the characters, so that there is uniform pronunciation of their language
throughout the provinces. Pinyin uses four different inflectional symbols in
combination with the alphabetic symbols to represent the pronunciation of words.
There is an onset (beginning sound) and rhyme (ending vowel consonant combination)
to every word part. The teachers start teaching
the sound symbol relationship early, to the 3, 4, and 5 year old children, so
once the students start the 1st grade they are ready to learn words. They spend
the first 6 weeks of 1st grade learning
beginning words (pinyin paired with pictures) and read their first stories.
At this point, the books start pairing the pinyin with the characters, in addition
to having many picture clues. The advent of pinyin has enabled the masses to
learn to read. They, government officials
and school administrators alike, had great difficulty admitting that any students
had trouble learning to read. But finally, after numerous meetings and questions,
they did admit that some
students do not move into reading characters, but just learn the pinyin. It
was stressed that pinyin is a 'tool' for learning to read. They move on from
pinyin to reading Chinese characters as early as possible. However, most street
signs have both pinyin and Chinese characters paired together, so everyone has
an easier time getting around. Maps and many tourist brochures also have both
the pinyin and Chinese characters. There are some schools for
special needs children. There are special schools for the blind, deaf, and mentally
retarded. They also were familiar with Attention Deficit Disorder and did talk
about some students being treated for it with medication, but there are no services
at this point provided to the learning disabled. The Chinese would not readily
admit that they existed. Finally, when we met with the University Professors
from Beijing Normal University, the professors talked about teacher training
for students with disabilities. In fact, Dr. Qian Tong Zhi had just started
the first Special Education course at the University level last year. Teacher educational training
differs from the U.S.. The teachers that we met were very experienced although
their training is very different from ours in the U.S. Currently the teachers
of kindergartens and primary school have a 12th grade education, middle school
teachers have two more years of study (an associate's degree) and high school
teachers have a 4 year degree. The Chinese are starting to require 2 more years
(an associates degree) for future kindergarten and primary teachers and a 4
year degree for middle school teachers with the future bringing a 4 year degree
to all teachers. The Chinese are undergoing
many changes in their educational system currently. The Chinese are in the process
of changing their teaching practices from that of rote learning to that of teaching
thinking skills. That was the impetus of having a delegation of reading experts
come to China. They were very interested in learning new techniques: Bonnie
Terry's presentations on The Sentence Zone, Ten Minutes to Better Study Skills,
and The Writer's Easy Reference Guide, Maxine Sherbot's presentation on the
'Almasi Sort' and JoAnne Kirk's presentation on techniques for remediating reading
difficulties for teaching reading and writing to their students. Parents, teachers,
administrators, and government officials were all interested in teaching language
and literacy early on. This commitment of the Chinese government to reach out
to English-speaking cultures is bringing their next generation out of isolation
because their children will know how to communicate and participate creatively
with the English speaking world. Copyright © 2000-01
Bonnie Terry, M. Ed.
MEET YOUR PALBonnie Terry is a Learning
Disabilities specialist as well as the owner of Bonnie
Terry Learning which is a company that produces quality educational books
and games. Bonnie Terry Learning's books range from phonetic reading drills
for reading fluency, items to help one's study skills, spelling the 500 most
used words and more. The games help with building on reading comprehension,
sentence building and structure, and math skills. Guides which are able to be
placed in one's binder. The Writer's Easy Reference Guide covers all your needs
for writing; such as paragraph and essay writing tips, bibliography tips, types
of sentences in the English language, words to make your writing more interesting,
transition words, common prefixes, suffixes and root words, help / being verbs,
capitalization words, punctuation rules, parts of speech definitions, how to
write a business letter, and more! Details on the Math Easy Reference Guide
are soon to come. Videos cover tips on using The Sentence Zone, spelling techniques,
and the Peoples to Peoples' Educational Tour of China. | 
