Educator to speak about visit to China

There are some major differences between the American and Chinese approaches to education.

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CAMPBELL — Parents of school children in China are much like parents here.

They want their children to have it better than they did, and they complain that their children have too much homework, said Dr. Robert M. Walls, principal of Campbell Elementary.

But there are some major differences between the American and Chinese approach to education, said Walls, who recently returned from a trip to China, where he visited schools in several major cities, including Ningbo and Zianshen.

For about nine days, between Dec. 14 and Dec. 23, he was the guest of the Department of Education in Zhejiang Province, located on China’s coast south of the Yangtze Delta. Walls said he was invited to China after a delegation of Chinese educators visited the Youngstown area last March, found the programs at the Campbell schools interesting, and wanted to learn more.

Today at 6 p.m. at Campbell Elementary, Walls will offer a PowerPoint presentation to the community on his trip to China, titled “China: Past, Present and Future.”

Part of Walls’ story will be his observations about China in general, and about its schools in particular.

Walls said he got a capsule view of China as he stood on one busy street corner in Ningbo, Zhejiang, a port city of about 1.2 million people facing the East China Sea.

He said he could see factories belching smoke and fire; skyscraper residential buildings going up everywhere; Mercedes automobiles parked on the street; and in the middle of it all, a woman washing her laundry with a brick.

China is in transition, trying to do in 50 years what it took the United States 100 years to do. Its ruling Communist Party still controls politics, but it is letting capitalism grow, though under a watchful eye, he said.

“China is an economic freight train,” Walls said.

Walls said he was impressed by the friendliness of the people and the cleanliness of the cities, although the smog and traffic are horrendous.

“I would never drive in China. A New York City cab driver couldn’t survive there,” he said.

China’s school system, he said, is set up differently than that of the United States.

In China, school is compulsory through the ninth grade, when students are tested to determine who goes on to high school. Those who don’t go to high school go to vocational school or join the work force. At the end of high school, students are again tested to determine if they can go to college, Walls said.

“I think where we miss the boat, compared with the Chinese, is that we don’t start vocational training early enough,” he said.

“We know by the eighth grade what students are into academics and who isn’t, but we don’t start vocational school until the 11th grade. So we have to find a way to keep the kids who are not into academics in school until that time, and end up losing some of them,” he said.

The Chinese also start learning English in the third grade, and are thinking of moving it down to kindergarten, while here learning a foreign language usually comes years later in the curriculum.

“Personally, I’d like to start teaching Mandarin Chinese in kindergarten,” he said.

Where Chinese schools fall short, Walls believes, is that they have very large classes and the children, “to me, learn by rote.” They aren’t taught thinking and solving skills as children are here, he said.

“That’s one of the reasons the U.S. is a leader in innovation, because we teach students to ask why and investigate. Americans are great idea people. The Chinese are great copiers,” he said.

Walls plans to do something about that this summer when he takes a delegation of Campbell math, science and literacy teachers to China to co-teach in its schools. The goal is to introduce critical thinking and problem-solving skills into their classrooms, he said.

alcorn@vindy.com