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Anonymous.
clay dubeArthur's right to note that China aims to educate more and more people. At this point, however, the number of Chinese with college educations is far less than the nearly 200 million he mentions.
In 1985 (when I was finishing my third year of teaching in a Chinese university), total university/college enrollment totalled 1.7 million. In 1990 it was about 2.1 million. In 1998 it was 3.4 million. It has shot upward in the past several years. By 2004, more than 13 million were enrolled. At this rate, however, it will be just a few years before China reaches the 200 million college grad target.
Statistics:
http://test.china.org.cn/english/en-sz2005/kj/biao/21-1.htm
AnonymousThanks for that site Clay....lots of good info in it.
I'm not sure if I'm relieved by the difference in what I was told and what you showed or more worried. It seems the rest of the world values education and holds it very dear. At times, I feel like a cross between a baby sitter, correctional officer, and occasionally, a teacher.
When I was in Cuba, even though they make no money, teachers are highly respected, and education is highly valued. I got the impression that if a child poses problems, academically or behaviorally, that child is embarrassing not just the family, but the state. So discipline issues are minimal, because they want to do well. There is no peer reward for misbehaving.
AnonymousHi Artur,
I'm not sure if comparing the number of students learning English in China and the US is very meaningful. English is now considered an internationa language. If that comparison means anything, it is that if 200 million Chinese are learning English, then fewer Americans have to worry about learning Chinese. If you go to Germany you do not have to worry about not speaking German, because most of them speak English. But if you go to Italy and don't speak Italian, boy you're in trouble.
AnonymousLantern Festival
Do you want to learn more about this interesting Chinese festival? Click below.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/home/index.html
Check out the floweres. Would you beleive that they are actually lanterns?[Edit by="rrustamzadeh on Feb 4, 3:48:40 PM"][/Edit]
AnonymousHi Reza....My comments are definitely not directed to you, so don't think that.
Reza does make an interesting point, because English is a common and popular language, does that make it acceptable that our student's shouldn't learn others? To me, this is what irritates the rest of the world, an arrogant attitude on the part of many Americans. Why should we bother learning about you or your culture, we have the technology and power, therefore we are in charge. You will do as we ask.
Reza..we may have the beginnings of a good debate here...
AnonymousThank you Arthur. You could not be more right. But I have to leave it at that, because I look too different to have an open opinion. I wish we had more understanding people like you.
By the way does any body get this joke? I didn't. Is Stoly some kind of Chinese drink?
A man goes into a Chinese bar and says, "How 'bout a Stoly?" The bartender says, "Once upon a time . . . ."
Here is another one, but it sounds like a piece of history rather than a joke!
Prime Minister Zhang was fond of handwriting, but he didn't put in a lot of effort to do his exercises. Everybody sneered at his bad handwriting, and the Prime Minister himself really didn't care.
One day he happened to draft a beautiful sentence and at once wielded his writing brush to write it down, indeed, there were dragons flying and snakes dancing all over the paper. Then he ordered his nephew to copy it.
When beginning to copy, his nephew stared tongue-tied and did not know where to start. The young man had to take the manuscript back to the Prime Minister.
"Uncle, I can't read your handwriting, please tell me what words they are."
The Prime Minister read his cursive hand a long time, and did not know what Chinese characters they were, either. He then turned to blame his nephew. "Why didn't you come earlier to ask me? I myself have forgotten the words which I've written."
AnonymousReza, I want to address the issue of foreign language, but first I must add that the "joke" you posted about the Chinese man is suppose to be a funny, but racist, comment on the accent of a Chinese person. btw.. Stoli is short for Stolichnaya, the vodka.
Okay, yes I agree most anywhere in the world there are people who know English. Even some French and Italians KNOW the language, they just don't want to speak it. No, it is not okay for our students to go through school not learning a foreign language.
Learning a foreignn language helps students to differentiate their learning and improve their analytical thinking. It isn't so much what language they learn, but merely the simple fact that they are in the learning process of acquiring a second language. The switching back and forth is a mind stimulation. On top of that, if a student were to learn a language with a completely different writing system, such as Chinese, that again is a brain power increase.
There is some research to support my claims but I don't have that info at hand. Does anyone want to help me out?
AnonymousDear Fisakson,
Thank you for explainig the Joke. I have never had a drop of alcohol in my life. I am not familiar with any drinks or their brands. I was asking if any body could expalin the joke to me.
I have been trying to learn about all aspects of Chinese life. I have been searching many Chinese sites. One of the sites I ran into was Chinese Jokes. Most of them made no sense to me. They required being familiar with Chinese language. I picked one out of many(Just to change the subject. Clay likes us to stay within Chinese matters and subjects), asking if any body got it. Now I do, and thank you again.
Secondly, I am sorry what I wrote in plain English was misunderstood by you. By no means do I agree that Americans should be monolingual. I pointed out a very common and obvios social behavior, without getting into details. I was hoping that my point would be easily understood, as Arthur very well opend it up.
Here is a little math problem to cheer you up and show that I agree with you 100%.
As a Persian speaking student who was learning English in America I decided to learn Spanish at the same time. My teacher was Cuban, and he claimed that my accent was Mexican. Can you tell me how many different nations and nationalities I mentiond in my statement. [Edit by="rrustamzadeh on Feb 5, 10:24:36 AM"][/Edit]
AnonymousThis article just popped up on the news...looks like Japan has a new heir to the throne.
AnonymousNPR's "All Things Considered" today (2/10) presented a fascinating look at how the Chinese government carries out policy at the local level. Apparently it is fairly common for women to have more than one child in rural China, because they need more hands to help with the farm labor. However, local officials cannot rise in the system unless they meet their "one-child quotas, which has led to forced sterilizations and forced abortions by some overly ambitious and zealous local officials. A blind lawyer has brought information to the rural people about how they should demand their rights, as officially, the government doe not sanction forced sterilizations or abortions. For speaking out on this issue, he has been under house arrest for the past 6 months. Go to http://www.npr.org, then click on "All Things Considered". The program is titled "Chinese Village Fights for Release of Activist". I think this would be an excellect source of information for government classes to talk about the reach of the government into private lives and to discuss the ways government policies are carried out.
AnonymousI just read an article in The New York Times Upfront magazine that talked about the economic boom in China producing dangerous levels of pollution. Automobile use and energy consumption in China, as it is right now, can quadruple pollution levels over the next fifteen years. The most startling statistic was this: on any given day, 25 percent of the pollutants in Los Angeles skies can be traced back to China. Wow!
AnonymousThere's lots of scary stuff when it comes to the needs for such a huge population. Another scary event is the disparity of boys to girls. Recently, on Primetime, they mentioned that girls are now being kidnapped to be sold to villages who have no females of marrying age for their male sons. They are also sold at young ages and are raised by families who later use them to carry on the family name. Ultrasound machines are used to detect the sex for a child to selectively abort girls. These Ultrasound machines are portable so even though the government has made them illegal, people can get an ultrasound inside a van anywhere.
AnonymousI read an article on LA Times on April 15, which was quite shocking. The Chinese government is setting strick rules on caring for the elderly parents. It fines and puts in jails those who neglect their elderly parents. A father who was disabled took his children to court for not supporting him. Anyone else read it? How do you find the article on the internet?
AnonymousI posted a similar response on another topic/thread but I wanted to share on this thread as well.
"I just attended a workshop this evening about "moral intelligence" by a national speaker/writer by the name of Michelle Borba. She emphasized the values of empathy, conscience and self-control, which she believes is part of the problem in today's American society." - posted on another thread
It is interesting how as we become more global and China appears to become more Capitalistic, we are seeing behaviors in China that would NEVER have occurred years ago. Black Market babies, Not taking care of your elders? What's going on? Are we ,the Western cultural influence, to blame? China has such an intricate and expansive history that is far more extensive than the U.S., will this "decline" continue?
Just questioning, seeing and hearing all of the new information at our last "Asia in the Classroom meeting" got me thinking.
AnonymousI read an interesting article from http://www.asiannewsnet.net. Apparently a lot of conflict resulted from the government forcefully evicting farmers and activists from land that was earmarked for a US base. All this happened just yesterday! This was no small clash either! There were 13,000 riot police involved in evicting the activists and farmers. According to the article the government did not want to lose trust with it's US presence. For this reason they didn't hold back in detaining all of the farmers and activists. If something like this happened in the US you can be sure it would hit the front page of any newspaper.
The Asian News Network looks like a great source for finding out about what's going on in Asia.