A TRIP TO LINCHUAN HIGH SCHOOL

June 22, 2009

Statue of an important scholar from Linchuan in JiangXi Province on the grounds of the new high school

I did not mention the trip we took on June 22nd to visit a high school in JiangXi Province. Early in the morning, prior to visiting the FuZhou Social Welfare Institute, we were fortunate to visit a brand new private high school in the LinChuan District.

At our hotel in LinChuan we met the family staying in the rooms next to ours. They are from the Cincinnati area, and the man is a Chinese citizen who has lived and worked in the US for the past 15 years. In fact his two children, who were with him on this trip, were born in the US and thus are citizens of both the US and China. This gentleman works for GE Aviation, and he was born and raised in JiangXi Province. He explained that JiangXi Province used to be home to a great many shoe and clothing manufacturers, but it is more profitable now to make those same shoes and clothes overseas in India, SriLanka, and Indonesia....................does that sound familiar? Many former factories are now standing empty, unemployment is high, and there is a great need to prepare the local youth for more promising careers. To that end, a private high school serving about 10,000 students has opened. It is not at capacity yet, and we were invited to take a look at the campus. The head of the new high school is a former college friend of the man who now lives near Cincinnati (I am not using his name because I did not get a chance to ask him if he wants to be mentioned in my blog). Our new friend from Cincinnati plans to form a charitable organization to raise funds for the school as his way of giving back to his home town.

Our guide Coby had all of us pile in the van and we drove to what turned out to be a huge campus. There we met the school director who gave us a tour of everything from classrooms to cafeteria. The school is not free, although scholarships can be obtained for those in need who show a desire to learn. Classes average about 100 students....yes, you read that right.........100 students per classroom. We walked past some classes that were in session in the 100+ degree heat and humidity.............guess what? No air-conditioning. Students sat two per small desk. All students had a pile of books in front of them that must have been close to eighteen inches high. A few students used their book stacks as "pillows" and were napping quite soundly through class. Others were taking notes. Some were whispering to their neighbor. Not much "active participation" in the lesson was evident. In other words, a typical high school.

We walked into a huge round atrium off of which there were about five floors, each floor containing uncounted classrooms. We were shown the computer lab, which was not operational yet, but would be ready for the fall class of students. School was on summer vacation, though there were a few summer school classes in progress (such as the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

The cafeteria was set up like a buffet line, with at least a dozen healthy choices available for a reasonable fee. Imagine the size of a cafeteria that serves 10,000 students on a daily basis, and you get an idea of how large a space this involved and all the tables that were set up. As this is a boarding school, three meals a day are offered for a fee. Not all students live in the dormitories, some are day students. But many of the kids come from the sourrounding countryside and live in the dormitories out of necessity. Tuition is not cheap, and the parents of these kids kids sacrifice everything so their kids can get a good education and have a shot at the Chinese dream of a good job with good pay.

The highlight of our visit was meeting the English teachers. English is China's second language, indeed it is the international language, we were told by our guide. The teachers looked so young!!!! Of course when you get to a certain age, EVERYONE looks so young. We had great fun speaking with these young teachers, and I was telling them about Arizona, and how we are required to have a Structured English Immersion (SEI) endorsement. At first they did not understand why I needed to know how to teach English in America....but I explained that many of our students come from Spanish-speaking homes. The method for teaching English in China is to practice writing words, saying words, conjugating verbs, etc. Much of it is rote memorization, and actual conversational English comes later. But all the teachers I spoke with were very good conversationalists, and it was a real pleasure getting to know them.

Here is a picture of all of us, including the family from Cincinnati, the school director, and some of the young English teachers, taken in the computer lab. In the front row you can see Maddie, Perrie, Hannah, and Steven (the son of the man who works for GE).