Educational Experiences

I’ve been home for 24 hours. My body is readjusting to a difference of 11 time zones, nearly reversing night and day. I woke up in the middle of last night, glanced at the clock which said 3:45, and panicked because I couldn’t remember what time the group was supposed to meet for the next day’s adventure. I looked around our darkened bedroom and couldn’t remember what hotel I was in. Readjustment is going to take a while!

When people asked me today about the trip, my first response was always that it was a fabulous trip and that I learned so much. Both statements are true, and they are totally inadequate to describe the experience and the learning. I remember taking a course in Chinese history as an undergraduate student. It was very difficult, in part because the names of people and places, and the historical events that we studied, were outside of any context that I had for understanding and making sense of it all. I’m certain that I learned more Chinese history, as well as culture and geography, in this two-week time period than I learned in a full semester course. It’s a powerful reminder to me of the importance of context and experience as we teach history. I can only imagine that it’s a challenging for our Vietnamese or Sudanese or Iraqi students to learn American history as it was for me to learn Chinese history from a book. The strategies that our history teachers are using, including stories and the glimpses of the effects of historical events on the lives of the people of the day, are so very important.

Visits to schools were wonderful; who amongst us doesn’t love walking into a classroom, talking with teachers and students, and sharing stories about our work. There were many similarities, including some of the big-picture issues, like national standards, test pressure, and new systems for appraising teachers. There were also the similarities of the students; as I said to a group this morning, kids are kids anywhere. The pre-schoolers were joyful; the elementary students loved showing us their work; the secondary students were into “cool,” even with uniforms. There were also very real differences, beyond the visible ones of size of school and size of classrooms. I know we believe there is great pressure on students, and schools, in our community and our country. It’s greater there. We recognize learning disabilities of many kinds. When asked what support there was for students that have difficulty learning to read in China, the response was that the assumption is that the student isn’t working hard enough. We’ve all read the studies about the cultural differences on expectations and effort; we heard evidence of that in every conversation.

China is struggling to implement some elements of democracy. Our guide in Beijing talked about citizens being able to elect representatives, who would get together to talk about problems. He thought there were about 2400 to 2500 representatives. Still, we didn’t hear much about governance in the two weeks we were there. The economy is government-controlled. Some businesses we visited made a point to say that they were a government-owned business. At the same time, there are many little storefront vendors, selling all kinds of things. I’m assuming we were seeing budding entrepreneurship there, though I don’t know. Access to information is controlled. Our guide noted that we could watch CNN in our hotel rooms, but that Chinese citizens could not have access to CNN. Twitter and Facebook are also not allowed and could not be accessed. At the same time, issues of the newspaper China Daily, which was printed in English as well as Chinese, contained letters to the editor that were critical of government policies. So many contrasts–and I suspect a visitor to our country who stayed for two weeks would identify the contrasts here, also.

I’ve always thought that travel, especially travel to another culture that moves you far beyond your own comfort zone, is one of the most educational experiences one can have. I believe that even more firmly in this, my first 24 hours home. I have returned with a little knowledge, a deeper level understanding history and culture and cultural competence, more questions than answers, and deeply grateful for the opportunity.