What if kids spent less time studying for exams and more time learning by doing, by getting their little hands dirty outside of the classroom?
It did happen in a rural county in China, but years later, today, the education experiment has been labeled a failure.
But was it really a failure, or a glimpse into a future that society isn't ready for?
And China's napping culture lives on, but not without twists.
Are we witnessing a shift from napping wherever one can find a moment of shut -eye to powering through lunch breaks?
Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Round Table.
I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Sun in the studio, first on today's show.
In 2017, a small county in eastern China's Zhejiang Province dared to dream big about education, imagining a world where students could thrive through hands -on learning, creativity, and exploration.
Instead of sitting in classrooms focused solely on boosting exam scores, students built bridges, designed school gates, and fueled their curiosity with practical projects rooted in their community community.
Yet, seven years later, this education experiment has been labeled a failure, with shrinking schools and dwindling student numbers.
Was the cost of this dreaming too big in a system that demands conformity?
Or is it a wake -up call to rethink education beyond rigid test scores?
Perhaps the real failure isn't the vision itself, but how students and families feel trapped by the relentless pressure of the ultimate exam of Gao Kao, or college entrance examination, as the only path to social mobility.
So let's go to you first, Yu Sun.
Explain to us the education experiment in Jin Yun County, eastern China's Zhejiang Province, which is south to Shanghai, the mega city we all know, and what were the key goals and principles behind this experiment?
Yes, so this is kind of an educational experiment to promote the quality education mode instead of the traditional test -oriented education mode.
So quality education is an educational model aimed at improving various aspects of a learner's overall quality, like moral and ethical development, practical skill cultivation, individual growth, physical health, and psychological well -being, aside from academic study.
Okay, so quality education means incorporating those other aspects of being a young person other than what you can learn in a book.
Yes. Okay, got it. And can I also just offer one footnote?
As a member of the millennial generation, when we were little kids, we've heard of this, quality education, but look at what, now, 20 years later, this is still being promoted.
And in a way, it feels like we've been standing still at the same place and making maybe not great strides in progress, but that's debatable.
And maybe this educational experiment is a good attempt in spearheading and forwarding quality education.
So carry on. Yeah, I would say the picture is different if we're comparing to like 20 years ago.
But anyway, we may talk about that later.
So in this story, there were once over 10 rural primary schools participating in this experiment.
They made various attempts in developing their COD project -based learning courses.
These rural primary schools also established an alliance of small and micro schools.
And in this way, I think they're trying to say these schools are really, really tiny.
Some of them only have like around 60 students in this school.
So they are called small micro schools.
So from 2017 and 2022, it's the period that they do in the experiment and teachers of this alliance would get together once after a while exchanging their experiences and understanding and innovation.
So yeah, project -based learning.
You mentioned that.
That for our listeners who don't know, that's a teaching method.
That's where students get their knowledge and their skills kind of from hands -on experiences.
One example would be maybe an elementary school student or a class has a project on environmental pollution, and then the students might be asked to research different types of pollution, then create a presentation on their findings, and then come up with a plan on how to tackle pollution in their community.
So it is what it is.
It is what it says.
They're given a project, they're given a task, and then they figure it out working together in a group.
Yeah. And I think the thing is that these project -based learning, it doesn't mean that they are completely moving from traditional teaching.
They still need to learn about Chinese, math, and English, also physical education and art.
It's just that they use a lot of these experiments and outdoor activities, let's say, to help students learn the scientific principles and knowledge and engage in physical exercise through all of these activities.
So it's not that in this experiment it was fully project -based.
It was kind of a hybrid system where you have your traditional classroom methods, teaching methods, but also you have some project -based activities as well.
Yes. And this is quite the deviation from the standard classroom teaching that everybody knows here in China, which is, yes, even if there are projects, but you don't really have much time or opportunity to actually get out of the classroom and have a hands -on experience, especially let's...
I mean, this is not really a particularly adequate comparison, but for example, like in big cities, there is a lack of even space for you to go outside.
Parents are worrying about, oh, traffic.
Oh, what if a bad boogeyman shows up or whatever it is?
But in these rural schools and especially very small rural schools, it seems like they've got more opportunity and space to experiment.
And let's get into this.
What kinds of activities, classes, and learning experiences were conducted in the so -called Jin Yun County experiment, which is an alliance of these schools in this county in Zhejiang Province?
Yes. Just by reading some of the stories of these schools, I want to go to these schools actually.
So there are no football fields or tracks, but there are sheep pens, chicken pens, etc.
And these are small animals raised by the students in the school.
The school and the village share a large auditorium, which houses original musical instruments developed or just made by these students.
There are no photos of school leaders nor columns for excellent deeds showcased in the school.
So instead, there is a huge smiling face wall of all of these students' faces on the wall of the school, which is five meters high with photos of them.
And they also call on the students to design a school gate for this school.
So a front gate to the school?
Yes, front gate. So they ask the students to collect the doors or the gates in your imagination or maybe around the world.
And then the students may just use their imagination to create a gate that they want.
But actually, there are some little anecdotes.
The teacher said the students are just using their wild imagination.
It is not a gate. So they asked them to go around the village and then to see the function, the meaning of the gate.
And then they also invited some designers to design the actual gate for this school.
Project -based learning.
And this gate looks, well, it's massive and is it made out of some specially processed bamboo?
It is artistic. It is.
It is because bamboo is also kind of a specialty in this area.
And it's very different from the usual iron big school gate that we usually see in some schools.
Sometimes I think, oh, that reminds me of maybe the front gate of jail.
But anyway, this one, it is amazing.
Some students would describe school as a jail, I think.
But through this front gate, if you march in during morning as you go to school, I would think you would have a very different mindset and feeling.
It's like going to Neverland or something like that.
But please carry on.
And there are just so many interesting classes and activities going on that went on during the seven years as this has been conducted.
Even only just from this one example, we can totally see that some of these aspects, these students can learn.
And I also heard that one of the function of this school gate, the huge artistic school gate, is also be a shelter for parents who is going to pick up their kids from the ring.
So from this example, we can see they have the access to learn, to research, to actually design by themselves.
And there are also other other examples like the teachers asked them to build bridges because a bridge is kind of a common thing in this village.
In southern China, there are a lot of water around the town, so they require the students to see how the bridges are.
And you know, they use wooden strips and measured the length and structure of different bridges in this village.
And there was one statement that really moved me, I think the principal of this school said that in the past, the children never paid attention to the bridge in their village.
But now with this task, with this project, that's all they can see.
They can only see bridges.
They discover the historical culture of this bridge.
It was in a TV show back then.
Okay, so the benefits then, if I'm listening to this, the students become more familiar with their community, they gain more pride in their community.
They also learn something about engineering, right?
What it takes to put in angles and weight and measurements and things like this.
They learn teamwork because they're working together to complete a task.
These are the benefits of these types of projects.
Yes, and these are merely a few examples out of the many, and there are a few schools who've joined this alliance, and we're using some of the activities that have been conducted in these schools.
And now this education experiment is reckoned a quote unquote failure.
But on what grounds, and do you see it as a failure, or are there merits to the experiment worth considering?
I wouldn't say it is a failure, because perhaps what the children are learning isn't just textbook knowledge, but more about the experiences that they gained through their growth.
And another aspect, I think, is they learned to observe their lives.
At one school, students explore rural architecture, record the history and stories of old houses, and preserve this information through written visual and audio means they also created village maps to serve as tourist guides.
And the principal said this was done to help them develop an eye for discovering beauty.
And do you think it is a failure in education?
I don't think it is a failure, because they can learn so much more than textbooks.
They also get the idea of how to live a life.
Okay, yes, I see exactly what you mean, but Steve, can I just offer a little bit more background in why some say that this is deemed a failure?
That is, after seven years of this experiment, the number of small and tiny rural schools that have joined this alliance has dwindled.
So some have dropped out.
And then second, there's a dwindling of the number of students in these schools.
And therefore, if you don't have schools, you don't have people who are actively participating in this anymore, then isn't it deemed a failure?
On top of that, the grades, they aren't really showing.
They're not shining.
They're not. So, you know, in China, often we look at the numbers and say, well, if you get the top score and you have the most number of students getting the top score, then you're a success of a school.
But if not, then sorry, that's a failure.
So these students then, we talked about it.
It's a hybrid system where they have some project -based learning experiences, but they also have the traditional methods as well.
That means that they also have the traditional testing methods as well, meaning you're going to have your math tests, you're going to have your language tests, what have you.
So the scores for those tests have not been there.
The scores for those tests have been lower in those schools.
I don't think so, because the thing is that no matter what kind of curriculum that they are having in their primary school, after their primary school, they're getting into a middle school, maybe not in this town, also in another county or another city.
So they are still taking the exams that every Chinese students will take in the city or in the country.
So it's like maybe you don't have so many weekly or monthly or even midterm examinations, but once you graduate from elementary school, then you are still subject to being judged by the same criteria of grades as all the other kids in the province.
So therefore, the other kids in the province who are not part of this experiment, they've gone through the traditional system, the traditional testing, and then they have been equipped, if we can say that, if their test scores are adequate, they've been equipped with the necessary knowledge to proceed
to the next level. It sounds like the schools, these experiment schools, the students weren't necessarily equipped with that knowledge that was necessary to do well testing at the next level.
Well, you can argue whether are these examinations testing for knowledge or not, because I bet the engineering knowledge, the knowledge of raising chickens and hens and all those things are not being tested.
So this is also interesting to point out that maybe our test system, it's only selecting those who do well in tests or know how to play this game and are trained for this game.
But when you sort of find out a different path and try to explore on that and then you're not really scoring high when you're back to this traditional way of judging.
Maybe I was thinking that is the tricky part of these experiments when people are viewing these, because it is hard to see the result of this experiment right away.
You need to maybe in the future, maybe 20 years later, the aspect or the result of this experiment can be revealed when the students are actually using the knowledge that they learned in their primary school.
Yeah, okay. But still, we could argue our opinions all day long, but the schools are closing and the students aren't there.
So what's the reason for this?
Is it parents aren't supporting this?
They don't like the idea of this experiment?
Is it the students don't like it?
Is it that the schools themselves, they don't like it?
I'm curious to know all of the answers to these questions.
And maybe the experiment is so short that we don't really have full answers to those questions just yet.
Yeah, so I think there are several reasons to the result that we are seeing right now.
First of all, I think the main leaders who are promoting this policy, they are gradually retiring and more and since then, I think there will be fewer people to push this policy to be conducted and to be implemented.
And also the number of these small micro schools is slowly decreasing.
The principles of these schools have also been transferred to larger schools.
And in this way, you know, smaller schools are kind of the place that experiments are taken place.
But if the schools is bigger, it is hard to conduct such kind of experiment.
And also, this is all happening in a bigger backdrop.
That is a phenomenon we've seen taking shape in China for the last maybe 20 years.
That is, there is a demographic migration that is in rural China, especially when we're talking about these small and micro schools, often they exist in places that have very small number of young labor.
So young people, middle aged people, they've all gone out to work in cities or nearby cities, if not the mega cities that we already know.
And another change has happened in recent years is that now these parents are often taking their kids with them.
Like 20 years ago, when we talk about migrant workers in this country, often due to just the difficulties of raising kids in big cities when you're doing heavy labor, the kids would stay at home and the parents would move to work.
Yes. And the grandparents would look after the kids.
Understood. Yes. And after the last 20 years or so of a lot of public discussion and social policy taking place, now kids often go with parents.
And then the villages only, in a way, this is rather sad, becomes residents for the elderly population.
And therefore, you don't need so many rural schools.
And then that becomes, I suppose, in a way, very difficult for people to decide whether you want to keep these small schools when you simply don't have many kids.
You're talking about maybe just 20 kids, 30 kids.
And what do you do about that?
And so the closing of some of these schools and the dwindling of the population of school age has something to do with this bigger picture as well.
And this has nothing to do with whether the educational quality is good or not of that school.
Well, then it's not fair for these types of experiments to be depicted as failures then.
If that's true, then we can't know whether this is a failure or whether this is a success.
We have to talk to the school administrators.
We have to talk to the teachers.
We have to talk to the students.
We have to talk to the parents.
There's been a lot of online comment about these types of things.
Right. What is the public in general saying about this type of thing?
Actually, a lot of netizens are, I think, praising this kind of policy.
And also, they actually wish they could have these kind of experiences when they were in primary school.
And a lot of them saying that it is a reflection of the education should be because it is something that these children would want, these parents would want.
But maybe it's just, you know, it's different from the current society is working.
And one online comment really stood out to me.
It was a lady who says that I'm 35.
This is me paraphrasing.
I'm 35. I don't have a child yet.
And if I know that kids are going to this kind of schools, I will have a child tomorrow.
I think in a vacuum, right, in a vacuum, not considering other circumstances.
When you ask the kids, do you enjoy going out in the community and finding out about the bridges in your town and then working together in a group to build a bridge yourselves?
Do you enjoy that? I'm sure that the children will probably say yes.
When we as adults look at that experience, we think, wow, that's amazing.
That's in a vacuum.
But when you have a big test like Gao Kao coming up in your future as a young student, yes, it's wonderful that these children are having different experiences.
But if in their future they need to take the Gao Kao, are we doing a disservice to these young students by not prepping them for that big test as early as possible?
I don't know if the answer is yes or no, but I think it's a question worth asking.
Yes. And could this reduced focus on test scores in this experiment be seen as a form of educational inequality by some of these parents and also doing the disservice to students?
Inequality, because the other students who are not in these experiment schools, they're getting the traditional testing.
They're getting the prep for the Gao Kao, if you will.
But the other students are not.
That's what you mean by inequality in that sense?
Yes, yes. But I was thinking, you know, of course, right now we are having the policy of, let's say, double reduction.
It is actually going with the trend of this policy.
To explain it, double reduction means to reduce excessive homework burdens and, on the other hand, to decrease the amount of outside school tutoring.
So this actually to, you know, to alleviate the burdens on both parents and students.
So in this way, I think it is on the right path, right?
It is, you know, letting the students to have less pressure and have a better experience in learning through activities.
But the fact is, after 70 years, sorry, after seven years, this experiment has been shut down.
What are the most important lessons we can take away from this education experiment?
I think the lessons we can, one of the lessons we can take away is that you've done the experiment in the rural community.
Now let's try it, perhaps in a larger community and see how the success goes there.
I think what I can see is that also one of the principals are saying that the people they cultivate are all the same.
They need to have emotional connections, aesthetic abilities, something like that.
And the only difference is in the resources.
In the cities, they might work with things like space models and ships.
But in villages, they can have these fields in water.
Can we find room for creativity and critical thinking without undermining exam success?
If we can reimagine education as more than just a test score, these rural schools could provide a new blueprint for preparing students to meet the demands of Gaokao and real life challenges.
