Huang Zhenzhong on Indonesian radio
Wei Ji Ma | Posted on December 7th, 2007 in Media. 
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Our Volunteer Program Director Huang Zhenzhong was interviewed recently by a reporter of “Asia Calling“, an Indonesian public radio program. The report is on the inequality between rural and urban education in China. Zhenzhong is quoted as saying: “I think the urbanisation of the books is a question. I heard of some teachers, when they teach something like traffic lights or other things – some other things that are very common in the city and not common in the rural regions. Sure, it’s important – it’s urbanisation. But what we think is important is just from the city, and many many valuable things from the countryside, they aren’t selected in the book.”
Click here listen to the report (or read the transcript)
What do you think of it? Do you agree with what is said in the report?
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diwu118 (blog author) says:
Added on December 9th, 2007 at %I:%M %pThis is a very interesting point — particularly as it probably also translates into urban bias in standardized examinations (similar to the white, middle class, suburban bias in the US standardized testing system). So, I guess my next question would be, how should this problem be approached?
Diane (blog author) says:
Added on December 11th, 2007 at %I:%M %pHu Yonghong, a member of RCEF’s Rural Teachers’ Network, said that his students didn’t know how to answer a question on their mid-term English exams which referenced guitars and other instruments which they did not know about. I think test makers should be more sensitive to the likely life experiences of rural students and make sure they don’t make test questions dependent on contextual knowledge. In addition to this, we should provide more extracurricular books to rural students that expose them to situations and things outside their current world experience and build up background knowledge they otherwise wouldn’t be exposed to.
Wei Ji Ma (blog author) says:
Added on December 13th, 2007 at %I:%M %pI agree. This sounds like a big problem. It would be good if future test makers spent some time teaching rural students as part of their training, to become more culturally sensitive. Also, then they can start including questions about rural topics in the tests, including agriculture, environment, and indigenous culture. I think that would also be very good for city kids and for the cohesion of the country.
Helen.Lian (blog author) says:
Added on December 29th, 2007 at %I:%M %pI agree as well.
This contextual knowledge problem is reflected in teaching some subjects in general also, such as English. It is harder to make it relevant for rural kids compared to city kids. A lot of English teachers in rural areas told me that their students find English rather boring, and useless.