The RCEF Blog 博客

While visiting the United States this summer, Sara Lam and I had the opportunity to participate in a week-long training at the Foxfire Museum and Heritage Center in Southern Appalachia. The center is located on Black Mountain in Mountain City, Georgia. Foxfire was originally the name of a class that was started in 1966 by [...]

Music class, like art class, is a rarity in rural China. The Guan Ai School students are lucky to have music class once a week. However, with little exception, teaching does not address any music concepts or learning beyond singing. The textbooks are basically “song books”. That’s why we welcomed the chance to have Music [...]

This post was written by RCEF Monitoring and Evaluation Summer Intern Shang Xinyuan, a master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Education. At the end of June before the government’s final exams, RCEF administered special tests aimed at evaluating students’ skills in critical thinking, communications, and creativity. To prepare for traditional tests, the [...]

In early June, Sara Lam, RCEF’s Executive Director of Programs, spoke about the Integrative Rural Education Program to around 60 students at Shanxi Agricultural University. The talk was enthusiastically received and many students participated in a lively question and answer session afterwards. The seminar was organized by a student rural volunteer group called Peasant’s Children [...]

In the previous post, I wrote about how RCEF designed special tests in Math, Science, English, Language Arts, and Social Studies for students. Our goal was to measure their skills beyond the textbook. Below are some examples of questions from the Social Studies test. What do you think is the most important of China’s ancient [...]

Historically, education in China has been very exam oriented. In the past, the main goal of many scholars was to pass the imperial exam, which would allow them to become civil servants. Nowadays, schools and teachers have their eyes on the university entrance exams （高考）. This focus on exams starts at first grade, or even [...]

Since the beginning of the school year, Sara Lam and I have been leading an adult English class every Tuesday and Thursday at Guan Ai Primary. The class was created because teachers at Guan Ai, English and otherwise, expressed interest in improving their English skills. From the beginning, seven teachers, or half of the teaching [...]

Dulangkou Middle School is located in a rural township but is one of the most-visited schools in the world. Ten years ago, it was a failing school in grave danger of losing students. Facing possible closure, it embarked on an education reform effort to raise students’ test scores with a radical new way of teaching. [...]

A little while ago I had the privilege of taking part in one of Intel’s global education initiatives, Intel Learn. It’s a non-profit program by the computer processor maker that is run in cooperation with governments around the world. Its aim is to enable students in developing communities to develop not only information technology skills, [...]

This New York Times article describes how some young Japanese are trying out farming since they can’t find jobs or are being laid off in the cities. The government is sponsoring farming training programs as part of its economic stimulus efforts. The mostly elderly farming population in Japan is said to “welcome” the young help, [...]