Quality-Oriented Education Essay, Research Paper

Quality-oriented Education

The National Conference on Education, the third of its kind since China began its reform and opening policies in the late 1970s, was hosted in Beijing in June by the central government and the State Council. It endorsed a blueprint for promoting quality-oriented education that highlights the cultivation of independent thinking, creative spirit and the practical ability of the nation. The past few years saw healthy advancement and forceful reforms in china’s education sector. Significant headway has been made especially in the implementation of nine-year compulsory education, the elimination of illiteracy and the enhancement of higher education and vocational training. However, much is still to be desired. The traditional examination-driven education system has bridled young people’s thinking and has made them mere passive learners with little practical abilities and innovative spirits. In other aspect, from some report, a domestic famous publish house published a best-seller named How to Have the Creative Spirits. It is doubtful that if creative spirits can be taught.

We improve our education quality to enhance our people’s competitiveness in the world. As we known, many China oversea students come to USA to study in the computer field and earn a lots money abroad, china primary students can get incredible higher score in math than the secondary students in USA. But, as a matter of fact, Chinese have never got a Novell Prize. From above or more evidences, some people conclude that the primary education in china adding the higher education in USA is the first- class education in the world.

China is not USA. They have different environment and teaching measure. We carries out the policy to master the basic knowledge in the beginning and do the researching work in the high school while education in USA advocates to cultivate the creativity of the students from the beginning. Some telltale man says Chinese primary education let the boy students become trucks, putting more and more onto them and is rather burdened, while USA is free education and boy students become cars and teachers are workers in the oil station. My friend studied in USA one upon of time email to me and said: My classmates ask me that why students in China asked to study advanced math which is so complicated and will not useful in the future when come to work. Furthermore, a group of teachers complain their promotions are relative to English that they have not got in touch with it for years. When talk about practical ability and creative spirits, we would like to mention that USA boy students are asked to do essay and find out the material by themselves in the library, sometimes need to do small experience and draw a conclusion. From the films or whatever, we find that they are used to saying I think or In my opinion etc. These seem astonished to us especially college students. Most college students are only busy in their paper at the very moment before graduate.

We are students and all regard taking note as a hard job. In a class, some incapable teachers are keeping reading or writing on the blackboard without any sympathy to our tied hands. It is a kind of dismal dictation. In statistic of the universities in china, 63% of students do not take note, more academic students than science. About 63% of students copy the notes before exams. Some exclaim there are giant columns of notes to recite. Not try your best but should follow your professors’ every original words if want to get high score. We always learn a lot of things, but occasionally use our head independently. It is fortune that our professors give us the first-hand thinking. It is unfortunate that our professors’ words are second-hand. Taking-note is part of examination-driven education and should draw the attention of the teachers. Give space to students is the right way leading to cultivation of creative spirits.

Compared it with past decades, Chinese education has achieved great successes. Here I focus on problems for the sake of greater successes in the future-above all on the need to cultivate in students:

a. Promotion of Creativity and Problem-Solving Ability in a New Environment

The promotion of higher mental abilities such as creativity and problem-solving power is not new. It has been counted as a main objective of education for a long time. But the future is different from the past in terms of the environment for problem solving. We have to use or apply Information Technology (IT) to find alternatives or to contrive new strategies in solving problems in the future. We need to re-think education in the information society and consider the development of the ability to solve problems in a new social environment.

b.

Learner-Oriented Education

It is important to have systematic knowledge and to solve problems autonomously in a rapidly changing society filled with a flood of information. Education can no longer use one-way instruction in which a teacher crams students with arranged knowledge. Learners must now enlighten themselves by planning and practicing their own learning. This brings new roles for teachers, and education administrators and rules must change to meet the changing roles of teachers and students.

What seems to be important in this regard is the fact that data and information are now fully and conveniently available to learners for autonomous learning. While printed media is costly and not immediately available, computers provide digitized data banks and networked systems able to provide the necessary learning environment.

c.

Learning Open to the World

Education up to now has been practiced in classrooms or lecture halls, that is, in closed spaces. The learner in a classroom has to learn with a visually limited number of people and with limited materials. Such an education brought up men and women of a closed mind and a limited view.

Now the situation has changed. We are living in a global community. We must have knowledge of other countries, societies and cultures, and develop the ability to collect and use knowledge and information from all over the world in solving our own problems. The current educational practice (a few people in a closed space using limited materials) must change to an education in an open space without time restrictions, sharing information with the global community of people. This change is possible with the assistance of information technology.

d.

Learning with Sharing

Up to now, our educational system has shown a tendency to push students to raise their personal scores, but not to develop their potential abilities or to share their knowledge and experience with other students. But as an individual one can accomplish few things in producing new knowledge and information in this changing world. It is impossible for an individual to acquire, analyze, and arrange the large amounts of information produced by innumerable studies and research all over the world. Besides many new ideas result from a synergy effect that combines the know-how and experiences from several disparate fields. Now we need to nurture the attitudes and orientation to solve our problems by cooperation as well as by competition.

It is not desirable to preserve the traditional methods in the face of the problems caused by traditional educational practices and the problems arising from changes in social practice. We need to establish a new educational vision as the goals, environment, and demands of education evolve.