Education Stimulus Bar

China has called for the formulation of an education reform plan that will focus on improving rural education, vocational training and teachers’ welfare, citing the global crisis as a call to arms to bolster education. The 2009 to 2020 evolving educational plan, will take into account the nation’s evolving population structure, rural-urban wealth gap and rural-urban migration, and meet the talent requirements for industrialization, urbanization and modernization.

The central government will create 50,000 teaching jobs in the country’s backwater regions in a double-barrel effort to help fresh graduates get jobs and improve educational standards in rural areas. The 50,000 posts, for “special vacancy” teachers, are in addition to a three-year initiative from 2006 to send 60,000 young college graduates to teach at grass-roots schools to bolster the level of teaching. Shouldn’t America be doing the same?

Students in rural areas in China, like America, have been increasingly failing to get access to quality education as the widening gap between urban and rural salaries and better working conditions lure many qualified rural teachers to more promising jobs in the cities.

Premier Wen Jiabao said educational planners must be prepared to shatter old mindsets and structures and be daring in exploring reforms in school management, pedagogy and assessment. “Education will take a prominent position as we seek to mitigate the impact of the global financial crisis on our economy,” Mr. Wen said. “Education has become the cornerstone of national development” ─ music to my ears. I advocated America do the same in my 2007 book Custom Made Knowledge. Why isn’t America? Why isn’t America, like China, investing in an education stimulus program that educates Americans in the ways to acquire the knowledge and the tools necessary to compete in an Interlocal economy.

War or Economic and Financial Stability?

Beijing and Tokyo have reached an agreement concerning permitted naval activity in exclusive economic zones, which reach 220 nautical miles from shore. Shouldn’t Washington and Beijing be doing the same?

President Eisenhower apologized for the flight of captured American spy pilot Francis Gary Powers over Russia and ended the U-2 flights over that country. Why couldn’t President Bush do the same when the U.S. reconnaissance plane crash-landed on Hainan Island in March 2001? Why couldn’t he just pick up the phone and discuss matters amicably with Jiang Zemin? Why was the first American spokesman Admiral Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific? Why did the U.S Ambassador in Beijing, Adm. Joseph W. Prueher, handle the negotiations? Why was the U.S. defense attaché to Beijing, Brig. Gen. Neal Sealock, wearing his military uniform at his first press conference? Was this diplomacy or a constant subtle unnecessary military reminder and threat?

When a Russian pilot defected with his MiG-25 in 1976 to Japan, American experts spent nine weeks stripping the plane and examining every part. The Russians eventually got the plane back in boxes. Why was the U.S. surprised then that the Chinese examined the U.S. spy plane? Isn't that part of the risk in the espionage game? Besides, if all the hardware and software was destroyed per the "checklist" as claimed by the American crew before the Chinese got access to the plane, what is the big deal? It is face. Symbolic value ─ it is just as important to the U.S. as it is to China.

What is the point of America pairing and starting to operate radar-evading B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters in the Pacific for the first time in February 2009? More to the point, what is the point in sending USNS Impeccable, a surveillance-spy ship with 2-km-long underwater receiver and source cables, off Hainan Island to gather underwater acoustic data of China’s submarine movements from its main submarine base on Hainan earlier this month? Whether the ship was in China’s exclusive economic zone or in international waters is secondary and irrelevant. The end result is the same ─ an unnecessary confrontation with five Chinese vessels that was luckily contained without any casualties, but triggered the U.S. to send warships to protect its "surveillance" vessels. China responded by sending its largest "fishery patrol ship" China Yuzheng 311 "on a routine mission" in the South China Sea and decided to convert mothballed naval vessels to fishery patrol ships ─ all this at the dawn of a new U.S. presidential administration. It was a similar provocation to what happened with the spy plane that crash landed at the dawn of Bush’s first term in office. Why does the U.S. military insist on provoking China while the White House and State Department are trying to get the two countries to work closer to resolve the global financial crisis?

English Is Not Enough

English is the national language of America. However, it is important to be bilingual or even trilingual in the New World Order. Learning a second and third language is more important for American children than any other subject ─ especially if America wants to continue to be a global leader in the 21st century. All high school and university graduates should be required to speak, read and write either Spanish or Chinese fluently, preferably both. Admittedly, once students have had a brief look at what is involved in each, there may be an overwhelming choice for one option, amigo. Only then will Americans be true global citizens able to survive in the 21st century.

Chinese officials are prepared to learn English to better serve their country ─ and do. Norman Pritchard is an English teacher living in China who has produced multimedia teaching materials at China Central Radio and TV University and Beijing Foreign Studies University for more than 10 years and has the privilege of teaching Chinese officials English. One characteristic that he observed that was shared by the Chinese officials he taught, all of them I might add, is their enormous intense motivation, 15 hour a day motivation to work hard and learn English. “Westerners have a generally cynical view of politicians, and here in China sometimes the phrase ‘officials’ is more often described with adjectives like ‘greedy’ and ‘corrupt’ than ‘sincere’ and ‘diligent.’ I did not expect to be touched at the emotional level by a group of trainees at the National School of Administration” said Pritchard who spent an intense three months teaching government officials. “I think I learned more about China and the Chinese in the last three months than I had in the previous 10 years as a teacher in China” Pritchard added. “I think my fellow foreign expert and I were privileged to gain an insight into the quality of some of the people who govern China in a way that only a few foreigners share, and the West in general is completely ignorant of. These were valuable men and women. They were cultivated and honorable, diligent and sincere. They represent truly the ideal of the good public official. I came to a closer understanding that this belief in education for its ministers is a central tenet of the Chinese government,” Pritchard continued unabashedly. “China demands excellence in their officials, and they are prepared to invest heavily in it. There is no analogue to this practice in Western democracy that I know of. I think China is the stronger for it, and the West the weaker for its absence,” Pritchard concluded.

The Pentagon is including Chinese studies in its long-overdue 21st- century linguistic arsenal ─ the National Security Language Initiative ─ which also includes Arabic, Farsi, Korean and Swahili. Students who take the Chinese course are paid a $1,000 stipend and competition for admission is fierce. More than 1,000 students apply for 69 places.

The languages involved skew heavily toward current or potential global conflict spots. The initiative aims to direct U.S. foreign language education away from European languages towards languages that are perceived to be more useful in the 21st century. At the U.S. Military Academy, where future Army officers are educated, the number of students taking introductory Chinese has steadily risen, from 65 in 2000 to 94 in 2007. The Pentagon has identified about 5,000 service members who speak Chinese in 2007, up from just 1,400 in 2000.