Pre-Trip Task: Exploring China's Education System

Education Structure of XiaMen, China
- 9 years of compulsory study

- Educators are supposed to learn to implement the guidelines, policies, rules concerning educational affairs, and organize, and coordinate the educational innovation of Xiamen towards a better future, to better help the students.

- local governments are primarily responsible for the provision, administration and funding of primary through upper secondary schools ---- system that is highly inequitable across China as rural areas have been unable to produce and allocate the same revenue as urban areas, and consequently are sometimes unable even to pay their teachers.

- this familial pressure has led to a culture of external tutoring in China. Students will often attend these schools or meet with private tutors after their official classes have ended for the day in order to improve their classroom performance.

- all primary and secondary schools across China are to be appointed supervisors by the end of the year, a move that education officials say will improve the regulation of education for children. 

- kids in Xiamen are apparently some of the unhealthiest in China. In Xiamen , nine out of every ten children in Xiamen have eyesight problems, two out of ten are obese, and rates of malnutrition and tooth decay are higher than the national average. 

- nobody can relax as long as the 高考 and 中考 exist, no matter what policies they implemented.

About the school that we are going to visit


Three Question:
1. Which educational system,either China's or Singapore's ,will benefit
the students more academically ?
2. Why the schools in China having longer lesson time than that of Singapore? What are their feelings towards it ?
3. Do students in China really love to go to school ? State reason for both.

Group opinion about the picture

  The photo showed the hungry people in Africa been watched by a vulture. The vulture seems hunting on the baby. The photographer, Kelvin Carter suicide because he suffered depression from taking that photo, at a young age of 31. One of his friends died and the other mortally wounded when trying to take photo of south Africa apartheid conflict. The people, who criticize him for not helping, did not think in his shoes. They assumed that he did not have rules to follow.
  According to the we have done on Kelvin Carter, we have gathered some information below. He was born in a all-white society where black people were being described in all negative ways. What we thought was maybe because of the curiosity for the lives of black people and that made him a photographer and took photos in Africa to truly know about them. We thought that he was confused whether to help or not to help the suffering people in his photos as a photographer to the extend where he could not take it and chose to give up on his life.
  That picture is making us reflecting as well, sometimes life has two sides. If Kelvin Carter did not take that picture, who would know about this.Nobody would know the hard situation that Africa is facing. If Kelvin Carter took the picture, he would be judged. Looking at the picture from another angle, this shows the key chain of food really well. The ones that are strong gets to survive, the ones that are weak will not be able to fit in the community. this sounds really cruel, but that is what we are facing everyday.