Foreign-Languages Instruction in Chinese and British Higher Education - Essay Example

Foreign-Languages Instruction in Chinese and British Higher Education Introduction The increasing discussions about social inclusion in higher education, specifically in the field of citizenship, identity and status, language, and foreign language instruction, attested to the importance of multiculturalism and the inconsistency of governments, particularly, in this paper, China and Great Britain. Moreover, it became apparent recently that enhancing social inclusion in higher education of those discriminated due to their disability, culture, gender, illness, seclusion, and communication problems, necessitates the same assured resilience that would cultivate the ingenuity of educators in higher education (Potts 2003). This paper will conduct a comparative analysis on social inclusion in higher education in China and Great Britain. Particularly, the analysis will be carried out in light of the issue of culture and language with regard to the restored concern for citizenship and national identity. This paper will discuss first foreign languages instruction in the Far East. Then, the ramifications of educational policies for racial/ethnic groups in relation to multilingual higher education and citizenship in Great Britain will be explored. Comparing Foreign-languages Instruction between China and Great Britain In the 1980s, Bob Adamson and Heidi Ross had experienced teaching English in China. The latter viewed foreign languages instruction in China as modernisation’s indicator, a phenomenon that was complicated and demanding (Potts 2003). As stated by Ross (1992), “Foreign language teaching in China has both reflected and complicated the competing political, economic and cultural imperatives secondary schools have been expected to mediate” (p. 240). The conflict between an ‘international interdependence’ and a ‘highly-cultured, public-spirited and well-disciplined socialist civilisation’ (Ross 1992, 243) that was invoked by modernisation was shown in the opposition between natural and teacher-directed use of foreign languages. As expressively articulated by Ross (1992), educators opposed and attempted to deal with these demands: Like Beijing opera stars who spend three years in the wings to perform three minutes on stage, the foreign language teacher’s fulfilment as a professional comes from moments when carefully constructed lessons are masterfully delivered. Relinquishing the metaphor of teaching and learning as perfect performance requires that secondary school teachers accept the learning process as an unpredictable, socially-constructed activity. That they are grappling with this challenge is clearly reflected in the growing trend to ‘psychologise’ secondary school foreign language teaching policy and practice (Ross 1992, 244-245). Higher education instructors in China revealed that one of the problems they face was the absence of opportunity to instigate a reformed educational practice. Their students as well as their selves encountered the same pressures (Hall 2000). It was difficult to deviate from entrenched cultural beliefs and traditional methods. In the 1980s, talking about the prevalent use of the ‘New Concept English’ (Ross 1992, 248), Ross stated that educators are resolute that this rooting in ‘fundamentals’ through representation and reiteration results in ingenious performance later on. There were several educators who were able to provide an ideal performance and cultivate natural language by their pupils yet this was seldom (McLaren & Torres 1999). Higher education teachers would be anxious that, due to the inadequacy of their own language skills and time, they would fail to correct mistakes if pupils continued on a spontaneous task. Instead of feeling limited by pressures for compliance in teaching, educators in higher education reveal that an expanded syllabus from which there is slight departure recognises all the strong points of educators and balances the learning context of every student (Richardson & Wood 1999). Heidi Ross claimed that mitigating the conflicts in foreign language instruction in Chinese higher education rests in the implementation of a joint model, as stated by Ross (1992, 251) “Until foreign influence is perceived as mutual enrichment rather than the means to absorption or conversion, this uneasy compromise is likely to continue”. Likewise, teachers’ college instructor Bob Adamson initiated the talk on this phenomenon within the modernisation perspective, distinguishing a Chinese perception of language as a rigid discipline to a British perception that language was complex and ever-changing (Potts 2003). Adamson (1995) discovered that his pupils were not stimulated or encouraged to teach; they had performed averagely, and some even poorly, in the university admission exams and they were aware that their standing as educators would be inferior. His associates, who in the beginning were hesitant to employ him as an instructor of fundamental English competencies, were later on willing to give foreign teachers greater opportunity, so they had extra time to take part in other profitable activities, facilitated by and even required in the current economic context (Potts 2003). In spite of the poor motivation in the college, several important reforms took place in the 1980s and 1990s as an outcome of guidelines for the development of curriculum, the formation of ‘nine years’ compulsory education (Potts 2003, 188), the broader utilisation of overseas knowledge and skills and the enhancement of preliminary teacher education. Nevertheless, Adamson (1995) believed that the impacts of modernisation had yet been shallow and that associates were cautious of putting into effect reform policies quite aggressively, ‘given the historically fickle nature of the politics of EFL [English as a Foreign Language] teaching in China’ (ibid, p. 208). Moreover, according to Adamson (1995, p. 209): National policies are formulated somewhat ambitiously, without due regard for the resources at the disposal of individual institutions. The college achieved a reorientation of its curriculum only by marginalising senior staff and local teachers in a supporting role to foreign teachers. In many respects, this situation represents an unhealthy compromise, as the necessary filter to adapt foreign ideas to the Chinese situation is not present. This will only be achieved when local teachers regain the core of the curriculum. Keith Sharpe and Qiuhong Ning (1998), comparing foreign languages training of teachers in China and Great Britain, reported that, although Chinese education was typified by standardisation and the British by diversity, the discourse of ‘improving standards’ and ‘competence and quality’ (Sharpe & Ning 1998, 42) was identical in each society, even though arbitrated through distinct cultural and theoretical systems. Student teachers in Great Britain are in schools most of their time, contrary to China, where teacher training was marginal (Figueroa 2000). This demonstrated an enduring tension between theory and practice in China, wherein, according to Sharpe and Ning (1998, p. 72), “the knowledge base of teaching... is almost exclusively seen as the knowledge of the academic subject being taught.” For instance, teaching is not viewed, hence not treated, as a ‘practical’ discipline, as stated by Potts (2003). Languages and Education of Ethnic Minorities The same mechanisms operate in Great Britain and China to reinforce the political and social discrimination of linguistic minorities. The Han is the major ethnic group in China but there are numerous ethnic groups, with a vast array of languages, used in written and verbal communication (Sharpe & Ning 1998). There has been a conflict at the core of the planning of language curriculum for Chinese higher education. The 1949 constitution proclaimed the right of minority groups to practice and improve their own writing systems and languages (Potts 2003). A movement in the 1980s for the eradication of language obstacles endorsed the common practice of Putonghua (Potts 2003). In business and education, expediency and education were the professed objectives of this movement but, given that majority of the ethnic groups in China dwell along her peripheries, it was about political harmony as well (Ross 1992). The conflict was mitigated theoretically by dividing learning and language with respect to a description of culture. If language was disconnected from culture, verbal varieties of ethnic languages therefore may be promoted and an initiative toward equal opportunity sustained (Richardson 2000). If culture was linked to learning, the writing of the Putonghua characters therefore may still validate a common identity (Potts 2003). Nevertheless, in actual fact, teaching the linguistic minorities of China has been challenging and perplexed, although there were initiatives towards a bilingualism plan in the middle part of the 1980s (Ross 1992). Tibetan education is an excellent case in point. In 1984, Tibetan was re-established as the medium of instruction. But there was a serious dearth of experienced and competent teachers and a dilemma in mustering available resources due to the fact that required knowledge and skills were located in the monasteries that the government refused to recognise (Potts 2003). School attendance in Tibet in 1990 was only slightly higher than 50%, a 20% improvement from the previous five years (ibid, p. 190). Nevertheless, subsequent to this effort improving first language instruction, Tibetan, since 1997, was substituted by teaching in Chinese in grade levels, and individualised instruction in Tibetan in secondary levels and Chinese in higher education (Potts 2003). This involved a subject in the history of Tibet at Lhasa’s Tibet University, where the teachers and the pupils were exclusively Tibetan. The mere exclusions to the latest agenda were several special schools (Potts 2003). The government officials of China seem to be prioritising security concerns over education. They are apprehensive that promoting schools using Tibetan medium will intensify Tibetan patriotic sentiments and insists for more self-rule from China (Ross 1992). When the pupils of Tibet had been trained in the language of Tibet during the 1980s and 1990s, they performed averagely, several of them excellently (Potts 2003). The students from a subject in math instructed in the language of Tibet did as good as those instructed in Chinese. Hence the subsequent year the pupils took exams written in Chinese, which majority flunked (Adamson 1995). The special language programme, advanced as the contrary, produced poor academic performance and the Tibetan pupils having difficulties in Chinese were classified ‘low achievers’ (Potts 2003, 190). Nevertheless, to make amends for the manoeuvring of the educational achievement of Tibetans, through the agenda of China of ‘positive discrimination’ toward ethnic groups, the Tibetan students could acquire additional scores in order to be admitted to a Chinese college or university (Potts 2003, 190). Guidelines for disabled pupils in Great Britain are similar to those for the ethnic groups in China. A hearing-impaired British scholar and author, Mairian Corker (2000), claims that: ‘The practice of language standardisation is a form of institutional oppression” (ibid, p. 459). Corker (2000) draws a connection between modernisation, citizenship, social inclusion, and language policy: Minority languages tend to be systematically separated from those domains that are crucial for social reproduction... Language is always tied to power because the production of an official language is bound up with the centralisation of the nation state through which the official or legitimate language becomes bureaucratically regulated (Corker 2000, 449). She illustrates the verbal model of teaching deaf pupils as a deep-seated violation of the human rights of disabled individuals. She does not share the opinion of those constituents of the British deaf organisation who view the implementation of inclusion in the pedagogical tradition as a diffusion of a culture that the able-bodied imperialists supported when they secluded hearing-impaired individuals in the first place (Potts 2003). Scholars and practitioners who would substitute general oral English with a general British Sign Language (Corker 2000) underestimate the multiplicity of medium of expressions and language. The claim on general types can merely heighten the seclusion of individuals who were deprived of access to them. For hearing-impaired individuals and other users of ethnic languages, social inclusion is a ‘function of the language they use’ (Corker 2000, 460). Thus, modernisation could not have a significant impact on the opportunities for social inclusion (Potts 2003, 191): Linguistic minorities, like other minorities, are defined within the dominant legislative framework by reference to their lack of power, which is seen to be the ‘natural outcome’ of their generalised low position within the cultural division of labour. As an outcome, education will unavoidably be advanced as a way whereby ethnic and vulnerable groups are functionally assimilated into the labour market without creating any menace to state supremacy (Richardson 2000). Social mobility, determined in relation to social inclusion, turns into a futile and usually unintended outcome, although one which has enormous theoretical possibility since it is viewed to be generated through the state’s goodwill (Hall 2000). Social equality for linguistic minorities is related to a democratic politics and multicultural society. Nevertheless, although this obviously does not illustrate China, it should be a portrayal of Great Britain. Yet, as stated by Mairian Corker (2000), these systems are not enough to level out the power inequality between language mainstream and minority. Education and the Issue of Citizenship Diversity of language is progressively examined in the point of view of nationalism. In spite of its radical histories, the notion of citizenship has surfaced to unite heterogeneous people without the integrating principles (Figueroa 2000) and it has reached the educational programme of China and Great Britain. In Europe, according to Ruth Lister, the emergence of ‘citizenship’ is brought about by several forces, including primarily, the re-charting of the map in the Balkans and Germany and the demands of globalisation and nationalism, next, the subject matters of obligations and rights that cross-border movement has created and, lastly, the notion of a European citizenship along with the expansion of the European Union (Potts 2003). Curtailing welfare state systems endangers a greater social kind of citizenship as well. In reaction to these occurrences: “The philosophy of citizenship has provided a means of reconciling the collectivist tradition of the left with notions of individual rights and responsibilities” (Potts 2003, 193). Translating this social-democratic model into reality would be difficult. British notions of citizenship take on a generality that confuses the obstacles to complete citizenship that are present for large numbers of individual due to their restricted opportunity for power and authority (Richardson & Wood 1999). Lister studied the issue of citizenship with regard to women’s position (Potts 2003). Mairian Corker (2000) claimed that on condition that language rights were not completely acknowledged in British education, hearing-impaired individuals would discover themselves barred from citizenship. Michael Ignatieff, honouring the French Revolution, challenged the ‘theoretical right to equality between citizens with the real privilege of bourgeois entrepreneurs’ (Potts 2003, 191). The conflict between real inequality and official equality was unacceptable but there was a setback: ‘free markets are economically efficient’ (Potts 2003, 191). The system of communism had been forged so as to bridge the gap between capitalist and citizen (Potts 2003, 193): Marxism... was an attempt to render the idea of citizenship applicable in modern economic conditions. It failed because the command economy is incompatible with either democracy or efficiency and because its politics never entrenched and protected private rights. Nevertheless, in taking for granted the mutual dependence between private and public, British Conservatism became disjointed during the administration of Margaret Thatcher (Hall 2000), as shown by its approach toward culture (Potts 2003, 193): An enthusiasm for the market as an economic and social instrument is accompanied by a curious distaste for the market place as a distributor of cultural goods... Conservatives turn out to be deeply unhappy about a cultural market place that seems to relativise and trivialise inherited values and that seems to stand for nothing more than the general permission to be free. The problems confronting government authorities of China several years later may be shown in quite similar terms; apart from the fact that the principle of British Conservatism was based on a dedication to individual rights (Richardson 2000). The Chinese Communist Party disallows individual freedom; Thatcher refutes the essence of public principles (Potts 2003). Nevertheless, the mission of cultivating economic progress while simultaneously sustaining cultural and political authority appears to be worldwide. Ignatieff claimed that a sound model for Great Britain was to merge the principles of ‘enterprise, initiative, personal responsibility or even the lawful pursuit of private profit’ with a ‘citizenship of entitlement... the shared foundation that alone makes freedom possible for all’ (Potts 2003, 194). The entirety of a Chinese student’s education may be viewed as openly political, albeit this could be weakening. Including a subject in civics in the curriculum could have helped students of education to fulfil a vigorous role but it also expressed a new form of moral regulation, possibly to oppose the liberating impacts of the process of marketisation (Ross 1992). Hence, the citizenship in China could be further than merely being an exemplary citizen, to be in harmony with communist and traditional value schemes of agreement and idealism, than being the vigorously participating independent citizen of British ideals. Katherine Forestier revealed connections between the political status of teachers and professionalization and between the political functions of schools and their re-educating programmes (Potts 2003, 194): Teachers will be retrained in politics, ideology, morality, subject knowledge, modern pedagogy, education research and analysis, teaching skills, the use of information technology and child psychology... The balance of subjects reflects the fact that schools are regarded as a key channel for the Chinese Communist Party to maintain political influence and control. While the Chinese educational system is reorienting their instruction of politics and civics, thus the British government has included into the National Curriculum the subject of citizenship (Figueroa 2000). The manuscript was made public in 1999 and the sets of programme started in 2002 in secondary levels (Potts 2003, 195). The curriculum is founded on the paradigm of equality and citizenship is characterised as a joint political and social connection: “Education in citizenship and democracy will provide coherence in the way in which all pupils are helped to develop a full understanding of their roles and responsibilities as citizens in a modern democracy” (Potts 2003, 195). The subject in citizenship is created to reinforce the cultural, social, ethical, and spiritual development and major competencies such as entrepreneurial abilities, financial knowledge, problem-solving skills, teamwork, information technology, and communication (Figueroa 2000). These competencies require students to initiate their own questions and discussions, pondering over their own and others’ insights, sharing knowledge, and becoming aggressively drawn in political and social concerns. The repercussion is that pupils will become critical and independent decision-makers and academics (Adamson 1995). An obvious connection is drawn between a progressive democracy and economy. Some of the content areas are: globalisation, conflict resolution, the media, the voluntary sector, political processes and institutions, cultural and social diversity, and human rights (DfES 2005). Great Britain is established within European perspectives, the United Nations and the Commonwealth (Potts 2003). Students will be roused to a debate, justify and explain their own insights and there is a focus on the needed verbal competencies. Students are supposed to understand, resolve, and ponder over various points of view. A significant portion of the manuscript is committed to the subject matter of inclusion, described as ‘providing effective learning opportunities for all pupils’ (Potts 2003, 195). The dedication of New Labour to ‘challenge and support’ in schooling is apparent but appears to be valid to two distinct factions (Potts 2003, 195): (1) For pupils whose attainments falls significantly below the expected levels at a particular key stage, a much greater degree of differentiation will be necessary. (2) For those pupils whose attainments significantly exceed the expected level of attainment within one or more subjects during a particular stage, teachers will need to plan suitably challenging work. Similar to discussions about motivating the creativity of pupils, the document of citizenship language is manipulating and liberating (Figueroa 2000). The independence of students is promoted but the subject itself it rigidly established and will be evaluated in accordance to thorough, predetermined objectives. Conclusions The process of modernisation in China and Great Britain has not led to better equality in education. Both societies have in common an ideal of recognising skills and improving standards. In China, discrimination of ethnic groups and vulnerable individuals in education are evident. The policies of the British New Labour movement for social inclusion are vital to their project of transformation. Nevertheless, these have been denounced for being unproductive and conflicting, due to the conflict between social inclusion and academic superiority. The similarities in China and Britain of equality and meritocratic programmes for education, shows the conflict between collective and individualistic ideals as well. An individual strategy puts inequities at the place of the entire system intact and a collective strategy fails to protect individual freedom and rights. Their decision is to create a relative description of social justice. Nevertheless, the practicality of contemporary paradigms shows an ideological void instead of a dedication to a sound principle. If the objective of modernisation has formed general trends of education changes in China and Great Britain, the justification for describing and reacting to concerns of social justice has been somewhat dissimilar. Great Britain has a more powerful ideal of rights than China, but this fails to recognise a predetermined right to involvement in dominant educational contexts. References Adamson, B. (1995) ‘The Four Modernisations Programme in China and English Language Teaching: A Case Study,’ Compare, 25(3), 197-210. Corker, M. (2000) ‘Disability Politics, Language Planning and Inclusive Social Policy,’ Disability and Society, 15(3), 445-61. DfES (2005) Developing the global dimension in the school curriculum. DfES 1409-2005 doc-EN. Figueroa, P. (2000) ‘Citizenship Education for a Plural Society,’ in Audrey Olser (ed) Citizenship and democracy in schools: diversity, identity, equality. UK: Trentham Books. Hall, S. (2000) ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities,’ in L. Back and J. Solomos (eds) Theories of Race and Racism. London: Routledge. McLaren, P. & Torres, R. (1999) ‘Racism and Multicultural Education: Rethinking ‘Race’ and Whiteness,’ in S. May (ed) Critical Multiculturalism: rethinking multicultural and antiracist education. London: Falmer Press. Potts, P. (2003) Modernising Education in Britain and China: Comparative Perspectives on Excellence and Social Inclusion. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Richardson, R. (2000) ‘Human Rights and Racial Justice: Connections and Contrasts,’ in Audrey Osler (ed) Citizenship and democracy in schools: diversity, identity, equality. UK: Trentham Books. Richardson, R. & Wood, A. (1999) Inclusive Schools, Inclusive Society: Race and Identity on the Agenda. UK: Trentham Books. Ross, H. (1992) ‘Foreign Language Education as a Barometer of Modernisation,’ in R. Hayhoe (ed) Education and Modernisation. The Chinese Experience. Oxford: Pergamon. Sharpe, K. & Ning, Q.H. (1998) ‘The Training of Secondary Modern Languages Teachers in England and China: A Comparative Analysis,’ Compare, 28(1), 57-74. Read More