Teacher exchanges can help rebuild China-US bridge, US educator says

Educational exchanges and ordinary people can help rebuild ties between China and the United States, retired US educator Ronald Sakolsky said at a media briefing in Beijing on Monday, calling on governments to support sustained teacher exchanges and citizens to carry forward people-to-people engagement.

For Sakolsky, the most memorable moment of his latest visit to China was reuniting over the weekend with former students at Luoyang Foreign Language School in Henan province, where he taught more than two decades ago.

"There are professors, doctors, entrepreneurs, bankers, and teachers. I was so proud of them," he said.

Seeing what his students had accomplished reaffirmed why he had chosen to teach, Sakolsky said. Their success showed that the time and effort a teacher invests in young people can continue to bear fruit many years later.

Sakolsky first arrived in China in 1999 through the US-China Teachers Exchange Program. While teaching English in Luoyang, he saw a television report about Yin Yuzhen, a Chinese woman planting trees to combat desertification in the Maowusu Sandy Land.

Moved by her determination, he raised $5,000 through a US charity to support her work. Yin used the money to buy tens of thousands of saplings, which later grew into a forest of more than 50,000 trees.

To Sakolsky, the successful careers of his former students and the forest planted by Yin are two lasting outcomes of the same educational exchange — one that helped young people grow and also enabled a personal act of support to take root across the Pacific.

"If a Chinese woman living in the desert can share a story with an American teacher from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, then the countries can share," he said. "It takes one step."

The US-China Teachers Exchange Program, which brought Sakolsky to China, ended in the summer of 2014. According to the National Committee on US-China Relations, the program ran from 1996 to 2014, sending 116 American teachers to Chinese schools and 332 Chinese teachers to schools in the US.

Sakolsky said he had not known before his return that the program had ended and was deeply disappointed. Without it, he said, he would not have been sitting in Beijing speaking about his experiences, nor would teachers on opposite sides of the Pacific have been able to share their knowledge and perspectives.

He called for renewed and adequately funded programs that would once again allow teachers to live and work in each other's countries. Governments frequently describe education as a priority, he said, but those words must be backed by concrete support.

"Actions speak louder than words," he said, adding that he did not want to place all the responsibility on governments. "But the government has to take the initiative."

Using the image of a bridge, Sakolsky said the leaders of the two countries could lay the first brick by supporting teacher exchanges, but the remaining bricks would have to be put in place through sustained contact between ordinary people.

"It's got to be the common people," he said, noting that ordinary citizens have an indispensable role to play in shaping relations between the two countries.

Such engagement is possible because people in China, the US and elsewhere share fundamental aspirations despite differences between their countries, Sakolsky said.

"China, America and the world have common goals," he said. "You want the best for your children, because they are tomorrow (the future). You want the best for your country."

Supporting one's own country, he added, does not require people to disregard the interests of others or sacrifice their children's future. Instead, education can reduce ignorance and enable people to make their own judgments after considering different perspectives.

"Listen to both sides — listen to the American answers, listen to the Chinese answers," Sakolsky said. "Then you decide in your head what you want to believe. That will build a bridge. That's how we get the common bond."