(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2008-01-14 11:33

'Quality education'

The exam score based on academics is still the only standard method to select students for college admission. Though a university degree no longer guarantees a good job and high salary, it can help, and parents still want to send their children to prestigious colleges for a bright future.

To fully embrace "quality education" in a rat-race era, however, means a new mindset and probably lower test scores.

In principle, quality education covers five aspects: academics, arts and music, moral and value education, physical education and physical labor. The physical labor part is dropped nowadays, and academics is emphasized.

Until that changes, extreme pressure, stress, distress and duress are a matter of course.

Quality education remains a goal, and children's television can help achieve it through learning and entertainment. It can also promote healthy intellectual, emotional and physical growth.

Children's TV in China dates back to the late 1950s. But teaching based on quality education will be incorporated into the 2008 programming by Haha TV, the dedicated children's channel in Shanghai.

Haha TV, formerly a series of TV programs, became a separate channel as of this month. It targets children and teens 14 years old and younger.

Cong Haiying, an official from Shanghai Education Commission, says this is the first time some condensed content and requirements of quality education have been televised in a systematic and easy-to-understand way.

Yang Wenyan, channel director and veteran TV producer, describes today's children, mostly from single-child families, as curious, emotional and capricious. She also sees depression and dissatisfaction.

"The fact is that they are getting too much homework and are asked to compete at the very beginning," she says. "They have little chance to interact with society or nature."

It seems that parents have only one mantra for their children: You must win. That pushes Yang and her team to promote healthy, meaningful learning and child development. It can also help parents understand children's brain development and cognitive growth, and why enormous work loads and demands can be counterproductive.

"The primitive form of children's TV like singing and dancing shows will be replaced by a format with more scientific planning," says Yang. Most programs are developed with experts and psychologists from the Shanghai Education Commission and East China Normal University. Scientific research on children's physical, neurological and emotional development goes into the planning.

"Haha Games" offers funny physical games that take into account children's physical shape and abilities. The program's "happy sports" spirit conforms to local teaching guidelines for physical education.

   1 2 3   

   1 2 3