From Changsha, Hunan, China to the Republic of South Sudan, and from Asia to Africa, the ink of 745,000 textbooks drifted tens of thousands of kilometers and arrived in Juba, the capital of the Republic of South Sudan, on July 14. These textbooks will be sent to about 654.38 million children in South Sudan to help the country gradually establish an education system.
This is one of the contents of China's first comprehensive "education aid" project-China's educational technology cooperation project with South Sudan. The project is led by the Ministry of Commerce, undertaken by Zhongnan Publishing Media Group Co., Ltd. and implemented by Tianwen Digital Media Technology Co., Ltd. ..
Where did the project come from? What's the point?
Assistance includes educational planning, textbook development and other projects.
South Sudan was founded on July 9, 20 1 1, and is the youngest country in the world at present. After years of war, South Sudan's politics, economy, society, education and other aspects are in urgent need of development, and education is listed as the key development area after national defense.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, education in South Sudan started almost from scratch, and the shortage of teaching materials and related teaching resources is the most urgent educational problem facing South Sudan. Some of the textbooks used in primary and secondary schools in South Sudan are aided by other countries, and some still follow the old textbooks of the Sudan period. There is no unified planning and design, and different teaching materials have different sources, which leads to improper connection and fragmentation of teaching materials. At the same time, the supply of teaching materials in South Sudan is far from meeting the demand. According to the official data of South Sudan, the ratio of students to textbooks in primary school is about 5∶ 1, that is, five students use 1 textbooks, and it is about 7∶ 1 in secondary school.
On June 20 14, Zhongnan Media formally applied to the Ministry of Commerce for the "South Sudan Education Comprehensive Development Project". After many negotiations and field visits, 201165438 In 2006, the first comprehensive education foreign aid project implementation agreement led by the Ministry of Commerce and specifically undertaken by Zhongnan Publishing Media Group was signed in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
According to the project cooperation, this foreign aid education project combines the national characteristics and education status of South Sudan, and starts from five modules: top-level education planning, textbook development, teacher training, ICT teacher training center construction and textbook printing, so as to help South Sudan achieve the development goal of "new country, new education". Gong Shuguang, chairman of Zhongnan Publishing and Media Group Co., Ltd. said that this project is expected to comprehensively improve the educational environment in South Sudan, help it build an all-round development system of modern education, and lay a solid educational foundation for this young country.
So far, the project has made many breakthroughs in other aspects.
The reporter learned that one of the three top-level design reports of South Sudan's education undertaken by Tianwen Digital Media, a subsidiary of Zhongnan Media, has been completed and submitted to the Ministry of Commerce, and the first drafts of the Guidelines for the Informatization Construction of South Sudan's Education and the Guidelines for the Modernization Construction of South Sudan's Education will be completed in mid-July and mid-September respectively. Tianwen Digital Media also undertook the construction of ICT training center for teacher training in South Sudan.
The first batch of 58 South Sudanese teachers have been successfully trained in China. As "seed teachers", they returned to South Sudan to further train local teachers. The second batch of 140 South Sudanese "seed teachers" will also come to China for training in the near future.
At the same time, Hunan Education Publishing House, Hunan Children's Publishing House, Hunan Science and Technology Publishing House and Tianwen Digital Media under Zhongnan Media have assembled the top basic education writing teams in China, and undertaken the compilation of mathematics, English and science textbooks for South Sudan primary schools (1 to grade 8), striving to provide tailor-made textbooks for teachers and students in South Sudan and help rebuild education in South Sudan. The new textbooks of three subjects are expected to be checked and accepted in June+10 this year, and then printed, and are expected to be shipped to Juba early next year.
Exploring a new mode of cultural education going abroad
At present, the main recipients of China's foreign aid come from developing countries and regions such as Asia, Africa and Latin America. According to the content and methods, the assistance methods can be divided into two types: conventional assistance such as infrastructure construction and material assistance, and "soft assistance" to carry out various technical cooperation in the local area and invite personnel from recipient countries to attend humanities training in China.
"In the process of foreign aid, China culture should develop and manufacture products according to the needs of foreign readers, instead of simply speculating what foreign readers need from their own perspective," said Ding Shuangping, general manager of Zhongnan Media. "The aid to South Sudan education project starts with five modules and focuses on solving this problem."
In Gong Shuguang's view, this brand-new mode of cultural education going abroad can make our cultural output have lasting power, even affect generations of local students and teachers, and form the possibility that Chinese culture will take root and sprout in this country for a long time.
Yang Mu, general manager of Tianwen Digital Media Technology Co., Ltd. said that one of the most important contents of South Sudan's educational science and technology cooperation project is to help South Sudan formulate national educational strategic planning, relevant policy systems and curriculum standards. This positioning can ensure that the teaching material development and teacher training in the subsequent stage will be integrated into China's values consistently and orderly, and also ensure that China will implement educational projects in South Sudan for a long time and continuously.
The first phase of South Sudan's educational technology cooperation project was started and laid the foundation by applying for national free aid funds, but the design of long-term operation fully embodies the characteristics of marketization. Experts in the industry believe that the mode of aiding South China, with the country as the leading factor and cultural publishing enterprises as the main body, will help to cultivate an international team, build a set of textbook publishing and printing system that adapts to the international market, lay a solid foundation for exploring the whole African market in the future, and also accumulate experience and reserve talents for China culture to go abroad better in the future.
People's Daily (201July 71June 8 12 edition)
(Editor: Wang Jiquan, Bai)