Published: 19 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
A Chinese businesswoman and Israeli educator are introducing China to democratic education, challenging cultural norms of obedience and authority.
Jiang Hanwei had been teaching physics at a country high school in eastern China’s Anhui Province for more than 10 years when she first learned about the virtues of “Jewish education”.
She’d had no knowledge of Judaism and had never met a Jew, but her perception that Jews were smart was enough to radically transform her approach to teaching.
Her traditional Chinese teaching method – with its teacher-centred lecture-style classes grounded in the Confucian hierarchy of absolute authority of the master over the student – gradually gave way to this new, Western approach.
In what came as an absolute shock to Jiang’s fellow teachers, her students were now running the class; no longer restricted to speaking only when spoken to, they were encouraged to interrupt Jiang’s lecture with remarks and questions – a terrible faux pas in Chinese culture – at times taking the teacher’s seat.
What was even more remarkable: after a drop in grades and a series of complaints from students and other teachers, things started to improve. Within just a couple of months, her students’ scores on the college entrance exam – known in China as the gaokao, a gatekeeper that often stands between success and failure in life – reached the highest levels in the school.
To Jiang and other Chinese teachers and parents, “Jewish education” was the system responsible for creating the world’s most rich and powerful people – Jewish businesspeople, bankers, and media tycoons – a common stereotype in China.
But the system that Jiang brought to her students came from a workshop she had attended led by an odd couple: charismatic businesswoman Zhou Ying and prominent Israeli educator Yaacov Hecht.
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A Lesson in Chutzpah: Why Israeli Education Is Growing in China (Haaretz)
