Around the World
Bai-jun Sun, Inner Mongolia, Hohhot, China
The cause of education is experiencing profound changes not only in developed countries, but also in developing countries. This changing focus is mainly to let every school aged child have access to education and gain real benefit through a perfect educational goal. This change is challenging to all teaching staff worldwide.
The target of ‘nine year compulsory education’ in China is to let every school aged child complete at least nine years of basic education, and by law this includes mentally and physically disabled children. Instead of ‘meeting exam education’, the slogan becomes, ‘practising quality education’. The so-called quality education has three main factors:
- Education is compulsory and all children have the right to mainstream education;
- students should have an all round education in morality, intelligence, physique and aesthetics;
- students should be active learners, ‘lords of learning for themselves’.
When we look at what we have been doing in the past, every educator can see the great challenge we are facing. The different and very complicated social and economic background has made Inclusive Education the perfect educational goal for all children. However teachers need help first! They need international information. They need technical support. They need the opportunity to exchange their experience.
The establishment of EENET has brought us a hopeful channel for exchanging information worldwide. We sincerely hope that EENET will help us to stamp out marginalisation in education for all time.
Bai-jun Sun, works in the Teacher Training Division of the Department of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot, China.