Writing a weekly journal has become an integral part of life for teachers at Yufeng Experimental School in Kunshan of Jiangsu Province.

As the first school in China to adopt the pilot programme, "New Educational Experiment" launched in 2002, the school requires its teachers to jot down weekly notes of significant classroom events, including emotions evoked by particular students, in order to keep a watchful eye on pupils as they grow and develop throughout their school life.

These notes can help teachers develop a mental picture of their students, aiding them to communicate particular issues they may have with a pupil.

Teachers before may never have believed that such a process could have such a strong influence on the education of a student.

However, compiling weekly journals about classroom events is now gathering momentum and this particular aspect of the "New Educational Experiment" has been the most notable, said Zhu Yongxin, 47, the advocator of the pilot programme, now deputy mayor of Suzhou and former professor of Suzhou University.

Wu Yinghua, a Chinese language teacher at the school, took notes on a certain "problem student" in her weekly teaching journal.

The first few lines of Wu's journal detailed aspects that stood out in her mind about this student, such as "Male, born in 1989, parents divorced and mother remarried, spoilt by his mother, clever but naughty, the most difficult student for teachers."

In Wu's mind, this student was perhaps the most difficult student, who would carry out rebellious acts that no other pupil would dare to do.

This problem student would bully his classmates into using a fouled toothbrush; he would muddy the walls by bouncing a dirty basketball against them; and he would curse his teachers in public, to name just a few examples of his misbehaviour.

Wu was determined not to give up on this student and set himself the target to reform him.

Having noted how this student changed during junior school, Wu compiled her journal into a book containing 150,000 characters, which she titled "Boy, I watch you grow up."

Wu's hard efforts of using her notes to communicate with the boy eventually paid off. This June, this former problem-student came first in the high school entrance exam graduating as a top student.

The final thing this student did before leaving the school was to make a respectful bow before Wu in thanks for all her hard efforts in reforming him. He vowed that he would study hard in high school with an ambitious aim to get into the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Successful experiment

As Gao Ziyang, a teacher of Yufeng Experimental School, told China Daily, "Journal writing is so far the most successful part of the experiment in our school."

Teachers are required to finish one set of notes per week on classroom activities while students are required to complete three per week. They would then be required to compile their notes into a legible format with pictures and illustrations on a yearly basis, Gao said.

The school has collected some 2,000 self-compiled progress books over the past three years. Some of which have been officially published, such as principal Zhou Kunshan's book titled "Action and Rewards: Record of the New Educational Experiment in Yufeng School," and a further 10 of the students' books will also be published soon.

In the autumn of 2002, Yufeng Experimental School started putting the educational experiment into practice on a large scale. "Great changes have taken place in the behaviour of students, teachers and the school itself," said Zhou Jianhua.

"However, the New Educational Experiment is in fact not a completely new concept," said Zhu Yongxin.

The ideas were initially borrowed from Chinese educators such as Tao Xingzhi who adopted education methods used in Western countries in the 1920s. "What we are doing now is putting these old ideas into new concrete practices," Zhu said.

"It is hoped that this experiment will help provide a setting for a well-rounded educational development as opposed to the prevalent 'score education system'," he said.

Zhu emphasized that the goal of the programme is to help teachers and students enjoy education.

Until now, 238 schools, both public and private, from 23 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions are engaged in this experiment.

"Test-oriented education has long existed in China, be it ancient imperial examinations or the present college entrance examination," said Zhu. "It diverts the education process from its original function and misdirects students, teachers and schools."

According to Zhu, school children are said to be the ones who "work the hardest, suffer the most, get up the earliest and sleep the latest" and all this against the pressure of getting good marks.

Teachers "get bored of their vocation and are not content in education" since every day they have to "teach the lesson mechanically and find ways to deal with tests."

Schools "severely limit their abilities" due to the high demand on test results, so they lose the ability to "cultivate the campus culture, develop students' characteristics and build up their individual personalities."

Zhu is not satisfied with the present educational status quo, which according to him, "features merely test taking, killing students' individuality and development."

As early as the late 1980s, Zhu, then a teacher at Suzhou University, tried to find a method to redress the basic education system, but his ideas were "incomplete" at that time.

He has since published two books on education "My Educational Ideal" in 2000 and "The Dream of New Education" in 2002, which encouraged him to instigate the education experiment in Kunshan, near Shanghai, three years ago.

Education online

In addition to the success of classroom journals, the experiment has also involved the set-up of an education website. Zhu uses this site as a key channel to voice his educational ideas to teachers across China.

Education On Line, the website he founded in 2002, has now become "the largest cyberspace school" for teachers in elementary education in China.

It currently has nearly 140,000 registered members and approximately 2,000 new articles get posted on the site daily. Teachers and students in Yufeng Experimental School frequently post their useful classroom notes on the site, according to Gao Ziyang.

"This is the future of education for me," said Luo Min, an experienced teacher in a remote area in Southwest China's Yunnan Province. "Through this website, I identified the weak points in my teaching. I learned a lot from it," he said.

Now Luo visits the site regularly and is involved in helping Zhu maintain the teaching forum for primary school education.

Many teachers as well as students and their parents love Zhu's passionate ideas, but their questions remain.

Is it really possible to carry out the new experiment if test-oriented education prevails, leaving scores as the single standard of ability in schools?

Some individuals expressed that "the new educational experiment is redundant under a score-based educational model."

In his book titled "The Dream of New Education," Zhu compares his new experimental ideas to a dream. He realizes that there is a long way to go before education in China can be reformed.

However, as he said once, "A man cannot go far without an ideal, so a country and an education system must also hold an ideal to reach success."

(China Daily December 23, 2005)