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Beijing - Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Beijing Jiayu English Center

The morning and early afternoon were spent at the Jiayu English Center in an outer suburb of Beijing.  At its most affluent, the area is middle class, but it also has substantial housing projects for poorer people.  You could see dozens of "under-employed" men on the street nearby the school.

The Jiayu school, for both school age children as well as local adults, was created by Mr. Jerome Ma of Lenovo and his wife (Jackie Wang) in response to what they perceive as the overly restrictive educational approach to teaching English in the formal school systems.

It’s a modest facility with great ambitions.  Here pictured is Mr. Ma in a room filled, in part, with surplus, uncensored English books made available by the Westchester Library System.  The Briarcliff school system will be undertaking a similar effort to contribute books to this English Center.

It isn’t easy for me to convey, just in words, the concepts and the implications of what this school represents, so I’d suggest you watch Mr. Ma’s explanation.   The video clip is more than twenty minutes, but it offers a fascinating perspective on both Chinese and American education.

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March 2006 Report
by Norm Jacknis, Westchester County Chief Information Officer