Help 200 students to learn and record their local historical and cultural heritage beyond what can be found in text books. Your donation will help train 20 rural teachers to guide students to do oral history, collecting life stories and narratives of past lifeways by interviewing their family and community elders for archiving, while learning to do research and analysis.
History teaching in China has been focusing on students memorizing facts and standard answers. Students are hardly given any opportunity of open inquiry. Students cannot be active learners, without disposition of raising questions and skills of research answers. Also they learn little from history and can't build good sense of self and the society without uncovering connections between historical facts. With fast industrialization, local history and culture disappearing exacerbates the problem.
We aim at training 200 students to do oral history interviews with family members or community elders in school year 2017-2018, following the standard oral history process. Your donation will help train 20 teachers from 10 rural schools to lead these efforts. The training this Summer will include five week self-practice guided by weekly online discussion, together with an in-person four day workshop at the end. Samples of work from teachers will be uploaded in September.
Through your support, 200 students will retain family/community history and culture, learn history through inquiries, improve their communication skills, and get an edge in seeking higher education. Your donation will also help build deeper understanding and stronger bond between generations, and between students and their home villages, which is beneficial to their growth. Samples of work from students will be uploaded starting from December 2017.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
