Shanghai Daily news

There is a Japanese story that has been known to move many Chinese children. It is about a girl who is kicked out of a public primary school because her imagination and hobbies disturbed the school's normal curriculum.
Upon her expulsion, the girl's mother found her a suitable school led by a benign headmaster with classes held in several old trolley buses.
After continuous encouragement from the headmaster, the girl led a confident and happy childhood.
As a grown-up, she would write a series of stories as a tribute to her late, beloved headmaster in the 1980s after she became a famous anchorwoman in Japan. The book immediately became a best-seller around the world and understandably, enlightened many educators in China.
By the end of 1980s, Liu Jinghai, headmaster of Zhabei No. 8 Middle School, raised a similar education theory which could be described as words that inspire students to "feel they are accessible to success."
"Students, who are repeatedly denied by their teachers or parents, will lose confidence in school life," Liu argued.
He said in some children's opinions, going to school was the last thing they wanted to do.
"Continuous failure in exams and complaints from adults have made some children felt tortured when studying."
In his research, Liu communicated with teachers to make them believe that every child in the school had the potential for success.
However, simply providing encouragement could not solve everything. Children would soon feel they were being cheated if they found there was nothing changed in their studies. To help children increase their confidence, educators needed to make them believe they are able to handle their studies.
"You cannot provide children with enough confidence by stuffing them with the solutions of binary equations when they are still confused by unitary ones," Liu theorized.
The school needed to divide incapable students into different groups and have teachers help them separately.
When their studies improved, teachers were suggested to reduce their help and let the children catch up with the rest of their classmates by themselves.
"Our aim is to make students confident and independent. We encourage and help children, but we don't want to be their safety pole," Liu said.
"Teachers will keep paying heed to such students and only help them when they meet great difficulty."
Such new educational theories have been mulled over since the 1980s, when the university-entrance exam was resumed following the Cultural              Revolution (1966-1976).
However, the system was driven to extreme when adults put great pressure on their children with the thinking that if they didn't attend a good university, there would be no bright future.
But it was clear that exam-oriented education made studies dull and added more psychological pressures onto students.
Jin Lifu, headmaster at the Hetianlu Primary School in Zhabei District, has tried to change the dull study standards.
"We are trying to stir up children's creativity by encouraging them to seek different solutions when facing problems," Jin said.
At present, about 99.18 percent of students in Zhabei District middle schools have graduated while the high school pass rate has reached 98 percent.