A Brief Reflection of Ontario High Schools: How does western education impact on Chinese Education

Introduction

Nowadays, the focus of the Ontario educational system is improved. Schools are looking forward to a better performance in both academic and social aspects; school boards are expecting a greater outcome from the educational institutions in their districts; students and parents have never stopped looking for a school providing comprehension development. In a word, the whole educational system of Ontario is moving forward sustainably. However, improvement needs energy. Sustainable improvement needs sustainable energy that can be converted into human and material resources (Hargreaves& Fink, 2007). Through the visits to the secondary schools in Niagara region, the developmental potential of the education shows incisively and vividly. There were four secondary schools visited by us in November: Eden High School, St. Francis Secondary School, St. Catharines Collegiate School, and Blessed Trinity Catholic Secondary School. In this paper, three of them will be picked to compare and evaluated: Eden High School, St. Francis Secondary School, and St. Catharines Collegiate School, because of that all three schools represent different form of school existing in Ontario: Public School, Catholic School, and Public Christian School. Afterward, such educational representatives of Ontario will be compared with the educational system in China in several aspects. Furthermore, an overview of eastern and western education will be stated at the end.

A general evaluation of schools

First of all, I am really glad to obtain the chance of obvious the Canadian schooling system internally. All the schools we have visited are elites in their specific educational area. For instance, the St. Francis Secondary School is a marvelous Catholic school in the school district. St. Francis locates nearby Niagara Lake shore. Because of the area is settled by the middle and upper class families, the constructions of the school are well built and decorated. As a fact, he students at St. Francis are mainly from the middle class and upper class result in that the school contains good manner and order. Generally speaking, the first impression of St. Francis is the heavily cultural atmosphere. The school daily schedule consists of numerous cultural activities and traditional events. Plenty of religious symbols and pictures, the memento of annual events and activities displayed in the well decorated hall. In addition, the strongest characteristic of the school prided by administrators is that school has a very strict discipline to keep it in great order. For example, Uniforms and specific kind of shoes are necessary to be worn on campus. What else, the tattoos and accessories like earrings are abandoned by the regulation of the school. During the visit, we can easily feel the peaceful and organized climate of the St. Francis. Moreover, another impressive factor is the technology and equipment for the school. From smart board, visual communication system in the classroom, to workshop, mechanical factor, musical classroom and even media center, the school contains almost every single top technology that could be utilized in education. As a result, the capacity of the student is amazing by the various choices of self-interest based courses. In fact, it seems the biggest difference between eastern and western education which will be discussed in later parts.  Last but not the least, the special education of St. Francis is fabulous. Special students in this school are treated very considerately and carefully. There are several levels to separate different degree of their disabilities. Some of them are able to involve into normal classes with their own teaching assistants. Another group of special students is arranged in resources classes with supports of extra resources for their study. And the rest which cannot proceed regular studies are looked after carefully in the special classes. By the thoughtful consideration and treatment, the special students can experience the best study climate they can ever have.

When you step into the school gate of Eden high school, you can surely smell the difference from other schools. As mentioned before, Eden High School is a Public Christian School. Normally, the religious school is not allowed to become a part of the district of the school board. As a special case, Eden is a Christian school; however, it is still not allowed to proceed religious activities in school time. Same as St. Francis High School, Eden High School has a strict discipline as well. A vivid evidence is that two students got a three day suspension because of walking while national song. The suspension is extremely serious to us, and it is impossible in China only by violating certain rule. Nevertheless, such punishments are kind of success as well because of being a part of moral leadership. According to Sergiovanni (1975), many school administrators are practicing a form of leadership that is based on moral authority, and such practice should be acknowledged as leadership. The administrators of Eden do successfully build a mutual respective relationship through the school wide by setting certain regulations and taking it seriously. As another expression of moral leadership, spiritual department is a core component of Eden’s educational system. This department mainly focuses on the mental health of the student. Besides, all off-school religious activities for students and teachers are held by spiritual department, it consequently regarded as an important agency to maintain symbols of Christian school. In addition, another impression in Eden is the patrolling police officer on campus. The principal Mr. Thompson explained that settling police in school can avoid bullying behavior from students. However, it can also be explained as an extreme way to keep the order in the school. Although it might secure the social equity on campus, student still could feel uncomfortable about being observed by police, like prisoners.

Due to the great scale of the school and the lovingly reception, we spent the most time in St. Catharines Collegiate high school, hence the information from this school is much more than provided by other schools. During our school tour, we observed the difficulties of organizing such a big educational institution. For instance, a boy was lying randomly under the stair and seems very sick. When the vice principal asked him about the reason, he just paltered him with the reason of not feeling comfortable. The biggest impression of the school is that the school provided us a fancy lunch which made by special student. Such activities show another kind of consideration to those special students that differ from schools above. The philosophy of special education in Collegiate is that they are not only taking care of the students but also looking forward to creating a better future for them. After having lunch at school, I went to watch a basketball game between Collegiate school team and Grimsby school team due to the heavy rain outside. As a fact, the enthusiasm of students for sports was really impressed me. The sports team for Canadian schools is far beyond only a competitive group but a representative of school culture. According to my own experience, since once I have played basketball for my school team, although the sports team in Chinese school can occupy school time for training and contesting, it still is isolated from rest parts of the school. Students are never allowed to dodge classes for watching games of their own school. To be frank, such impression gave me a sense of humanistic concern in Canadian schools; it is not about academic excellence, but the sense of collectivism.

Lastly, all three schools will be compared generally and systematically by using the professor Sydor’s “Four Leadership Frames” theory and Dr. Larry Lezotte’s “Correlates of School Improvement.

		Eden High Christian public school Trinity	St. Catharines Collegiate	St. Francis high school
STRUCTURAL FRAMES	Students Appearance	·  Religious students, uniformed, well organized by strict disciplines and police	·  Minorities and new immigrants, dress sloppily and poorly, behave desultorily and unconcernedly	·  Mainly white students, Uniformed, well organized by strict disciplines
	Teachers Appearance	·  Teachers look very professional, dress in a casual formal style, has a positive interaction with their students	·  Teachers look tired and unconfident, dress casually, bare have interaction with students	·  Teachers look very professional, dress formally, has positive interaction and various activities in class
	Class Scale and Discipline	·  Various Classes available to students, students are concentrating and active based on their own interest	·  Transmitting based classes, students seem to be abstracted ·  School discipline shows in front of every classroom	·  Students are organized by course and the teacher not class, generally small classes ·  Students’ interest and ability are well developed
	School Order	·  Hardware: classroom equipped with updated technics, hand work workshops, mechanical factory and art rooms; ·  Environment: school building is new, clean and neat, all in good order ·  School Uniform: students all dressed in uniform	·  Hardware: classroom equipments are old and outdated, no sensory room at school, a big library and huge auditorium ·  Environment: school building is big but old, not very clean nor neat ·  School Uniform: the only public school with uniform	·  Hardware: classroom well equipped, advanced electric equipments are utilized, independent resource room, workshops and media rooms. ·  Environment: school building fulfills new and clean of cultural elements ·  School Uniform: students all dressed in uniform
HUMAN RESOURCE FRAMES	Principal Leadership Style	Male. ·  Efficient, and professional principal with consideration for students ·  The principal works closely with teachers and students ·  Strong moral leadership	Female ·  Very kind, responsible but not professional enough, invitational leadership style ·  The vice principal seems to be unfamiliar with the school facilities and students, she said she is a newcomer	Male Efficient, care about all students. Little bit bureaucratic, lack of communication with us
	Teacher-Student Relationship	·  Seems limited ·  Students are well organized by the teachers ·  Lack of information	·  Standard, seems like lack of cooperation	·  Good, positive interaction with each other, students show respect to teachers and teachers seem to care about students
	Others	·  School council is very effective because parents are pleased to be getting involved in school activities	·  School gets 5000 hours volunteer services per year from the community	·
SYMBOLIC FRAMES	Non-Religion	·  School history display board, school trophy show box, and students’ decorations are neat and beautiful showing that the school is under good management	·  A board on the wall showing the history of the school at the front door ·  Colorful decoration paintings on the wall in lobby and hallways	·  School history display board, school trophy show box, and students’ decorations are neat and beautiful ·  Elements show the characteristics of the school
	Religion	·  Numerous cross, religious portrait and symbols infiltrate into every corner of the school ·  Photo frames of the Pope and the Primate and cross in the lobby ·  Students-painting crosses ·  Morning prayer	·  None	·  Not too many symbols of religion, but the school still shows their Christian religion by several aspects

Comparison between Chinese and Canadian educational system

Leaders through their ways of mandating to approach their vision of schools. Whatever decisions they make, ways they choose to implement educational improvement, they will "tap people's emotions, appeal their values, and respond to their connections with other people" (Sergiovanni, 1992, p. 76). There is a morally based leadership-- a form of stewardship, that emerged in the late 20^th century (Sergiovanni, 1992). In stewardship, school leaders, administers, teachers, and parents share their ideas and values, more importantly, responsibilities for students' learning. Students are also a part of this leadership, "they join the others in stewardship responsibility for the school as learning community" (Sergiovanni, 1992, p. 91). As Sergiovanni comments, 

Stewardship represents primarily an act of trust, whereby people and institutions entrust a leader with certain obligations and duties to fulfill and perform on their behalf. For example, the public entrusts the schools to the school board. The school board entrusts each school to its principal, parents entrust their children to teachers. ... Stewardship involves placing oneself I service to ideas and ideas and to others who are committed to their fulfillment. It furnishes an attractive image of leadership. (p. 91)

During the school visiting, the principals all mentioned about how their communities contributed to the school, how the parents involve themselves in the school event and help schools establish programs. They are not only proud of their staff and teachers but the bigger environment they live in. School, community, parent, and student are interrelated in terms of building a more effective learning environment. In China, they have a top to down hierarchy relationship. A community is much less likely involved in students' learning. Parents' job is to obey what the school tells them to do in terms of students' assignments and then monitor their children to finish. Instead of cultivating multiple abilities, schools in China focus on the students' successfulness of exams. As a result, the cognitions of students' learning orientation, self-awareness, and social obligation are low. This stewardship starts to emerge in private schools in some big cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and so on. But it is still a tough way to persist and implement it in the exam-focused school culture.

Generally speaking, the educational system in Ontario province is far ahead of most educational systems in the world, including Chinese and American. Based on the organizational theories, the educational organizational structure is moving steadily forward to a learning organization model; meanwhile, the Chinese education is still struggling between bureaucracy and modified bureaucracy. Although there are increasing educational leaders in China who start to care about more than the result of examinations. The whole society in China including educator student and parent is still putting the academic excellence on priority. The power of decision making in schooling system is impossibly distributed into lower levels of the educational structure. The student and parent are still located on the bottom of the whole educational pyramid. Besides, the so-called educational reform in china is mainly based on quality oriented education, which focuses on providing multiple developmental directions to students and distributing the right of decision making into student and parent level. However, all Chinese educational institutions are still directed by the syllabus formulated by the government, and the result of examinations that based on such syllabus is still the only way to evaluate the outcome of education. Therefore, the education in China could possibly improve only if the Chinese educational system could be restructured by entire society according to the real purpose of the quality oriented education. In a word, pyramid organizational construction of education should be eliminated.

As another fact, overwhelmingly more Chinese schools start importing “invitational education” into their classes. Nevertheless, the invitational education is based on Dewey’s educational theory, constructivism, which was abandoned by Chinese government several decades ago. However, the current Chinese educational system is simply referring to the successful outcome of western education reform and ignoring the basis of such revaluation. Like a bomb without blasting fuse, you cannot control the timing and power; like a skyscraper without groundwork, you cannot direct the construction growing straightly and solidly. It could definitely lead a disaster for our educational system without a bright correction. The original purpose of invitational education is inviting students to develop themselves initially. On the contrary, the misunderstanding invitational education will possibly mislead into a dead loop. In order to really apply advanced western educational theories into Chinese environment, the administrators and leaders must realize that simply importing part of the system can no longer work in the current situation. The barycenter of education must be transferred from exam-oriented to student-centered. Besides, the government should lay the educational pyramid down and truly distribute the power into different levels. Although the government and educational department could still work as a leader of the whole system, providing the direction and adjusting the deviation, the mutual respect and interaction are still the foundation of the advanced learning organization. Finally, to quote from Albert Einstein, We cannot solve the problems that we have created with the same thinking that created them.    

Conclusion

In conclusion, we are really pleased to have the chance of visiting those preeminent schools in Niagara region. Such experience provides a general vision of the Canadian educational system to us. As a part of graduate study, this kind of applicable course, offers students not only general knowledge but also applications into real educational institutions, the principle of teaching in Canada could easily explain by such activities. In the end, the useful experiences and precious memories will be definitely recorded in my path of educational career.

Reference:

Hargreaves, A., Fink, D. (2006). Sustainable leadership. John Wiley & Sons. Inc.

Sergiovanni, T. (1992). Moral leadership. The Jossey-bass reader on educational leadership (2nd. Ed.). Pp. 75-92.