Flying in the classroom
"If you push them too much, children will run away," says Chen. "If you're too easy on them, they'll grow lazy." Every evening the class is a "tug of war" between Chen and the students.
During this 90-minute tutorial, Chen uses every method at his disposal to hold the attention of his young charges, whose energy is flagging at the end of the day. Studying the Northern and Southern Song dynasties, they cover everything from the Chenqiao Coup to the Jingkang Calamity. Chen describes how Zhao Kuangyin's officers made him emperor and how the emperor subsequently took away the military powers of those same officers. Chen has a lively presentation, and from time to time he inserts jokes to hold the attention of students who are about to nod off.
But there is something here that makes one curious: Why does the class not focus on the typical problem areas for students-namely Chinese, English and math?
Chen acknowledges that he starts with history and geography, which have a lower bar in terms of difficulty, partly because he has a better handle on the material. But he explains that the main reason he does so is that these children have quite honestly too weak a foundation: textbooks for English, math, physics and chemistry are extremely difficult for them; it is easier to engage them by describing the emperors, generals, heroes and beauties of history.
In the same vein, Chen Junlang goes all out thinking of ways to hold these kids' attention. He plays tapes of a dramatic television series about ten Qing-Dynasty emperors. And running counter to the way that history is taught in school, he first gives the students a clear understanding of timelines and then makes links between Chinese history and Western history, letting them know that Alexander the Great's empire coincided with the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods in China.
Despite knowing junior-high-school teaching materials like the back of his hand, Chen only has a high-school education. So that he could teach children, he spent more than a year studying in detail all of the middle-school textbooks on the market. He discovered that there was little difference in the content: they were all stiff, fragmented and lacking in connections. Consequently, Chen decided to write his own set of educational materials-interesting and inspiring texts that begin with history and geography and move on to language, math and science. He aims to use hands-on, experiential methods to raise children's willingness to learn. For instance, they built a model of the kind of wheeled catapults used in the film Lord of the Rings. The project created understanding about axles, levers, parabolas, and mechanics.
Chen's plan to write "Flying Classroom" teaching materials earned a grant of NT$1 million from the Johnny Walker Keep Walking Fund. Apart from offering financial assistance, the grant also served as a kind of affirmation.
Since he was already helping his son (second from left) with his homework, why not help other children in the community? The Jianhe Library was born from Pa Chen's (right) "butting in."