Lu Panliang, principal of Fuxing Middle School, talks about what the partnership with Fudan University will bring to this one of the “old eight schools”?
2024-08-15
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In July this year, Shanghai Fuxing Senior High School was officially renamed Fuxing Middle School Affiliated to Fudan University. At the same time, the People's Government of Hongkou District signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Fudan University to launch the "Fudan-Hongkou Experiment" for early discovery and cultivation of top innovative talents. As early as the end of last year, Fudan University signed the "Top Innovative Talent Cultivation Program" with Fuxing Middle School. As a long-established high-quality high school in Shanghai, what changes will the name change of Fuxing Senior High School bring to the school? Recently, the reporter interviewed Lu Panliang, the principal of Fuxing Middle School Affiliated to Fudan University, on this issue.
Return to the embrace and let high schools better understand the needs of talent training
Reporter: As one of the "Eight Great Kings" of Shanghai's well-known high schools, what are the considerations behind Fuxing Middle School's cooperation with Fudan University this time?
Lu Panliang: Our most fundamental purpose in joining hands with Fudan University this time is to keep pace with universities, actively integrate into the new round of education and teaching reforms, leverage the deepening cooperation between regions and universities, further explore new models for the comprehensive training of outstanding innovative talents, and transform the results of higher education reform into advantages in basic education training.
Education, science and technology, and talents are the basic and strategic support for China's modernization. The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has made a special chapter on the "three-in-one" deployment, overall arrangement, and integrated planning of education, science and technology, and talents, pointing out the direction for the high-quality development of education. At the same time, as the comprehensive reform of education continues to deepen, how to promote the scientific and effective integrated training of top innovative talents in universities, middle schools and primary schools requires universities and middle schools to work together.
Moreover, talent cultivation is a long-chain systematic project. At a time when technology empowers and accelerates the development of education, the speed of knowledge update has been shortened to two to three years. It is possible that from the time a student enters school to the time he graduates, the knowledge he has learned has been updated once. Therefore, whether it is a middle school or an "upstream" university, change is an inevitable need.
In reality, the basic education ecology in Shanghai has been changing over the past 20 years. The implementation of the zero-volunteer policy for the high school entrance examination has led to a clear stratification among Shanghai's high schools. The high school quota allocation policy that has been continuously promoted in recent years will bring new changes to the high school structure in Shanghai. As an old high school located in Hongkou District, it faces considerable challenges in development in the face of factors such as the population export from the central urban area and the continuous expansion of the "four schools". To reach a new level, a breakthrough must be made.
This name change is also a return for Fuxing. Fuxing Middle School and Fudan University have a long history. As early as the 1960s, Fuxing Middle School was once under the leadership of Fudan University. Yao Jing, the then principal of Fuxing Middle School, became a member of the Party Committee of Fudan University, which opened the curtain of comprehensive education reform of middle schools under the guidance of the university. At that time, a large number of famous scholars including Professor Su Buqing, the former president of Fudan University, Professor Xie Xide, Vice President Tan Jiazhen, Professor Cai Zuquan, Professor Gu Chaohao, etc. participated in this education reform.
As the leader of education reform, colleges and universities need practical carriers that can implement education reform. So in those years, many Fudan professors would bring their teams to teach middle school students at Fuxing Middle School. After discovering problems during the teaching process, they would go back to make corresponding adjustments and modifications to the textbooks. At the same time, many subject teachers at Fuxing Middle School would also use their holidays to go to Fudan for training. Many teachers lived in Fudan dormitories during the winter and summer vacations, and were personally tutored by a team of professors who participated in the compilation of relevant subject textbooks. Therefore, many courses and teaching contents of Fuxing at that time were closely related to universities. For example, oral English and physical and chemical experiments were leading in all middle schools in the city. Similarly, the number of students admitted to Fudan from Fuxing also rose sharply in those years, with more than 50 students in the most years. The six years of in-depth cooperation with Fudan not only laid the foundation for Fuxing Middle School to become a famous school in Shanghai in the future, but also formed a distinctive teaching feature on campus that advocated discussion, self-study and subject practice.
To promote integrated training from high school to university by taking a specific point as an example
Reporter: After cooperating with Fudan University, what plans does the school have in exploring the "early discovery and early training" of outstanding innovative talents?
Lu Panliang: In 2021, a student from Fuxing University who won the silver medal in the 36th China Mathematical Olympiad was admitted to Tsinghua University through the "Qiu Chengtong Mathematical Science Leadership Talent Training Program", which attracted considerable attention at the time. In fact, since 2015, the school has held the "Su Buqing" class with the support of the School of Mathematics of Fudan University, and gradually formed the characteristics of mathematics competitions. According to the cooperation agreement signed by the school and Fudan this time, the two parties will deepen the construction of the "Su Buqing Class" and establish a new "Tan Jiazhen Class" for Fuxing students with outstanding development potential in the two major disciplines of mathematical sciences and life sciences, and explore the "early discovery, early training" and advanced development of top innovative talents.
The "Su Buqing Class" will rely on Fudan's 11 basic disciplines outstanding student training program 2.0 bases, and Shanghai universities' "moral education and talent cultivation" research bases in mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, etc., to continue to deepen the innovative education exploration of the connection between university and high school; students who choose to take the university-high school integrated training courses can achieve mutual recognition of credits after passing the assessment and being admitted to Fudan in the college entrance examination; through two-way selection, Fudan teachers will serve as academic mentors for the "Su Buqing Class" students to enhance students' scientific research capabilities and innovative qualities.
The newly established "Tan Jiazhen Class" this year will take high school life science as a pilot subject, adopt a "point-to-surface" approach, and carry out a three-year high school-university integrated training program starting from the first year of high school, selecting and training a group of high-quality talents with international vision, comprehensive innovative practice and scientific research capabilities in the field of life science research. Fudan will provide students with integrated training policies, curriculum resources and practice platforms.
At present, Fuxing has selected outstanding students from all over Hongkou District and completed the formation of the "Tan Jiazhen Class" of 2024. Starting from next year, we will cooperate with relevant colleges of Fudan University to jointly design and implement the independent enrollment process of the "Su Buqing Class" and "Tan Jiazhen Class" to recruit students with excellent comprehensive qualities from all over the city.
According to the plan, students in the "Su Buqing Class" and "Tan Jiazhen Class" can use their summer and winter vacations to participate in learning and scientific research activities in relevant colleges and departments of the university, and Fudan will open courses, laboratories, libraries and other related resources for them. In the future, Fudan will also open a "weekend school" Fuxing special class to allow high school students to experience the academic atmosphere and environment of the university in advance, understand the characteristics of the subject, and find their own interests.
From general education that continues the university spirit, to special lectures on establishing career direction, to exploration of through-train talent training, we hope to improve the mechanism for early discovery and training of outstanding innovative talents through a series of in-depth collaborations with universities.
Tailor-made to help students find their interests as soon as possible
Reporter: Cooperation between middle schools and universities is not uncommon. How can we make this cooperation "more than just superficial"?
Lu Panliang: Today, the country is promoting a new round of "double new" education reform. Although there are more and more contacts and cooperation between many universities and middle schools, if universities cannot truly intervene in the education and teaching reform of middle schools, then the cooperation can only remain on the "surface".
What we hope is that both middle schools and universities have a scientific and comprehensive top-level design, and through systematic cooperation, students can understand university learning and research in advance. At the same time, these contents must be related to the current high school curriculum and to students' further studies, rather than simply copying university content into middle school classrooms.
The connection between middle school and university talent training is not a new thing. As early as 2008, Fudan University established the "Buqing High School Student Research Internship Program" to provide outstanding high school students with spare time to experience the atmosphere of undergraduate learning and research. At that time, Fuxing Middle School also participated in this program. Students can not only audit university courses regularly, but also use the summer vacation to follow university teachers to engage in research projects.
There was a student who left a deep impression on me. During one summer vacation, he spent two weeks washing test tubes in a university laboratory. When we learned about this, we initially thought that he had wasted his time, but later when we talked to him, he told us that these two weeks helped him understand the necessary qualities and spirit of scientific research.
Last year, we worked with the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University to develop a summer course called "Approaching Mangroves", with more than a dozen students participating. This is different from the university's original prerequisite courses. The entire course was redesigned by teachers from both sides in conjunction with the District Education College, based on high school life science textbooks and combined with relevant cases.
This summer, we let more students go out of their homes and follow Fudan experts and professors to approach mangroves to conduct research projects. They approached artificial mangroves in Shanghai and Wenzhou, Zhejiang, using a group cooperative learning method that combines classroom and practice, and explored scientific issues in the northward migration of mangroves and the protection and restoration of coastal wetlands under global climate change. This course is problem- and interest-oriented, and is assessed through academic reports rather than traditional exams. We hope to explore new ways to evaluate middle school subject teaching and create a demonstration platform that connects universities and middle schools. With further cooperation with universities, there will be more and more similar project-based learning courses in the future, and more and more students will participate.
In addition to cooperating with universities to tailor project-based learning courses, every academic year, we also invite university teachers to hold eight categories of general education lectures in multiple disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, literature, history, philosophy, and economics. For each lecture, we will ask the other party to explain at least a few questions to the students. For example, what is the research direction of a certain subject? What changes will occur in the future prospects of this subject? If you want to choose this subject, what preparations should you make from now on? I hope that university teachers can clearly convey these concepts to high schools, so as to jointly achieve the goal of talent training.
The new college entrance examination reform in Shanghai emphasizes career planning, and the various attempts made by the school and universities in recent years also hope to help students find their interests and work hard to transform them into hobbies through planned and organized high school-university through-training. In this regard, we are willing to be "guinea pigs" and provide some practical cases for high school-university through-training.
Author: Wang Xing
Text: Wang Xing Photos: Provided by the school Editor: Wang Xing Responsible editor: Jiang Peng
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