GREAT Festival of CreativityEducation creates the people who build economies and generate the ideas, technologies, and creative visions that drive progress.A Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) official told a Shanghai forum for China-UK Culture Year that only universities can both strengthen internationalized education and help students develop critical thinking.
The official, Jiang Feng, Chair of SISU’s University Council, explained to other participants in the “Inspiring Young Minds: the art of Education” session that comparisons of difference cultures helps develop critical thinking, which is the precondition and foundation of creative study.
Jiang also told forum attendees that education is valuable in taking the young people on a journey where differences must be acknowledged and where they can form their own opinions and values. In his view, teaching is communication both ways between teachers and students leading to the effective knowledge translation from those who know to those who don’t.
Jiang pointed out that SISU has developed a series of programs to advance internationalized education, which include state-funded international exchange of potential graduate students and the cooperation between SISU and one of the UK’s MOOC platforms, FutureLearn.
Attendees also included FutureLearn’s CEO Simon Nelson and English graphic designer Neville Brody.
The forum, held by the British consulate in Shanghai, is only one activity during the 2015 China-UK Culture Year, which was designed to further the relationship between the two countries in commerce, technology, culture and engineering.
