As many of you know, I was part of a Los Angeles delegation of educators on a visit to China this past week.  I was sad to miss Back-to-School-Night, but honored and proud to represent LACHSA abroad. This 21-member delegation, led and sponsored by UCLA's Confucius Institute and Graduate School of Education, also consisted of superintendents and principals from several Los Angeles County school districts as well as representatives of the California School Boards Association.

A high school student performs a Beethoven Sonata.

For LACHSA, the goals of my visit were simple:  First,  to create opportunities and connections for our students in an ever-growing and dynamic world like our proposed China Exchange.  Second, to continue to expand the profile of LACHSA as an international institution for arts and education.  At LACHSA, we understand that art can transform the human spirit.  It has the power to uplift  and inspire us, to bring joy and heal us.  The arts can also bridge divides of language, culture, and nationality in unique ways to discover and uncover the universal traits that bind us all.  Our responsibility as an institution is to provide opportunities for our students to experience this for themselves.

The first part of our visit focused on Shanghai.  This sprawling metropolis is one of the most dynamic and fast-paced cities on earth.  Its towering, iconic skyline boasts the tallest building in China and the fourth tallest on earth; it is also one of the world's most populous cities.

A thoroughly modern city, Shanghai is extremely safe and clean, with bustling streets, Western shops, and international travellers of all sorts.  Despite the dazzling and dizzying frenzy of urban China, our main focus was on the schools.

Our hosts, the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (SMEC), have been very interested in international models of education and the design of schools for some time now.  Their interest in high-performing schools in California has intensified in recent years and is realized through principal and teacher shadowing initiatives, student excursions abroad, and placements for graduates from universities.  Their goal is to identify the best practices of American schools and implement them in a uniquely Chinese context. 

Our schedule was exhaustive and consisted of school visits--including discussions with schools administrators--formal discussions with (SMEC) members, and working dinners, ending in the late evening.

The schools were clean and ordered, as I had imagined, and the class sizes of the public schools of all levels were large--averaging about 48 students.  All of the students in the schools we visited wore uniforms adorned with a red scarf.  It is important to remember that although China is a modern nation with a modern, market-oriented economy, China is a country with a very strong and undemocratic communist party system.

Interestingly, all of the schools we visited promoted the arts.  Due to the national curriculum in place in China, all students enrolled in schools participated in music, dance, visual art, and drama classes to some degree.  Their emphasis on creating well-rounded citizens was stressed and the obvious investment in the arts was proof of their commitment to this noble goal.

The academic classes we visited were more often than not teacher directed with little student-student interaction.  There is a heavy emphasis on memorization and rote learning at schools in China and despite high rankings on international standardized tests, there is a shift away from this kind of learning towards practices that involve more critical and creative thinking.  LACHSA has a burgeoning reputation in China because of our focus on the arts; our practices that promote creativity are of keen interest to the Chinese.  In fact, there will be visits from a group of Chinese principals to LACHSA later this month and next. 

I was also amazed by the level of English-language proficiency of students.  All schools begin English-language instruction in the elementary schools some as early as first grade.

Despite the marked differences between the schools we visited and American schools there were also remarkable similarities.  Nowhere was this on display more than our visit to LACHSA's sister school in China, the Hangzhou High School for the Arts.

After four days in Shanghai we travelled two hours outside of Shanghai to Hangzhou.  As an urban metropolis, Hangzhou could not be more different or more beautiful. The defining feature of Hangzhou's beauty is expansive West Lake located within a booming city center of some 8 million people.  The Chinese have a saying: "In the sky there is Heaven and on earth there is Hangzhou."   The natural and preserved beauty of West Lake, with its ancient pagodas and natural islands, is indeed heavenly.

LACHSA and Hangzhou High School for the Arts 

The similarities to LACHSA are striking.  Hangzhou High School for the Arts has 600 students, in grades 9-12, who major in one of four arts areas: music, dance, theatre, and visual arts.  School uniforms are eschewed at this school--the mere question provoked a strong reaction--as the students are free and encouraged to express their individuality.  The students from Hangzhou graduate to the top universities and conservatories in China and some of the top professional music and dance ensembles.

The principal of the school, Principal Song (aptly named!) and I had the chance to talk about our schools.  He first began by asking me if we had any issues at LACHSA with students who embraced their artistic discipline, but disengaged in their academic studies.  He then asked about students' balancing demands of arts and academic workload and then about tensions between arts and academic interests.  I responded jokingly that these issues did not exist at LACHSA.  While we shared a hearty laugh, it was instructive to me that even in a distant country six thousand miles away, we shared so much in common.

Although their school was not in session--the school was being retrofitted for earthquakes--we did meet some of the students and heard some of them perform, including one of the students who will visit LACHSA in October.  I am so pleased that 22 students from this school will visit LACHSA in October. 

There is a heavy weight that rests upon those of us who lead and teach at LACHSA.  Indeed, we are charged with preparing students for a world that in many ways has yet to be invented.  Success in this ever-evolving 21^st Century world depends less on acquiring specific content knowledge and skills and more on the ability to think critically and creatively, problem solve, and move seamlessly within a globalized world. To illustrate this point think about this: The top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist as early as 2004.  This phenomenon will only continue and will continue to challenge all schools to adequately prepare their students for success.