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WOMEN AND TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING 135
Student ‘quality’ is addressed in terms of course comprehension and skilling, but also in
relation to the subjectivity of the student as ‘all round’. ‘All round’ includes their vision
of a wider world, which may be already quite accessible and familiar to middle-class urban
children but will not be so to children in rural schools. It also includes an expectation that
happiness is predicated on learning in an environment conducive to learning and that the
latter is characterised by multi-literacy, both visual and moral, in the classroom. The
motivations underlying this set of objectives flesh out what is meant by a technological
classroom and a ‘comprehensive curriculum’. The modernisation process is accompanied
by education objectives that position the teacher as an embodiment of new technologies,
and as a mediator of external realities in the wider world. They also, still, take on
responsibility for incorporating the political boundaries of state and Party in their
management of the information that they convey—through film, language and other
subjects.
Furthermore, the presentation of results at the Zibo Conference leads us to make two
observations relevant to our argument here. First, all the presenters, bar one mainland
and Hong Kong participant, were female, either representative senior teachers, or
teachers who had themselves managed the classroom teaching of the project. There was
therefore a strong sense of female competency associated with the event, which was
enhanced by the presence of Yu Lan as guest of honour. As in all international meetings,
some teachers were initially nervous—or the equipment failed them—but overall the
impression was one of commitment, differentiated and inventive teaching and learning,
and talent finding a niche.
Schools were offered 216 packages in testing the film course. They were either
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thematic, edited collections of films (about dogs, monks, witches, Pearl Harbor, space,
pirates) or collections of films which have several versions: Around the World in Eighty Days,
Six Warring States (Zhanguo), Cinderella (five of the available 77 versions were selected for
the course), Tarzan (twelve films), Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels. Many of the films
seem rather antiquated to the eyes of a Western educator, but it must be remembered
that the course intends to give students a context in which to place their film spectatorship
generally. It is the modality of the teaching that makes this experiment interesting. There
is a rather proscriptive system of film selection for the trial and presumably for the
curriculum once it is in place. Films are required to be ‘classical’ and to aid ‘psychological
development’ within an overall curricula remit to socialise the young. Nevertheless, at
classroom level this programme is implemented by a large cohort of mainly female
primary teachers, who mobilise this course for locally differentiated outcomes. I will
outline two examples from very different schools to exemplify this.
In a primary school in Jiangxi, Grade Three and Grade Four students (8–10-year-olds)
studied the story of Robinson Crusoe in several film versions over an entire semester. The
aim of the course was to build a comprehensive understanding of survival and to build
physical endurance among students. The teacher in charge argued that, although the
catchment of the school was of low to average economic standing, many children in her
year groups were single children, and many were somewhat spoilt as a result. She felt that
visual appreciation, fun (happiness) and technological training could combine to support a
moral agenda. She and her team utilised fieldwork in the surrounding countryside to help