Teenage boys in a Shanghai school are on the front line of teaching reform after the world’s top-scoring education system introduced male-only classes over worries they are lagging girls.
Rows of white-shirted boys are put through their paces as they are called up individually to complete a chemical formula by teacher Shen Huimin, who hopes that a switch to male-only classes will help them overcome their reticence.
“We give boys a chance to change,” she said.
The Shanghai school system topped the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s (OECD) worldwide assessment tests of 15-year-olds in 2009, the most recent available, ahead of Korea, Finland, Hong Kong and Singapore.
But even so officials are concerned that some male students may be slower than their female counterparts in development and certain academic areas, such as language, and the shift toward single sex classes aims to boost boys’ confidence.
A prominent Chinese educator, Sun Yunxiao, found the proportion of boys classed among the top scholars in the country’s “gaokao” university entrance exams plunged from 66.2 percent to 39.7 percent between 1999 and 2008.
Across the developed world, girls do better than boys in secondary school, the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) found in a 2009 report on the educational performances of 15-year-olds.
“There are significant gender differences in educational outcomes,” it said, adding that high school graduation rates across the OECD were 87 percent for girls but only 79 percent for boys.
In response, Shanghai’s elite Number Eight High School is halfway through the initial year of an experiment, putting 60 boys into two classes of their own — a quarter of its first-year students — and teaching them with a special curriculum.
“This is a big breakthrough,” said principal Lu Qisheng. “There’s lots of hope — hope that boys will grow up better.
“Boys when they are young do not spend enough time studying,” he explained. “Boys’ maturity, especially for language and showing self-control, lags behind girls.”
China shut most same-sex schools after the Communist Party came to power in 1949, and the only all-boys junior high schools in the country are privately run.
Shanghai does have an all-girls state-run high school, the former McTyeire School for Girls, which marked its 120th anniversary last year and counts the three Soong sisters — Qing-ling, Ai-ling and Mei-ling — among its former pupils.
Between them they married two leaders and an industrialist. Qing-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the first President of the Republic of China, while Mei-ling wed Chiang Kai-shek, who would also later become president.
Student Li Zhongyang, 15, said he felt less shy about answering questions in his all-boys class, but drew hoots of laughter from his fellows by suggesting an absence of girls let them concentrate more on study.
“We lack confidence,” he said. “The teachers like girls, who answer more questions in class. This program lets us realize we are not worse than girls.”
It is something of a contrast to males’ traditionally dominant roles in Chinese culture, but principal Lu said the program “doesn’t have much relationship to equality in society.”
The scheme was launched after China’s government called for more “diversification” in educational choices within the state system.
A Peking University professor has called for an even bolder reform, suggesting in September that boys should start school one or two years later than girls.
“The Chinese education system needs to improve and allow various education methods,” Wu Bihu said on his microblog.
Now Lu hopes to create China’s first all-boys school one day.
“Ten or twenty years ago, there was no need for an all-boys class — just put everyone together,” he said. In an increasingly aspirational society, he added, some families saw the new program as having connotations of top overseas private schools, and so promising an advantage in the highly competitive gaokao.
“The parents know: England has Eton,” he said.
China gives boys a ‘chance to change’
China gives boys a ‘chance to change’
Trump awards medals to the Kennedy Center honorees in an Oval Office ceremony
- Trump said they are a group of “incredible people” who represent the “very best in American arts and culture”
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Saturday presented the 2025 Kennedy Center honorees with their medals during a ceremony in the Oval Office, hailing the slate of artists he was deeply involved in choosing as “perhaps the most accomplished and renowned class” ever assembled.
This year’s recipients are actor Sylvester Stallone, singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, the rock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford.
Trump said they are a group of “incredible people” who represent the “very best in American arts and culture” and that, “I know most of them and I’ve been a fan of all of them.”
“This is a group of icons whose work and accomplishments have inspired, uplifted and unified millions and millions of Americans,” said a tuxedo-clad Trump. “This is perhaps the most accomplished and renowned class of Kennedy Center Honorees ever assembled.”
Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center
Trump ignored the Kennedy Center and its premier awards program during his first term as president. But the Republican has instituted a series of changes since returning to office in January, most notably ousting its board of trustees and replacing them with GOP supporters who voted him in as chairman of the board.
Trump also has criticized the center’s programming and its physical appearance, and has vowed to overhaul both.
The president placed around each honoree’s neck a new medal that was designed, created and donated by jeweler Tiffany & Co., according to the Kennedy Center and Trump.
It’s a gold disc etched on one side with the Kennedy Center’s image and rainbow colors. The honoree’s name appears on the reverse side with the date of the ceremony. The medallion hangs from a navy blue ribbon and replaces a large rainbow ribbon decorated with three gold plates that rested on the honoree’s shoulders and chest and had been used since the first honors program in 1978.
Trump honors the honorees
Strait, wearing a cowboy hat, was first to receive his medal. When the country singer started to take off the hat, Trump said, “If you want to leave it on, you can. I think we can get it through.” But Strait took it off.
The president said Crawford was a “great star of Broadway” for his lead role in the long-running “Phantom of the Opera.” Of Gaynor, he said, “We have the disco queen, and she was indeed, and nobody did it like Gloria Gaynor.”
Trump was effusive about his friend Stallone, calling him a “wonderful” and “spectacular” person and “one of the true, great movie stars” and “one of the great legends.”
Kiss is an “incredible rock band,” he said.
Songs by honorees Gaynor and Kiss played in the Rose Garden just outside the Oval Office as members of the White House press corps waited nearby for Trump to begin the ceremony.
The president president said in August that he was “about 98 percent involved” in choosing the 2025 honorees when he personally announced them at the Kennedy Center, the first slate chosen under his leadership. The honorees traditionally had been announced by press release.
It was unclear how they were chosen. Before Trump, it fell to a bipartisan selection committee.
“These are among the greatest artists, actors and performers of their generation. The greatest that we’ve seen,” Trump said. “We can hardly imagine the country music phenomena without its king of country, or American disco without its first lady, or Broadway without its phantom — and that was a phantom, let me tell you — or rock and roll without its hottest band in the world, and that’s what they are, or Hollywood without one of its greatest visionaries.”
“Each of you has made an indelible mark on American life and together you have defined entire genres and set new standards for the performing arts,” Trump said.
Trump also attended an annual State Department dinner for the honorees on Saturday. In years past, the honorees received their medallions there but Trump moved the ceremony to the White House.
Trump to host the Kennedy Center Honors
Meanwhile, the glitzy Kennedy Center Honors program and its series of tribute speeches and performances for each recipient is set to be taped on Sunday at the performing arts center for broadcast later in December on CBS and Paramount+. Trump is to attend the program for the first time as president, accompanied by his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
The president said in August that he had agreed to host the show, and he seemed to confirm on Saturday that he would do so, predicting that the broadcast would garner its highest ratings ever as a result. Presidents traditionally attend the program and sit with the honorees in the audience. None has ever served as host.
He said he looked forward to Sunday’s celebration.
“It’s going to be something that I believe, and I’m going to make a prediction: this will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night,” Trump said.
The president also swiped at late-night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel, whose program was briefly suspended earlier this year by ABC following criticism of his comments related to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.
Kimmel and Trump are sharp critics of each other, with the president regularly deriding Kimmel’s talent as a host. Kimmel has hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards and the Academy Award multiple times.
Trump said he should be able to outdo Kimmel.
“I’ve watched some of the people that host. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible,” Trump said. “If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”
