Functional Education System essays

Functional Education System essays When I accepted the position of Secretary of Education I was asked to design and create an education system that is works. Unfortunately it is my belief that no one person can create a fully functional system of education. The problem with the current educational system is not the teachers, principals, supplies, or budgets [Though the latter two create problems unique to the situation]. The problem with the current education system, and all education systems, proposed or previous, are the students. A handful of unmotivated students, say 5 in a class of 20, can greatly decrease the measure the amount the other 15 motivated students learn in relation to what they are normally able to learn. This decrease is caused by the slow rate at which one of these classes will progress due to the unmotivated students disposition to learn. This unfortunate trait is all too evident in classrooms of America, causing bright students not to fall back in grades, but not to learn to the total extent of their ability. My proposal is not that we need a new teaching system, that classrooms must be structured differently, or that students must be further segregated according to their skills. There is no existing reason that the most advanced I.B. student cannot be placed in a class with the lowest student in Tech Prep and the Tech Prep student be capable of keeping up with the I.B. student if the extra effort is willing to be put forth. It is that students must first have the desire to learn. Until these unmotivated students decide to take responsibility and prepare to learn, there can be no true working education system. In closing I would like to state that this seemingly perfect system of teachers instructing and all the students paying heed and learning is not impossible. Only we are unable of designing the system that can coerce students into being attentive. The students themselves ...

Taiping Rebellion in Qing China

Taiping Rebellion in Qing China The Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864) was a millenarian uprising in southern China that began as a peasant rebellion  and turned into an extremely bloody civil war. It broke out in 1851, a Han Chinese reaction against the Qing Dynasty, which was ethnically Manchu. The rebellion was sparked by a famine in Guangxi Province, and Qing government repression of the resulting peasant protests. A would-be scholar named Hong Xiuquan, from the Hakka minority, had tried for years to pass the exacting imperial civil service examinations  but had failed each time. While suffering from a fever, Hong learned from a vision that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ  and that he had a mission to rid China of Manchu rule and of Confucian ideas. Hong was influenced by an eccentric Baptist missionary from the United States named Issachar Jacox Roberts. Hong Xiuquans teachings and the famine sparked a January 1851 uprising in Jintian (now called Guiping), which the government quashed. In response, a rebel army of 10,000 men and women marched to Jintian and overran the garrison of Qing troops stationed there; this marks the official start of the Taiping Rebellion. Taiping Heavenly Kingdom To celebrate the victory, Hong Xiuquan announced the formation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, with himself as king. His followers tied red cloths around their heads. The men also grew out their hair, which had been kept in the queue style as per Qing regulations. Growing long hair was a capital offense under Qing law. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had other policies that put it at odds with Beijing. It abolished private ownership of property, in an interesting foreshadowing of Maos communist ideology. Also, like the communists, the Taiping Kingdom declared men and women equal  and abolished social classes. However, based on Hongs understanding of Christianity, men and women were kept strictly segregated, and even married couples were prohibited from living together or having sex. This restriction did not apply to Hong himself, of courseas self-proclaimed king, he had a large number of concubines. The Heavenly Kingdom also outlawed foot binding, based its civil service exams on the Bible instead of Confucian texts, used a lunar calendar rather than a solar one, and outlawed vices such as opium, tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and prostitution. The Rebels The Taiping rebels early military success made them quite popular with the peasants of Guangxi, but their efforts to attract support from the middle-class landowners and from Europeans failed. Leadership of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began to fracture, as well, and Hong Xiuquan went into seclusion. He issued proclamations, mostly of a religious nature, while the Machiavellian rebel general Yang Xiuqing took over military and political operations for the rebellion. Hong Xiuquans followers rose up against Yang in 1856, killing him, his family, and the rebel soldiers loyal to him. The Taiping Rebellion began to fail in 1861  when the rebels proved unable to take Shanghai. A coalition of Qing troops and Chinese soldiers under European officers defended the city, then set out to crush the rebellion in the southern provinces. After three years of bloody fighting, the Qing government had retaken most of the rebel areas. Hong Xiuquan died of food poisoning in June of 1864, leaving his hapless 15-year-old son on the throne. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdoms capital at Nanjing fell the following month after hard urban fighting, and the Qing troops executed the rebel leaders. At its peak, the Taiping Heavenly Army likely fielded approximately 500,000 soldiers, male and female. It initiated the idea of total war - every citizen living within the boundaries of the Heavenly Kingdom was trained to fight, thus civilians on either side could expect no mercy from the opposing army. Both opponents used scorched earth tactics, as well as mass executions. As a result, the Taiping Rebellion was likely the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century, with an estimated 20 - 30 million casualties, mostly civilians. Around 600 entire cities in Guangxi, Anhui, Nanjing, and Guangdong Provinces were wiped from the map. Despite this horrific outcome, and the founders millennial Christian inspiration, the Taiping Rebellion proved motivational for Mao Zedongs Red Army during the Chinese Civil War the following century. The Jintian Uprising that started it all has a prominent place on the Monument to the Peoples Heroes that stands today in Tiananmen Square, central Beijing.