China aus dem Blickwinkel des sekundären Bildungsbereichs

Abstract

The article "China aus dem Blickwinkel des sekundaren Bildungsbereichs" discusses the German Chinese Textbook Project on the one hand and the image of China among German high school graduates on the other hand. The German Chinese Textbook Project was initiated in 1991 by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research and the Chinese Ministry of Education (Forschungszentrum fiir Unterrichtsfacher und Lehrmittel) in Beijing (People’s Republic of China). Since then the mutual presentation in schoolbooks and teaching material have been discussed by several commissions resulting in many concrete proposals for improvement. The results hitherto achieved were published in Edition 90 of Studies in International Textbook Research (Georg Eckert Institute). The cooperation is still going on. The image of China among German high school graduates was the subject of a survey in the form of a questionnaire (27 questions) among 1010 high school students carried out from August 2002 until May 2003. In the present article the answers to the following five questions are illustrated exemplarily: Is there a "Chinese language interest group" at your high school? What did you learn about China at high school, for example in geography? Can you imagine or do you intend to study sinology or a China related subject after passing your university-entrance examination? What are your spontaneous associations concerning China? Do you know what language is spoken in China? All in all it turned out that the pupils are primarily informed about China by the media. Personal contacts, journeys to China or other forms of cultural interchange have only minimal impact on the image of China among the teenagers. It is especially teachers and parents that influence the shaping of pupil’s opinions, although this influence is far from adequate and less important than the Textbook Project expected. In general, the positive German image of China is mainly due to the country’s attractiveness in terms of economic development and tourism.