21st century, a new century featured by innovative knowledge, is an age of knowledge economy and calls for the basic education to be a cradle of nurturing international innovative talents, which is a time mission endowed to realize the great rejuvenation of our Chinese nation. To fulfill the requirements of the international metropolis in demand of advanced foreign language talents, to establish a system of cultivating foreign language creative talents and to follow the instruction of “cultivating advanced foreign language talents from childhood” advocated by Shanghai Municipal Government, the Shanghai Pudong Foreign Language Primary School (SPFLPS) affiliated to Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) was founded in September 1999 at the request of Shanghai Municipal Government and with the care, support from the leaders in Pudong New Area. Zhou Muyao, then vice mayer in charge of education, came for inspection in person and gave his full consent to the orientation of PFLPS. “Principal taking responsibility under the leadership of the Board” is the school running system. The honorary director of the Board is Ph.D. supervisor, Professor Dai Weidong, who is former Party Secretary and President of SISU, and who is now Chairman of National Foreign Language Teaching Advisory Board under the Ministry of Education and Vice Chairman of Shanghai Federation of Literary and Art Circles .The director of the Board is Professor Hu Luyi, former Deputy Party Secretary of Shanghai Municipal Commission of Ethnic and Religious Affairs of Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress and Chairman of Shanghai Municipal Education and Health Commission . The first headmaster of the school was associate professor Zhu Jianguo, who was the former vice president of SISU, now the headmaster of Shanghai Pudong Foreign Languages School affiliated to SISU and Chairman of Shanghai Education Administration Society.
Following the spirit of “three orientations” proposed by Mr Deng Xiaoping, the school is vigorously pursuing its objective, that is, to establish a school that serves as a cradle to nurture the innovative talents with high qualification and solid foreign language foundation to meet needs for the future international competition. The school gains considerable advantages of excellent teaching staff of SISU and adheres to the policy of taking foreign languages as its characteristics. When the school was first founded, many experts helped to draw out the English teaching syllabus, including Ph. D supervisor Zhou Shen, Deputy Director of English Language Teaching Subcommittee of National FLT Advisory Board, Dean of College for Overseas Coorperation, SISU, member of Shanghai Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and board member of SPFLPS; Doctor Sun Jian, Deputy Dean of College of International Finance and Commerce of SISU.
Our school motto is “Nation, Honor & Responsibility”, and this distinct educational ideology is exemplified by the sentences such as ”No bad child, and every child should have a taste of success; the charisma of teacher lies in the objective and fair treatment of each student; marks are part of the students’ privacy; all students are supposed to take turns to be the team leaders, and charming teacher will help students foster their love for study ;tolerance is more forceful than punishment, so corporal punishment is strictly forbidden, and a teacher’s duty is to explore. Both the motto and the ideology have been concentrated into the school atmosphere, the teaching atmosphere and the learning atmosphere, and incorporated into the school’s educational tradition and values, and moreover, they have created a kind of internal culture of our school, which keeps pace with the development of the whole society.
Campus culture is the implicit curriculum of a school. It not only influences the students’ character and morals, but also their habits and behavior. In the light of the scientific outlook, our school created a natural, purificatory and glorified environment to pursue a harmonious development of the nature and our campus, and to create an encouraging atmosphere, thus enabling our students to learn in the natural environment of our school. We make our campus our home, our garden and integrate the beauty of society, art, nature and science in it. In this way, our students can grow up in a healthy, harmonious, pleasant and challenging environment. It is in this nice atmosphere that they can feel the urge to improve themselves and to enjoy the happiness of learning.
In the recent nine years, SPFLPS has adhered to the principle of setting self-development aims by giving priority to listening and speaking and by conducting graded teaching. Experimenting by giving lectures on second foreign language to students of Grade Five, we are always exploring the best foreign language teaching methods. Keeping up with the world, we are highlighting our features and endeavouring to vitalize the school’s image.
Cherishing the merits of traditional education and the achievements of today’s exploration, SPFLPS has also the aspiration for future advance. By no means will we disappoint the leaders of the Shanghai Municipal Government who have placed great expectations on us to train advanced multi-language talents. We will play a leading role in the present education reform.
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