Appreciation brings out students' potential

Repeating school years is a big problem in rural education, and detention is a serious blow to student confidence. Yang took a survey of 357 students in the village and found 72 percent had detention experience and 98 students had been held back twice.

He decided to put an end to detention and carried out the first no-detention experiment in the province. He consulted experts, read literature and earned acclaim for this education method.

In Yang's eyes, every rural student has great potential. Rural education is not only for students to learn, but also brings them confidence and happiness.

A student called Xiaozhou was careless, and failed many courses. His parents asked the school to hold him back for the the school year. Yang observed Xiaozhou carefully and found him interested in arts. He assigned him a post as art leader and held exhibitions for him at school. Under his guidance, Xiaozhou became more and more confident and his academic performance improved. He progressed to the next grade, went to middle school and enrolled in the industrial design department of a northwestern university.

No student has repeated a grade since the no-detention experiment began. From the experiment, Yang saw the importance of appreciation in education.

He required teachers to look for students' merits and write them down on a card. The card states the time, place and the detail of a good deed and the teacher's comment. Yang read the merit cards during the flag-raising ceremony on Monday and the names of students who received merit cards were written on the school's blackboard.

In Xingzhi primary school, everyone takes turns to be group leaders and class cadres, so they get the chance to show their abilities and improve their confidence. They also learn to care for and serve others.

The graduates of the school are confident and active. Many parents said Yang's education model not only changed their kids, but also changed their preconceptions about rural students.

Yang's practice and research on appreciation in education drew attention from Southeast Asia. He has been invited to give speeches in Singapore and Malaysia and was profiled by Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao of Singapore.